I’ve done some swaps over on flickr and elsewhere and have loved getting some fun goodies in the mail - the real mail. You remember the real mail, dontcha? My children are always trying to snag my stuff. So I decided to give them their own little swappity fun. It will be different each time. I’ve got a list a mile long that my children have come up with for swapping ideas. Most of them are pretty good, too. The first swap is a Book Swap. It’s a public group set up as invite only (there’s a link to request to join, so don’t fret.) Since this is for our children I wanted to take whatever precautions I could to protect identities and information. If I don’t know you (in life or in blogdom for a while - no anonymous members) I’ll need a reference from another group member or some one we both know.

See that badge over in my sidebar? It’s going to stay there as long as the sign up is open (July 15th, 2008). Don’t miss out.

Come and see.

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Alternate title: Kicking up some dust
or
A miracle: I’m sure our neighbors are happier

Today Goro got busy with a new chore. He learned how to cut grass. With a push-mower. GASP!

He got a little instruction from SmockDaddy about the mower then went to task.

He jumped right on it proud to learn something new and help.

With sister close behind he sets to task. His mind on the job at hand.

Second verse lap, same as the first.

Ready about!

Hard to lee. or About Face.

He did a great job and I am very proud of his achievement. It’s no small task as our yard is large AND we don’t even own a lawn mower.¹ I’m proud of you, Iain. You did a great job. But the hugs will wait until after your shower - you are a bit dirty and, well, stinky, too. :o)

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Just for fun the other day I decided to click on a link from someone else’s blog to see what my blog rating is. Not the Google ratings or feed ratings and all that. Those G, PG, and R ratings. The ‘just for fun’ ones. I often follow links like that, but I never post them. Once upon a time a had a page just for entering the codes from those silly quizzes and such, but I think I deleted it. I don’t usually like that on my front page, but when I’m in the mood or needing some seriously brain dead idle nothingness to help me avoid work that needs to be done I do a few of those things.

This particular blog rating link fives you a rating, a graphic, and the reason for the rating.

Here’s my latest rating:

Remember this post from just a few days ago? Yeah that one about all the crack corn?

Thanks to that post I have a rating of R. The word crack ¹ got me an R rating. That’s about as stupid as Craig Ferguson not being allowed to say the name of this animal on TV. He’d get censored. What is up with that? ² So don’t run off because of the rating - it’s just a passing phase. We’ve been through rehab successfully. I promise. No more crack!

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I was changing the litter box last night. I heard the cat crying about as loudly as he could (which is pretty loud) telling me to hurry up. He does that a lot, yells at us when we’re slow with his food or his box. I was hurrying as fast as I could. Seriously, that’s not an enjoyable job, but care must be taken to ensure that pouring the contents into a trash bag is the cleaning that must be done. No one wants to clean spilled kitty box litter from the floor.

I was squatting on the floor scooping big cups of litter into the box from the large bucket of litter refill. We buy it bulk and pour it into a big bucket for storage. My left wrist, right under my palm, stung like a bee got me then it rather quickly began to itch. I tried to ignore it so I could complete the task at hand. It itched to much to be ignored and I looked down at it and became rather puzzled at what I saw.

There was a piece of plastic stuck to my hand and wrist. It was thick and molded to match my hand from the top of my palm, down my wrist, and extending onto my arm about five inches. There was nothing holding it there. It looked like something that would be used in the medical world to hold a wrist still to allow an injury to heal. I began wondering what I had done and when I had done it. I couldn’t remember. The itch was getting worse. I reached down to remove the piece of plastic and everything looked fine, except that the plastic piece was attached to my arm and it did removed, it opened to the right in a hinge-like fashion to reveal my skin, but injured skin, thin and pale.

I focused on the area that itched and I saw the culprit, a Love Bug. Seriously, a Love Bug? I grew up with these bugs swarming all over twice a year. They are incapable of biting. there called Love Bugs for Pete’s sake. Although that’s not why they are called Love Bugs. We used to catch them and let them crawl on our arms and hands, like Roly-polies (Pill bugs). So I reached down to pull it off and it wouldn’t come off. I couldn’t get it off. The more I pulled, the tighter it clung to my thin, pale skin. And then something moved. Something moved under my skin, right below where the Love Bug was biting. I kept pulling and pulling. Finally I got it off, or rather began ripping my skin open as I pulled on the bug, but it wasn’t hurting. It was like the top layer of a blister filled with water. But what I exposed was most disturbing. Larvae. Large pencil sized larvae. And as soon as I exposed the larvae they began writhing under my skin trying to get away. I reached in a pulled on one pulling and pulling to get it out. I got it out and tossed downward to grab another one, there were at least five I could see.

When I looked down at the bucket we use for holding new litter I saw Birdie squatting across from me. She was taking over the job of filling the cat box. I looked at her face and it was all scrunched up as if to say she agreed that the things in my arm were gross. I looked back down at the bucket and realized the bucket looked different and the contents were moving. It was full of these large larvae.

I screamed at her to get back and realized I was in a rather unfamiliar room. I didn’t know where we were. I shook off those questions to get back at the task of removing the larvae from my arm. There were more Love Bugs on my arm, biting the larvae. What? I kept pulling and pulling. I got them out, seven of them.

Then I awoke.

That was just one of eight different rather vivid and strange dreams I had last night. Each of the dreams were vivid and clear. So clear that when I awoke I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed them or had just been having strange thoughts while wide awake.

A restless night, like the previous three. Four nights of visions I can not explain. I’m not taking any medications. I have not been eating anything new or strange.

Maybe it’s in the water.

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For about two/three years now I’ve been learning CSS and have made some attempts at learning php as well. That’s not a very long time, that makes me a babe in this web world. If you don’t know what those are don’t fret, just keep reading and pretend you do. I learned HTML years ago. I, by no means, am of a professional level. I do know what I’m doing, but I don’t have the confidence in myself that I should. I see so many really awesome blogs and designs out there that intimidate me highly. I am not a very creative person. My gifts with just about any form of making something lie in the areas of someone telling me what they want and me getting it done. God seldom blesses me with a vision to start with. It has happened a few times, but rarely. You give me A and I’ll get you all the way to Z and way on past it.

When I sew, I’m good. My details are incredible. I have years of sewing under my belt. I am 39 and I have been sewing since I was twelve. That’s a long time. When it comes to sewing I call myself a professional. I have taught classes, been paid for services, created some designs of my own. What I don’t have is the means to print those designs, own a copyright, and sell them. This takes financial backing that I don’t have.

I can look at something in a store and go home and make it. I’m good. On some level, this aggravates me; at what point are my ideas for a new twist in an old pattern just a recycled idea I saw somewhere when I was twenty? It all just becomes a part of me. That’s the thing about learning new things - it becomes a part of us. It took me many years (through college) to understand the difference with the quality of my work needing adjustment or critique and someone liking or not liking my work. If the quality of my work is top notch and professional (which it is now and has been for many years) then if you don’t like it I don’t care. I like green, you like blue and that is all there is to it. If you tell me that you don’t like green that is fine. It is your choice, your liking, there is nothing wrong with green. If I make an outfit and you tell me that you don’t like it, that’s fine too. You can see the fine detail and quality of my work and see that it is good and acknowledge that alone without liking it. That’s called appreciation.

In education, most liberal arts degrees require art appreciation and music appreciation. Many of our literature courses are just that as well - learning to appreciate the writer and what he has written whether we like it or not.

There is maturity in learning the difference in why we like or dislike something and still being able to appreciate it even when we dislike it.

For example, I really don’t like the country decor/theme of natural wood and heart and duck/goose cutouts. I would never want that in my home. Tat does not mean I can not appreciate it. As a matter of fact, an old friend back in Hattiesburg had her entire house decorated in this theme. I didn’t like it because I don’t like that design, but I want to say loud and clear that her house was beautiful. It was not overly done, the balance she found was welcoming and never made me feel swallowed or buried in country decor knock-knacks. I am able to appreciate what she did with decorating her house because she understood the theme and balanced did it well.

So, I’m getting way off here, but I just wanted to express that when I do something well and I know I can I don’t find it hard to speak up for myself. I am a seamstress and a really good one. My prices are set the way they are because I know I am good (I’m often told my prices are not high enough).

When I am learning something new and I know I did it well it’s harder for me to shout for joy and make huge announcements because I just don’t have the confidence yet to be able to balance that bit of deflation should it really not be as good as I thought it was. So validation is great. I never got any growing up, so I realize that this is just a sign of immaturity with my emotions of let down. No I don’t have a tantrum when someone doesn’t like something I’ve done when it’s a new thing for me, but the deflation is a bit more than it should be. Yes, I get over it rather quickly, but I don’t like my balloons to burst - I’d much rather let them go and watch them fly away into the big blue yonder. So that is what I do - I move on as quickly as possible to learn how to better what I’ve done. It’s a learning process. I love to learn. I think it’s important for all people, young and old, to be able to bask in a bit of glory before they begin the next step of correcting what was wrong. Validation is encouragement, not mastery. Validation is important in life.

What’s the point you ask? The point is this: I have recently felt validated with some hard work and my time spent learning about designs for this bloggy world in which I participate. Some time ago (years) my hubby began writing articles for various Christian magazines in his areas of expertise: church music and church worship. He’s been asked to speak at other churches as a result of this as well. I wish he had more time to give to this and to say yes to opportunities that come his way, but we just are not financially able to do that, yet. This is his passion - worship in a reformed tradition. He has many initials after his name and could list numerous publications with which he has worked. But my hubby, he is a humble man and doesn’t do that. He practically refuses to do that. He is out for his own glory; he wants others to see God in what he writes and teaches. I love this about him, but sometimes I think he needs to show others the validation he has received. I don’t think he gets the respect he deserves. But he sees a list of initials and accolades as pretentious. Sometimes it takes a bit of that in our world to let yourself “be known”. Again, that is not what he is after (God I love my man). I still think a bit of pretention in his life would be good, not too much, just enough for others to know.

I’ve been trying really hard to encourage him to write a book, or two or three (more on this later). Time, and money to assist with that time, would be helpful. But time he hasn’t had. He still needs that day job to help us eat. My hubby is an incredible family man and doesn’t want to sacrifice too much of that time to take away from the nurturing of our children. (See how good of a man I’ve got.) He understands the importance of a father’s role in the life of a child and he’s an awesome father. For as many years as we’ve had a baby in the house as soon as he gets home he has a baby in his arms.

OK, I’m getting off track again. He has a website, an eMag if you will. It’s an online magazine (are those still called eMags?). The original form of this was a subscription via mailing. The Internet is a big thing and has allowed him to reach more people and more churches than possible via a snail mail subscription (although he offers that for those who still desire that form of magazine). It’s called Rediscovering Worship.

I found a theme by Justin Tadlock that I thought was just perfect for what my hubby wanted to do with the online version of the magazine. The theme is called Options. This theme would allow him to use the familiar platform of a blog and WordPress that he already knew so well. While my hubby is brilliant it is a fact for anyone that a smaller learning curve for something new allows us more time to get right down to the work at hand. This platform just seemed like the right thing. This theme would allow for just that. I began working on customizing the theme for his site. I also found a plugin (that is not quite as easy to work with as they claim, but still works) to allow us to manage the subscription aspects of the magazine. This took months to finalize and master. Often I found myself at the mercy and time table of the plugin creators to make certain changes that would work for us. This was not easy, or inexpensive. But, I’ve been proud of what I was able to accomplish and give to my husband.

Recently, Justin offered up a showcase of ten customizations on his Options theme. He featured us/my hubby’s site in this list. Go check it out; we are near the bottom. There are thousands of downloads of his theme and hundreds of customizations listed in his forums. I feel so intimidated by the awesomeness of many of those customizations. The work others have put into their blogs is incredible. But being included in this list really give me a feeling a validation for the work I’ve done.

Thank you for making it to the end of this post.

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