A Totally Frivolous Want

I just posted this at DiscussCooking.com and thought it would be a good topic for today.  :)


There are things we all need and things we want, but what is the one thing that you have always wanted but have never gotten? This has to be a "want" and not a "need."

For me it is a pool table. When I was around 10 my mom and dad, Aunt Janet and Uncle Ted, and my Uncle Glen all went together and bought a pool table. It was kept in Aunt Janet's and Uncle Ted's garage, and we spent a lot of time there. It was mostly the adults who played, but we did get a chance now and then. When my aunt and uncle moved, no one had room for the pool table, so it was sold. It has been over 40 years since then, but the strong desire to have one has never gone away.

What is it that you have always wanted?

Tiredness + Thirst = Yuck!

Wow, did I do something stupid the other night.

I have been waking up at night not only very thirsty, but also with my mouth and throat as dry as cotton. I try to keep a bottle of water next to the bed for those occasions.

The other night I woke up incredibly dry and thirsty. I was also still very tired. I grabbed the bottle that was next to my clock, sat up, and opened it. Then, for some reason, a still small voice inside of me said, "What if it's not water?" I barely gave it a thought, but instead of gulping and swallowing almost in one fluid motion as usual, I just poured some of it into my mouth and held it for a second. That was definitely long enough to realize that what I had in my mouth was not water, but witch hazel (with rubbing alcohol). I spit it out and rinsed my mouth a lot, then drank from the water bottle that had been sitting right behind the witch hazel.

YUCK!

Fortunately, even if I had swallowed the mouthful of witch hazel solution it would not have killed me, but it scared me to think of what could have happened if it had been something more dangerous. I will definitely be more careful about what I leave near my bed!

Thank You God for that still small voice.  :)

To Pluck or Not to Pluck

A while back I wrote about God speaking to me. Sometimes I recognize when He is speaking to me, but I'm sure there are times that I am too "busy" to listen. I really hope not, but I'm human, and fallible, so I'm sure I have. Today though, God spoke pretty clearly to me, in a direct answer to something I asked Him.

For the last 20 years, give or take, I have had a few gray hairs pop up on my head. There were only about three of them the first ten years, and I routinely plucked them, but they have slowly been increasing. I still pluck the obvious ones, but I know that if I continue to pluck all of them, I won't have a lot of hair soon! There are not enough gray hairs to warrant dying my hair, and since I love my hair color, I don't want to take a chance on ending up with a bad dye job.

This brings me to my conversation with God this morning. Right after my shower, as I was plucking a couple stubborn gray hairs that were standing straight up toward the back of my head, I remembered hearing some time ago a verse in the Bible about gray hair being a crown of glory. I told God right then and there that I would love to be able to find that verse, and that if gray hair is a crown of glory, I wouldn't mind going gray so much.

After my shower, it was time for my daily devotions and Bible time. I read two short devotional pages, then I am working on reading the Bible through in a year. First I read the devotion in my Daily Guideposts (a gift from my dear friend Maxine). Next I read today's entry in "Open Windows" (a small periodical published by LifeWay).

For today's devotions, "Open Windows" had me read Proverbs 16:27-32. The main focus of today's devotions focused on verse 32, but imagine my delight when I read verse 31. Remember my question to God? Well, here was His response to me:

The silver-haired head is a crown of glory,
If it is found in the way of righteousness. Proverbs 16:31.

I asked God to show me the verse, and there it was. I didn't have to go digging through the Bible. I didn't have to look at the concordance. I read the "assigned" verse, and there it was.

Now I just have to keep working on the righteousness part.

The Strangest Dream I Have Had in My Entire Life!

In my 53 years of life, I have had some crazy dreams. In fact, normal dreams are not the norm for me. Fortunately I love my crazy dreams, as they keep me well entertained. In my dreams I have been stalked by large wild animals, I have been lost, I lost my toddler grandson on a walk, and once I dreamed that I walked into a 7-11, grabbed a frozen pizza, folded it, stuffed it in my purse, and walked out. I don't often dream about people I know, and in fact, I'm not usually myself in my dreams.

I had one dream that I woke up from, crying. When I dream about my mom, who passed away over ten years ago, I wake up feeling happy. Last night's dream however, was without a doubt the strangest dream I have ever had.

I don't remember most of the dream, although it was all strange. The part I do remember is still very vivid to me. In my dream I felt something heavy hanging from my left eye. I could see that there was something hanging, but I couldn't see what it was, so I looked in the mirror. Woven into my eyebrows, and hanging about to my chin was some kind of soft woven nest. I looked inside, through the reflection in the mirror, and inside the nest were two baby voles! I have never seen a vole in my life, other than in pictures many years ago, but I remember in my dream saying that they were voles, and not moles. I had my husband cut the nest out of my eyebrows, and that is when the dream ended.

The strange thing is, I know what caused me to dream this strange dream! I don't know why the nest contained voles rather than moles, but the mind works in crazy ways.  To see a vole, you can check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vole,

Where did the dream come from? I believe it came from the skin tags my husband has on his eyelids. I have a small one as well, but his were large enough to bother him and we have been working on removing them. The doctor told us we could tie a thread around them and they would eventually fall off. We have removed a couple that way. Unfortunately, before they die and fall off, they double in size, but that's another story. :)

The reason I believe the skin tags are behind my dream is that for years before we knew what they were called, James called them "floppy moles." So in my mind, I transformed floppy moles on the eyelid into a nest of voles hanging from my eyebrows.

Well, it is time for bed. I wonder what crazy world I will visit tonight?!

Sweet dreams!!

Giggling Doggies!

James and I were acting silly with each other not long ago. Cubbie was just lying down and relaxing. I noticed that when we would act silly, Cubbie would wag just the tip of his tail. That is when I realized that dogs can giggle! 

When Cubbie is happy or interested in something, he wags his tail. When he is all-out excited, he wags not just his tail, but his whole body. But sometimes, as he did the other day, he just giggles!! 

When Cubbie giggles, I can't help but giggle back!