7 Quick Takes

 

Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler, a fellow Texan, for hosting

7 Quick Takes Friday 

over at Conversion Diary.com

 

1 - I broke my vow, made in 2009, to not engage combox trolls. This particular one was an apologist for divorce. The fact that people had the audacity to express sadness and regret over divorce was the fuel that fed her fire. On a silly impulse I thought I could point out the errors of her assumptions, the lack of charity and open-mindedness in her tone, and then we all could get back to a civil discussion. The fantasy world I live in doesn't even charge admission. Come by and visit some time!

2 - Speaking of trolls, don't you ever get tempted to respond to the run of the mill evangelical atheist's trump card argument of "Only stupid people believe in God!" with "You've got a point there!" Then adding, while smiling sweetly, "So, when did you become Christian?"

3 - I have all these lovely pictures of baby goats, of foundations being poured, of kids being cute. What I don't have is a clue where the wire that gets the pictures from the camera to the computer is. Pick a box, any box...

4 - I've lost 15 pounds this summer. Part of it was stress, part of it was activity, but the last 5 pounds was due to Light Weigh. Suzanne Fowler developed this plan. It's more about putting God in the empty spaces of your life rather than stuffing those spots with food. I'm working on Week 3 of the 12 week program and am learning so much about prayer and sacrifice that I wanted to let you know about it. It's worth a look.

5 - Newsflash: Men are stronger than women. After dumping the hay bale on the side of the road this week, we had to get all that loose hay put up because it was going to rain (can we get an AMEN on that?!). Baled hay can take a little rain, but unbaled hay ruins. My husband and I couldn't even work on this job together because of the craziness of our schedules lately. He worked on putting some of the hay in the barn, then ran off on another errand. I finished an errand and then took my turn. I worked for about an hour before I uncovered the only part of the bale still intact. It weighed way more than I could handle. By breaking every OSHA rule I could think of, I barely managed to maneuver it off the trailer and into the barn. I was a sweaty mess when my husband showed up to tag me out on the job. "That's in an awkward place," he noted, seeing my handiwork, so he picked up the remains of the bale and casually tossed it up onto the hay pile. It took me 30 minutes of grunt work to move that thing and he just flipped it up there like it was nothing. Awesome.

6 - Last week my third grade son wrote his first official book report. I'm certain that others believe in the sanctifying effects of book reports for first and second graders, but I decided that book reports could wait until he was seven going on eight. It's not as if scholars are crippled in high school because they didn't write a one sentence summary of The Cat in the Hat beneath an undecipherable picture in the first grade. The skill of story analysis can be learned more readily after the brain is capable of abstract thought. In the meantime, I feel that reading should be enjoyed long enough to become a habit before we make a chore out of it.

7 - Speaking of waiting, we decided to keep my 5 year-olds in preschool for now. One of them has Autism and the other has some maturity issues. As we've progressed into the third week of school and we have experienced success after success with school, I am happy with our family's decision. They both feel competent and smart and are so much more eager to try something new than they were last year. I've got my Kindergarten curriculum already purchased and waiting in the wings, but for now, it's staying in the box. The flexibility of homeschool is one of it's many charms.