I have not written a blog entry for a very long time. Writing is cathartic for me, but I lost interest soon enough, and stopped writing for the blog. Most of my writing in the past years has been in the form of emails. I have written a lot of emails, believe me. Before that, I wrote for myself, long hand, with a pencil, on paper clipped to a clipboard. I would * attach a sheaf of papers to the clipboard, fill them with thoughts, then move that pile of journal entries to a permanent storage place, and then repeat from *.

I would love, love, love to organize all those old journal entries some day. Whoa! We’re talking thousands of sheets of paper, with hand-written journal entries. How would/will I ever get those organized? I’ve thought about putting them in microfiche format, and maybe I will some day, or I could pay someone to archive them on microfiche.

Now, back to the present . . . .

Bill and I headed out to deliver phone books this morning, but it started to rain in earnest and we drove back home. He – Bill – then left for somewhere, though I know not where; all I know is that he took his ladder with him! Bill is, by the way, gearing up for deer-hunting season. He bought his hunting license the other day, and he’s been buying every deer lure/attractant known to man! He loves to go deer hunting, and he loves to eat wild game of any sort. This past summer, he brewed up some turtle stew, made with a turtle Will brought home from a local pond. I did not eat any turtle stew, thank you very much. The very thought of it makes me lose my appetite. I suppose if I were hungry enough, I would be glad for the food.

Will went to homecoming this year, with a young lady named Terra. My baby is growing up! He is now taller than I am, by the way!!

The sliding glass door is in. I had to lengthen the drapes since the door replaced a window. Please see photo.

The lengthening process took @ 8 hours! I kept adding black stripes till they were long enough – one of those projects for which I am grateful I didn’t know would take so long else I would not have started. But what was I to do? I didn’t want to make new drapes for two windows, so it was either lengthen the ones for the new door to match the front window drapes . . . . or make all new ones. Ugh! Our next project is going to be, Lord willing, the building of a new workshop/storage shed. We’ll see. We already have the building permit, so we’ll see . . . .

That dining room table, by the way, is an amalgam of old wood and the table we had before; the base is one we got at a yard sale. The idea was to shorten the existing table to accommodate the flow of traffic to the new door.

We painted the whole upstairs main living areas next, after the door was in and the wall around the new door was dry-walled. The walls are now a lovely green. The next shot shows my trellis/frame project; I have not filled those trellises with photos yet. That wall, by the way, is magnetized so that I can change photos willy-willy. There are now photos in there, at this writing; I just haven’t taken a picture of them in place yet.

I’ve been googling Bohemian Décor lately, and I think that sort of describes our style. I have yet to come up with a suitable name for our style, alas!

I think I’ll insert one more photo then save it in my newterabyte.

This photo shows one of my quilts hanging in the dining area. We needed some art there, and this quilt was hanging on the wall in my basement sewing room. I mounted it on a cork board.

A Papasan Chair Upgrade

Please note the end table next to the chair. I got that for, like, free at a yard sale. It was not level – the glass was not level – so I brought it home and adjusted it. This table is handy because it’s easy to move from room to room, as needed. It can also be placed over a couch because the top is cantilevered over the base.

t we ended up doing . . . .

That’s Crocheted fabric strips on the top of the new footstool.

In 1988, upon the release of his book ­­Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie received death threats from muslim leaders. It seems he had written some negative things about the muslim ‘religion’ and he had to run for asylum in the United States.

What do these two things have in common? They both involve censorship.

And while you and I might not think that this sort of thing can happen in the good old US of A, we would be stupid in that assumption because it already has gotten to that point in our country. (For example, the recent Hate Crimes Bill makes it illegal to say certain things without censure.)

I am taking all of this to heart, folks, and I’ll tell you why: It really might get to where I cannot say what is on my heart and mind, so I think I’ll write some of those things now – things about which I have hesitated in the past because I didn’t want to offend anyone. The time has come to write plainly. It’s like that radio personality said: There might not be much time to write or say certain things . . . .

While the world seems to be focusing on Islam as the worst thing on earth, there is an organization that is much mightier and much more deadly and much more pervasive in this world: Catholicism. Catholicism has a blatant disregard for the Word of God. Catholicism is not a religion; it is a political party. (I would love to see a breakdown of the percentage of catholics who voted for pro-abortionist Barak Obama.) And while Catholicism is known for its anti-abortion stand, Catholicism is responsible for every abortion that has ever been committed in this world.

Catholicism doesn’t kill people; it destroys people, one day at a time. It anesthetizes people. It hypnotizes people. It is a doctrine of demons. They preach ‘another Jesus,’ as Paul writes, as recorded in the bible.

And another thing: Abortion is murder. Someone (a ‘good catholic’) told me that their conscience allowed them to vote for Obama because abortion is ‘just one issue.’ And I wish I’d said to them: And the killing of Jews was just one issue in Germany, too.’

Oh, oh! Just for the record: Lutheranism and Methodism and Baptismism (!) are also doctrines of demons. (As long as I am offending folks, I may as well include those people who think they are better than others because they are not catholic.)

I’m on a roll!! Here’s something else, too: Jesus said, ‘Without me, you can do nothing.’ I don’t care who you are or what you are or what you think you are all about, without Jesus, you can do nothing . . .

There! Now I have offended just about everyone. But I don’t care because that radio personality is right: There might not be much more time to speak plainly in this country.

I almost forgot: Homosexuality is perverse. Sorry. I didn’t mean to leave anyone out here! But let me go one step further for all of you who are smugly thinking, ‘Homosexuality has nothing to do with me’: Fornication ruins societies. Sleeping with someone to whom one is not married is fornication. I don’t care that our society thinks this sort of behavior is AOK; it is not.

There! I feel better now. At least now, if censorship in this country gets to the point where I cannot write such things, I will have already written some of what I know to be true. I just hope there is a place for me to run in the event that the US is no longer offering asylum to people who speak the truth . . .

No matter where or when the subject comes up, someone inevitably wants to argue with me about this particular subject. Perhaps the subject will cause you to want to argue with me too!

The subject? Hitting children.

Big people do not hit little people.

That’s it, in a nutshell. It is not right for big people to hit little people.

Inevitably, too, the person who argues with me is the same person, or so it seems: Someone with a beer can in their hand and a wary demeanor that borders on paranoia. Inevitably, too, they feel compelled to add this argument to the discussion, ‘My parents spanked me and I turned out OK.’ To that I want to say, ‘Oh, really? You could have been better . . .’

By the time our third son came along, I eschewed the practice of hitting children altogether. I had, I admit, swatted the diaper-padded butts periodically of our older two boys, but I made a firm decision that I would not thusly discipline our third son, Will.

All of which does not explain the following series of events: When Will was quite small – maybe a year old – he took to periodically taking potshots at my head! I never saw it coming; he would thwack me suddenly in the head. There was no warning. THWACK! He would swing back and hit me with all his might.

This went on for some time. I had no idea how to deal with it. Finally, when Will hit me in a store parking lot one day, in desperation I stopped a total stranger and told her the situation and asked for her advice. I told her that I was thinking seriously about hitting him back the next time . . .

This was a nice, mature woman I consulted in that parking lot. She concurred with that assessment: she told me she thought I’d have to hit him back the next time. I walked away from that conversation thinking that maybe Will would never hit me again and thus I would not have to deal with this again.

But of course he did hit me again. And I didn’t hesitate; I pulled back my arm and thwacked him with the same force with which he had walloped me. His eyes got big but he took it like a man. And he never hit me again . . .

And now for the rest of the story: Just this morning (Will is now 13 years old now, by the way), I suddenly realized why Will felt it was a good idea to hit me: He had never been hit before and had NO idea how it felt.

I have no idea what the lesson is in this story. I’ll let you decide the implications. I, personally, am inclined to think that we are all prone to treat others in ways that we have not been treated ourselves simply because we have no idea what affect our actions are having on others, but I’ll have to give that some more thought. Get back to me in about 13 years and maybe I’ll have a better idea about this . . .

In the meantime, I have to add here that our mom – a woman who raised 8 children – never hit any of us. She never so much as threatened to hit any of us. Amazing.

Oh, and that reminds me: One time I did come close to hitting Will in anger. I offer this last note by way of an alternative to spanking: Will tried to cop an attitude with me. I got very angry with him. I’d never been angrier with him. And in fact, that is the only time I ever got that angry with him. But instead of lashing out at him, I said, ‘I am so angry with you, Will! As you know, I’m not in the habit of hitting you, but this is one time when I could hit you!!’ He got the message and backed off quickly, believe me. He’d never seen me angry like that before.

I quit!

Love always,

Susan

I used to add new posts to my blog on a regular basis. Then someone told me that if I blogged something, I would lose exclusive rights to anything I shared in my blog.

Perhaps this is true. I don’t know. Not writing for a blog because I might ‘some day’ write for publication is no way to live, though; I do know that. And here is why:

The faulty presupposition is that, if I share something today, I won’t have anything more to share tomorrow.

The truth is that there is a future, and a good future, and thus I will never run out of things to share . . .

Too, there is the fact that writing for a blog is a form of publication. Just because I am not getting paid for it does not mean that I am not publishing when I write for a blog.

Put another way: A lifestyle that allows me to write for free is a better lifestyle than one that requires me to get paid for writing.

One day I made a bouguet with flowers from our garden. Someone said to me, when they saw that bouquet, ‘Wow, Sue, you could be a flower arranger!’ And I thought, ‘Well, if someone makes a bouquet, that makes them a flower-arranger, doesn’t it?’

In other words: A person does not have get paid to do something in order to be successful at that thing.

And, in fact, a lifestyle that affords someone the freedom to do something for free is a very rich lifestyle indeed.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Love always,

Faye

Self-Portrait

One night I had a dream in which I ‘saw’ a woman struggling through trial after trial. As I watched her struggle I wanted to help her. The dream went on and on. I got more and more frustrated because I could not help the woman in the dream. Toward the end of the dream, I realized with astonishment that the woman I’d been watching the dream video was . . . . me.

I had that dream many years ago. I awoke from it realizing that somewhere along the line I had come disconnected from myself. I started, then, to make a point of kneeling down once a day, as a way to reconnect with myself.

I also immediately upon wakening from that dream started seeking the lord about why it was that I had disconnected from myself. Eventually, I got my answer:

When I was a child, we had a cat, Calico. I really liked that cat. I was a shy child, backward and gawky. I latched onto that cat like she was a lifeline. Every morning, I would get up and go outside to see my cat Calico. One morning I could not find Calico. I yelled for her and looked for her. No cat. I went inside and told mom I could not find Calico, I could not find my cat. She was busy doing something in the kitchen, as I recall, and I remember that she did not turn away from her task as she said to me, ‘We had to give Calico away.’ She went on to remind me that the neighbors had been complaining about our cat.

That, folks, is the moment when I disconnected from myself. I decided, at that juncture in my life, that I did not exist. I figured it this way: If my parents did not see how attached I was to that cat, then I must not exist.

I’m serious. At that moment, the only thing that made sense to me is that I did not exist. That was the only thing I could think of that would explain the circumstances in which I found myself.

So! I disconnected. I was quite young when this happened. I was in my late 30′s or early 40′s when I had the dream in which I realized I was disconnected from myself. That’s a lot of years to think one does not exist. I had spent those years trying to live my life from a distance, not even realizing it was my life.

I am sharing this because I do not believe I am the only person to whom this has happened. Psychology tells us that people disconnect when their emotional pain is so great they can’t bear it anymore, so they distance themselves from the pain, from their lives. But it has been my experience that this does not explain this dissociative thing adequately. No. I think there are others ‘out there’ who, like me, decided at one point that they do not exist.

If you are one of those people, please know this: You do exist. And you are not alone.

Love always,

Susan