Body Wellness: Day 2 and Muse

So far:

Eating: 1 cup water, 2 cups skim milk, 1/2 cup each of yogurt, blueberries, and Fiber One, 1 cup water, 16 oz chai frost with whipped cream, turkey and string cheese sandwich on Honey Wheat Berry bread, 3 oz chocolate chip cookie. 3 cups water. 100 calorie dark chocolate, Shrimp Mediterranean 1/2 bowl, 2 cups water.

Exercise: 40 minute walk up hospital hill

Muse: After this post, I picked up My Life in France by Julia Child. As I was walking with the book, I thought. I am "voracious." Everything I do is voracious. I am a voracious reader, voracious learner, voracious to know and understand. I laughed out loud when I sat down at that moment and read these lines:

"But I had so much more to learn, not only about cooking, but about shopping and eating and all the many new (to me) foods. I hungered for more information" (pp. 39-40).

Julia Child and I are ONE! She was voracious too! I can never stop learning. I want to learn more of God (for He is unfathomable, and there is ALWAYS something to learn of His ways), of art, of culture, of language, of literature, of philosophy, of flowers (Lorraine exclaimed yesterday, "Carol, you amaze me at how much you know and want to know!" because I was going to take a picture and go home and find out what flowers were on her table), of people. I suppose that is why I loved living overseas so much. I loved learning about the culture and cracking the code. Julia Child was learning the language, learning the cuisine, creating community in Paris by "cracking the code" of that culture. I think I have a new soulmate!

Perhaps all tall women are voracious (Julia Child was the same height at 6 feet 2 inches tall).

vo•ra•cious \vȯ-ˈrā-shəs, və-\ adjective

[Latin vorac-, vorax, from vorare to devour; akin to Old English ācweorran to guzzle, Latin gurges whirlpool, Greek bibrōskein to devour]

(1635)

1 : having a huge appetite : ravenous

2 : excessively eager : insatiable 〈a voracious reader〉

Another similar word to describe me: enthusiastic

en•thu•si•asm \in-ˈthü-zē-ˌa-zəm, en-, also -ˈthyü-\ noun

[Greek enthousiasmos, from enthousiazein to be inspired, irregular from entheos inspired, from en- + theos god]

(1603)

1 a : belief in special revelations of the Holy Spirit

b : religious fanaticism

2 a : strong excitement of feeling : ardor

b : something inspiring zeal or fervor

synonymy see passion

That is why the people in this video (Topsail Island Retreat, April 2007) couldn't accept this assessment about me from a silly (and ancient) personality test we all took:

Body Wellness: Day 1

I have not posted about this for a LONG time. There has been more on the Well-Watered Soul lately and much on the Well-Educated Mind over the last year. Interesting that both of these can be very sedentary occupations! So, I try to combine my wellness of body with these two passions by taking long prayer walks with my Face to Face: Praying the Scriptures for Intimate Worship book in hand or listening to the Bible on my Kindle as I walk. I also read/listen to my classics while I work out on the elliptical and lift weights. It is the greatest combination of pleasure and pain!!!! (Really, working out is no longer a pain for me. It is SO important for me in staving off those menopausal hot flashes!)

Alas, I am doing really well in the "wellness of body" area, but I would like to proclaim the 31 days of August as the "pull in my eating" month. All this birthday celebrating has involved eating a ton: the Mexican cruise, parties, meals out, my birthday tea. All fun, but it is time to reign it in.

I am going to log what I eat here. I don't know if I will count calories, but I will log. I won't break it into breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. Too much work for a busy gal like me (or is it myself?). I will write it in a "stream of consciousness" style like Joyce and Faulkner. LOL.

PLEASE NOTE: If you read this and think I am not eating enough, you are probably wrong. People eat too much. That is why most of America is overweight. Whenever I post what I am eating, someone eventually says, "Are you sure you are eating enough, Carol?" UGH!

For their benefit, I go through the trouble of counting it all out (I have been a nutritionist for 28 years (B.S. Foods and Nutrition 1981), for heaven's sake, I can tell you the approximate calories of almost anything I am eating in my sleep!), and it is ALWAYS enough (unless I am fasting for spiritual reasons, which is on a regular basis).

Trust me, I will NEVER starve myself. I love food too much to do that. I eat everything (Sorry, but there are some people who eat the weirdest things in the name of "health"!). I just want to maintain my weight even though I am 50. So, I watch my calories. I don't diet. So, don't read this and worry, OK? I will not starve on this 31 day journey.

So, here goes:

August 1: 16 oz. skim milk with light whipped cream, 2 tsp. peanut butter, 1 slice honey wheat, 1 string cheese, 1 cup pork fried rice with brocolli, onions, and carrots. 3 cups water, 1/2 cup each of non-fat, plain yogurt; blueberries, and Fiber One Cereal, 2 servings of Steel cut oats, 1/2 cup raisins, 1 TB Smart Balance, 1 TB honey, 1 string cheese, 100 calorie dark chocolate bar. (just for the record that is about 1500 calories off the top of my head)

Exercise was NILL. I had a rest and read day!

In Your Presence

I do not know what is happening with me. There is this amazing connection that I am having with God right now.

My dream has always been to see a 24/7/365 kind of relationship with God (You - for I write this blog to You and for You). I remember reading Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence in the early 80's and felt like I had a new role-model. I specifically remember leaving Gill Coliseum on the OSU Campus one night, being tilted over by some strange encounter with Diane's guy friend, Chris. I cried out to You with the desire to not let strange encounters with others derail me from Your precious presence. It became my passion and something in which to strive because "In Your presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forever" (Psalm 16:11). Yet, being the emotional self that I am, it has always been difficult. Those bi-monthly extended times of prayer helped to recalibrate me, but by the end of the sixty days, I was undone again. Oh, to be undone only by God because of His overwhelming presence. That is what I yearned for more than anything.

Later in my journey, I read excerpts from Frank Laubach's (1884-1970) Letters by a Modern Mystic where he resolved: "I would succeed better this year with my experiment of filling every minute full of the thought of God than I succeeded last year. And I added another resolve -- to be as wide open toward people and their need as I am toward God. Window open outward as well as upward." 

Somehow, Frank's effort seemed so realistic with little increments of growth year by year. He also did not live a monastic existence as Brother Lawrence did. His inward and outward growth were simultaneous. I wanted that moment by moment experience of God in the midst of the daily grind of life with "tilting people."

The life change that we made over three years ago (June 16, 2006 was our moment of deliverance from a very unhealthy situation) seems to have contributed to me not going so far into the quicksand that I can't look up. I no longer stare into space at the dinner table. I'm there with my family in everything. There is no "back burner" stress stemming from the "crazy-makers" that permeated my past spiritual environment. I don't have to sludge through mud to get to Your presence anymore. No more quicksand, miry clay. You've set my feet upon a rock and made my footsteps firm (Psalm 40:1-3). The path to Your presence is less obstructed these days.

Even though I did a lot of grieving from 2006-2008, the deaths did more to stabilize me than knock me off Your rock. In October of 2006, Bruce was diagnosed with melanoma. In March 2007, my aunt fell, went into a coma, and died. In May, my cousin was murdered in a drug-related incident. In August, it became apparent that my mom was slipping away, and I cared for her all of November 2007 until she slid into heaven. Then, friends died (Jeanne, Bruce, and Jane) and parents of friends died. Last of all and probably most difficult because of his spiritual state, my brother died a lonely, alcohol-related death on the floor of his mobile home. Although I may not have realized it at the time, I was in deep mourning for over a year because my focus was more outward in the care of my mom and care for my friends who lost their spouse or parent. This didn't tilt me. Something about death puts it all in perspective, and I can concur with Solomon on this one:

"It is better to go to the house of mourning,

than to go to the house of feasting:

for that is the end of all men;

and the living will lay it to his heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter:

for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning;

but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth" (Eccl. 7:2-4)

So, my mourning is over. The fruit of the last three years has been more 24/7/365 than I have ever known in my life. I am 50. I am thankful. I am humbled. I am at peace. I am surrounded by so much love.

I am undone.

What Nancy Wants to Be Famous For . . .

I have been posting videos of Nancy's famous "car baking" from two years ago (since it is so hot here this week), but she told me she would rather be famous for this, and I tend to agree that this is infinitely more eternal in reward!

Undone

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by God's presence right now. I have been in a sense of awe since I came back from the club.

Man - what will heaven be like?

Waiting on Him

I am spending a day in prayer today and journaling here and in my "My Lord and Me" notebook. I am soaking in the Lord right now and in the "Realizing His presence" stage of my time.

Divide the day into three parts: waiting on the Lord, prayer for others, and prayer for yourself.

As you wait on the Lord, don’t hurry. You will miss the point if you look for some mystical or ecstatic experience. Just seek the Lord, waiting on Him. Isaiah 40:31 promises that those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. Psalm 27:14 is one of dozens of verses which mention waiting on Him. In Psalm 62:5 David says, “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him.”

Wait on God first to realize His presence. Read through a passage such as Psalm 139, grasping the truth of His presence with you as you read each verse. Ponder the impossibility of being anywhere in the universe where He is not. Often we are like Jacob when he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I was not aware of it” (Genesis 28:16). ("How to Spend a Day in Prayer" by Lorne Sanny).

Expecting wonderful things from Him today!!!!!

"Heal The World"

I honestly was not one who even listened to any of Michael Jackson's 80's music (I mean you listened to it if you had hearing because it was piped everywhere, but I never intentionally listened to it), but this is a beautiful song. So, I am posting it!

Here is the beautfiul video that goes along with it: "Heal the World"

"Heal The World"

There's A Place In

Your Heart

And I Know That It Is Love

And This Place Could

Be Much

Brighter Than Tomorrow

And If You Really Try

You'll Find There's No Need

To Cry

In This Place You'll Feel

There's No Hurt Or Sorrow

There Are Ways

To Get There

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Little Space

Make A Better Place...

Heal The World

Make It A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Entire Human Race

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

If You Want To Know Why

There's A Love That

Cannot Lie

Love Is Strong

It Only Cares For

Joyful Giving

If We Try

We Shall See

In This Bliss

We Cannot Feel

Fear Or Dread

We Stop Existing And

Start Living

Then It Feels That Always

Love's Enough For

Us Growing

So Make A Better World

Make A Better World...

Heal The World

Make It A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Entire Human Race

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Dream We Were

Conceived In

Will Reveal A Joyful Face

And The World We

Once Believed In

Will Shine Again In Grace

Then Why Do We Keep

Strangling Life

Wound This Earth

Crucify Its Soul

Though It's Plain To See

This World Is Heavenly

Be God's Glow

We Could Fly So High

Let Our Spirits Never Die

In My Heart

I Feel You Are All

My Brothers

Create A World With

No Fear

Together We'll Cry

Happy Tears

See The Nations Turn

Their Swords

Into Plowshares

We Could Really Get There

If You Cared Enough

For The Living

Make A Little Space

To Make A Better Place...

Heal The World

Make It A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Entire Human Race

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

Heal The World

Make It A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Entire Human Race

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

Heal The World

Make It A Better Place

For You And For Me

And The Entire Human Race

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

There Are People Dying

If You Care Enough

For The Living

Make A Better Place

For You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

You And For Me

I Hope You Dance . . .

This song could possibly be in my top ten. Thinking about it before Hannah's wedding. Thinking how I have a picture of her dancing with Phil at MY wedding!

Love the words . . .

time, a wheel in constant motion

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances
But they're worth taking
Lovin' might be a mistake
But it's worth making
Don't let some hell bent heart
Leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out
Reconsider
Give the heavens above
More than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their years and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small
When you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
Dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you dance
I pray you're dancing
I hope you dance
I pray you're dancing

I hope you dance.

Tuesday Musings

Musings - "Thought and thinking are mental forms and processes, respectively ("thought" is both)."

Just going to set the timer and write for a while. Maybe 15 minutes: Here I go:

I slept in until 7:45 this morning. I had such a productive day yesterday. I just know when day is going to be productive. Something hormonal courses through my veins, and it is almost compulsive. I figure I need to grab that and run with it while it is there. Good thing I did because it was there yesterday day and gone today!

My house is in pretty good shape on the inside. I am not touching the garage though, and maybe I should. Then I would know where things are in there, but I feel like it is more George's territory, and I don't want to insult him by cleaning up "his" garage. :)

The thing I always put off is the filing. So, I decided to just attack it. I put my iPod on with Baroque music, and I plugged along until I was finished. I decided that I would not fire up the computer until it was done. Finished in no time. Makes me wonder why I don't just do it as I go along or have a weekly time where I file for fifteen minutes. How about "Filing Friday for Fifteen" I can call it 4-F! Laughing out Loud! Yes, "time for 4-F." I'm there!

I also cleaned both bathrooms, reorganized the linen closet, did four loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and culled out all those records we got from Jan W. (why did we do that anyway?).

In the process, I listened to The City of God for all the work that didn't require reading (i.e. filing). So, I have less than 200 pages to go!

Lisa even took my kids to tennis and brought them home. Oh, she even got me milk! Man. What a great friend!

Then, on top of all of this, my kids and George went to video class for three hours. So, I took a walk and had time to myself.

Monday was awesome. Now, I am just sitting here for Tuesday. I sort of overdid it on my back too. So, I can't do the labor stuff today (but the house is clean anyway). I am going to walk with Rebekah at 10 am and take my kids (and Jake) to tennis at 12 and drawing at 1:30. I think I will go lift and do cardio while my kids are in drawing since that is a great time of day at the club. I can read there without a bunch of noise (those raquetball players are loud and annoying) in the background.

I am really enjoying The City of God. I can see why people like Augustine so much now. Confessions didn't really convince me, but this book has convinced me. He is great. I am reading an abridged version, but i have the unabridged on my Kindle. So, I do read beyond the abridged sometimes. After I am done with TWEM, I will read the unabridged. It is good in the abridged though because it has summaries of the chapters it skips.

Hasn't it been fifteen minutes yet? I am ready to be done with this and go on to other things. I didn't watch the clock to see when I started.

Oh well, I am done anyway.

The Quiet Takes My Breath Away

Even though my kids have their "domain" in the basement, and they are pretty quiet kids, there is something so very soothing about having nobody here right now. George (the sweetheart) is taking his lunch break to take them to the orthodontist and on an errand. So, I am here for a bit by myself in the quietness of the morning.

I love it.

TWEM Classics: 103 out of 154 (67%)

I FINISHED THE ANCIENTS!!!!!

Chronology of Classics in The Well-Educated Mind

Ancients (15 out of 15)

BC
2000 Epic of Gilgamesh/Ferry/Poetry
800 Iliad (*+ T)/ Homer/Lattimore/ Poetry
800 Odyssey(*+ T) /Homer/Lattimore/Poetry
600 Greek Lyrics/ Lattimore/Poetry
458 Agamemnon(*+ T)/ Aeschylus/Drama
450 Oedipus Rex(*+ T)/ Sophocles/Drama
441 Histories/ Herodotus/ History
431 Medea/ Euripedes/ Drama
400 Birds/ (Clouds – T) /Aristophanes/ Drama
400 Peloponnesian War(*+ )/Thucydides/ History
375 Republic(*+)/ Plato/ History
330 Poetics(+)/ Aristotle/Drama
65 Odes of Horace/Poetry
AD
100 Greek Lives/Roman Lives by Plutarch

Medieval Times (15 out of 19)

400 Confessions*+ T Augustine Fitzgerald Autobio
426 City of God+ Augustine History
731 Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede History
1000 Beowulf* Poetry
1300 Inferno*+ Poetry
1300's Everyman Drama
1350 Sir Gawain & the Green Knight* Poetry
1386 Canterbury Tales* Chaucer Poetry
1430 The Book of Margery Kempe Autobio
1513 Prince*+ Machiavelli History
1516 Utopia* Sir Thomas More History
1564 Sonnets Shakespeare Poetry
1580 Essays+ Montaigne Autobio
1588 Life of Teresa of Avila Autobio
1588 Doctor Faustus Marlowe Drama
1592 Richard III Shakespeare Drama
1594 Midsummer's Nights Dream* Shakespeare Drama
1600 Hamlet* Shakespeare Drama

1600 Poems* Donne Poetry (British)

Early Modern -1600-1850 (23 out of 33)

1605 Don Quixote*+ Cervantes Penguin Novel

1611 Psalms KJV Poetry

1641 Meditations+ Descartes Autobio
1667 Paradise Lost*+ Milton Poetry

1666 Grace Abounding Bunyon Autobio
1669 Tartuffe Moliere Drama
1679 Pilgrim's Progress* Bunyon Novel
1682 Narrative of Captivity & Restoration(T) Rowlandson Autobio
1690 True End Civil Government Locke History
1700 Way of the World Congreve Drama
1726 Gulliver's Travels* Swift Novel
1754 History of England, V.5 Hume History
1757 Songs of Innocence and Experience by Blake/Poetry (British)
1762 Social Contract+ Rousseau History
1773 She Stoops to Conquer Goldsmith Drama
1776 Common Sense (T) Paine Dover History
1776 Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon Wormsley(Ab) History
1777 School of Scandal Sheridan Drama

1781 Confessions* Rousseau Autobio
1791 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (T)
1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women+ Wollstonecraft History (British)
1798 Lyrical Ballads* Wordsworth, Cooleridge Poetry (British)
1813 Pride & Prejudice*+ Austen Novel
1819 Odes* & Poems Keats Poetry (British)
Longfellow Poetry (American)
Tennyson Poetry (British)
Whitman Poetry (American)
1835 Democracy in America* Tocqueville History
1838 Oliver Twist Dickens Novel
1847 Jane Eyre Bronte Novel
1848 The Comunist Manifesto+ Marx&Engel History
1850 The Scarlet Letter* Hawthorne Novel

Modern History (1850 to present) ( 50 out of 87)

Rossetti Poetry (British)
1851 Moby-Dick/Melville/Novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin/Stowe/Novel
1854 Walden/Thoreau/Autobio
1857 Madame Bovary* Flaubert Novel
1860 Civilization of Renaissance Burckhardt History
1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Jacobs Autobio
1866 Crime & Punishment Dostoyevsky Novel

1850- 1866 * Dickinson Poetry (American)
1872 Dunbar Poetry (American)
1877 Anna Karenina* Tolstoy Novel
1878 Return of the Native Hardy Novel
1878 Sandburg Poetry (American)
1879 Doll's House Ibsen Drama
1881 Life & Times/Narrative of Frederick Douglass * T Autobio
1881 The Portrait of a Lady* James Novel
1883 Williams Poetry (American)
1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* Twain
1895 The Red Badge of Courage Crane Novel
1899 Importance of Being Earnest Wilde Drama
1901 Up From Slavery Washington Autobio
1902 Heart of Darkness* Conrad Novel
1902 Hughes Poetry (American)
1903 Souls of Black Folk DuBois History (American)
1904 Cherry Orchard Chekov Drama
1904 The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism Weber History (German)
1905 House of Mirth Wharton Novel
1907 Auden Poetry (American)
1908 Ecce Homo Nietzsche Autobio (German)
1913 Poems* Frost Poetry (American)
1921 Queen Victoria Stachey History
1922 Larkin Poetry (British)
1924 St. Joan Shaw Drama
1925 Mein Kampf Hitler Autobio
The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald Novel
Mrs. Dolloway Woolf Novel
The Trial* Kafka Novel
1929 An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth Gandhi Autobio
1932-1963 Sylvia Plath Poetry (American)

(1865-1939) William Butler Yeats (Irish)
Auto of Alice B. Toklas Stein Autobio
Born 1934 Mark Strand Poetry (American)
Born 1929 Adrienne Rich Poetry (American)
1935 Murder in Cathedral T.S. Eliot Drama
1937 The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell History
1938 Our Town Wilder Drama
Born 1939 Seamus Heaney Poetry (Irish)
The New England Mind Miller History *

1940 Long Day's Journey into Night O'Neill Drama
Native Son Wright Novel
Born 1940 Robert Pinsky Poetry (American)

1942 Stranger Camus Novel
1944 No Exit Sartre Drama
1947 A Streetcar Named Desire Williams Drama
1948 Seven Story Mountain Merton Autobio
1949 1984 Orwell Novel
Death of a Salesman Miller Drama
1952 Invisible Man Ellison Novel
Waiting for Godot Beckett Drama

1955 The Great Crash Galbraith History
Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis Autobio
1956 Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) Poetry (American)

1956 Seize the Day Bellow Novel
1959 The Longest Day Ryan History
1960 A Man for All Seasons Bolt Drama
1963 The Feminine Mystique Frieden History
1965 The Autobiography of + Malcolm X Autobio
1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez Novel
Rosencrantz & Guildenstein Stoppard Drama
1972 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Calvino Novel
1973 Journal of Solitude Sarton Autobio
Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn Autobio
1974 Roll, Jordan, Roll Genovese History

1974 Equus Shaffer Drama
1977 Born Again Colson Autobio
Song of Solomon Morrison Novel
1978 Distant Mirror Tuchman History

1978 Jan Kenyon (1947-1975) Poetry (American)
1982 Hunger of Memory Rodriguez Autobio
1985 White Noise Delillo Novel

1985 Rita Dove (1952- )Poetry (American)
1987 All the President's Men Woodward & Bernstein History
1988 Battle Cry of Freedom McPherson History
1989 Road from Coorain Conway Autobio
1990 Possession Byatt Novel

A Midwife's Tale Ballard Autobio
1992 The End of History & the Last Man Fukuyama History
1995 All Rivers Run to the Sea Wiesel Autobio

(*ITC, +D overlap, T)

ITC= Invitation to the Classics D=Denby's Great Books T = Thelma's Library

The Shaped Up Summer

Well, it is a FREE summer for me, but I did sign the boys up for some fun things this summer:

Corvallis Community Television Video Production Course - actually, George is doing it with them. It will be a fun time for me to have Monday nights free and clear. :)

Realistic Drawing - Benton Center course with Mark Allison

Tennis - two weeks in July

So, why am I awake at 12:45 am?

Maybe I drank Lady Grey to late in the day

Or maybe the movie premiere has caused me to stay

Awake until now and cleaning up things

Browsing collectible my inheritance did bring

OK, that is enough with the rhyming. This is enough! The movie premiere was really great. I was very impressed with Bethany's editing and sound on The Road to Freedom.

Yesterday was a lovely day:

Up early to spend two hours of solid time in the Word

Morning walk with Michelle

Prayer processing after walk

Iszler's clan over for movies downstairs with the kids and talking and prayer with Kim

Took kids to Haberman party for four hours of birthday and water fight fun!

Returned microscope to Barb

Went to Jamocha Jo's

Prayed, processed in the promises of the Word, and listened to poetry as I drifted off to sleep

News as George fixed me hummus and flatbread (Have I mentioned I have the best husband in the world?)

Premiere

Cleaned out closet! A goal achieved!

Looked up collectibles I acquired because no one wanted my mom's stuff, and I am sentimental. Now, I have NO IDEA what some of these things are. What is HALL China? What is Strombergshyttan Thick Walled Scandinavian Glass Vase?

Who knows. I think I am finally getting tired.

I loved yesterday. I really and truly loved yesterday. :)

Poems, Prayers, and Promises

This John Denver song wafted through my head as I sat down and thought about what I would like to do with the next three hours of silence while my kids are out of the house for a birthday party. I did come down to three things I want to do:

Poems - Listen to some more of "Song of Myself" a massive poem in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Prayers - This really is what I will do first. I just prayed with one friend an hour and a half ago, but there is so much on my heart after a conversation with her mid-day and a walk with another friend this morning. Sometimes all you can do is pray and hope that wickedness will not prevail and to remember God's desire:

"“Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’" (Ezekiel 33:11, NASB95)

I can pray that wicked people will see the light and LIVE rather than spreading their wickedness.

Promises - More time in the Word is always a good thing! I am LOVING Isaiah and getting so much more out of it than I have ever gotten before. Praise be to God for His gift to me of the Bible Book Club that keeps me accountable and learning daily.

So, off to Poem, Prayers, and Promises!

Summer Reading List

This is possibly overly ambitious, but why not?

(Finished ones in RED)

AD

100 Greek Lives/Roman Lives by Plutarch

426 City of God by Augustine

731 Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede

1580 Selected Essays by Montaigne

(This will complete the Ancient and Medieval Time periods)

1835 Democracy in America by Tocqueville (not Am Lit but related)

1850 Whitman Poetry (American)

1872 Dunbar Poetry (American)

1878 Sandburg Poetry (American)

1881 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Autobiography

1883 Williams Poetry (American)

1902 Hughes Poetry (American)

1903 Souls of Black Folk by DuBois

1907 Auden Poetry (American)

1913 Frost Poetry (American)

Book club:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Selkirk’s Island by Diana Souhami

That is it! My Amazon Kindle 2 makes this so FUN too!!!! I can read with large print while I am working out! I can switch it to text-to-speech when I need to run an errand too.

Feeling No Hope for Days Gone By

That sounds so deeply sad, but I guess I should elaborate.

I went to Lamppost today, and I was the last person to post there early last night. Gone are the days of Trapdoor Society where you would leave a post and ten people would respond to what you had said and the dialogue went on for days. Now, I think there are eleven people there where there had been probably 50 regular posters and another 50 occasional posters and another 50 lurkers!

It makes me sad, but you know what? It is peaceful! Gone are the days of provocative posting that always ended in a big conflict, lots of tears, and people calling me on the phone. Gone are the days when people would post a "zinger" to me that would sting me to the core and make me sad because I felt very misunderstood. Gone are the nasty emails! In fact, I got my last "nasty" one (from that person who was usually nasty to me, but now is very nice because the drama in her marriage is now known) the night before we left our church. We got all the drama out of our life in less than 24 hours between June 15 at 8 pm & 16 at 3 pm (when we walked out the doors of our church for the last time!).

No more drama in both areas is a very good thing.

There was so much drama in that online community. Now, everyone gets along, but they aren't very committed to the group.

In looking at the 17 people in the retreat picture from seven years ago in South Carolina (before everything hit the fan), we have:

5 divorces

2 separations (One of which is already headed to divorce. The other is hopeful)

1 separation but back together and rocky

3 undetermined, but rocky, at best

6 still together and strong

I asked one friend, who is separated, whether she thought that some of her marriage difficulties played into her posting, and she said, "Most definitely."

So, all that to say is that there was a ton of drama on the board, but it had much to do with the drama playing out in their homes that we could not see.

I do miss the stimulating dialogue, but I do not miss the drama.

The online community has also dispersed to things like Facebook, and I don't mind. Facebook is friendly. I like the occasional "hi" on Facebook with those old and dear friends, but I also like how Facebook integrates my local friends. They even interact with each other, and that makes me smile.

Some of those online people still congregate on Facebook in the form of "tagged" notes. Last week, one of them had a tagged note with a great quote. I wasn't included, and it stung a bit, but I guess there was a reason for it. It seems like there are little splinters of people in the group maybe based on their life changes. While walking on the beach with Julie, she told me about someone's "guy" like I already knew, and I knew nothing about it. This was my rhetorics partner from the TWEM classics, and we had shared deep things. Now, she doesn't even tell me there is a "guy" in her life after her divorce (maybe because she told me that this guy was out of the picture when she was separated from her husband, but I guess he really wasn't).

So, a part of me is out of the loop, but a part of me doesn't mind not being a part of the drama anymore. Nobody reads this blog anymore either. I am not part of most of their "blog rolls" either, but I think they all still like me. So, I think I have good individual relationships with all of them. I am just not "in the group loop," and that is OK.

Just musing on a Thursday morning! Off to Isaiah.

How Many of These Classics Have You Read?

I've only read 20 out of these 100

This is based on the Penguin Classic's list of "100 Classic Books You Must Read Before You Die". http://www.listsofbests.com/list/11632. Its for people reading them, wanting to read them or wishing they hadn't read them LOL.

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
2. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
3. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
4. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky YES
5. Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
7. Spy In House Of Love: V4 In Nin'S Continuous Novel - Anais Nin
8. Lady Chatterly's Lover - D.H.Lawrence
9. Venus in Furs - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
10. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer YES
11. The Karamazov Brothers - Fyodor Dostoevsky YES
12. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad YES
13. Diamonds Are Forever - Ian Fleming
14. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
15. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
16. A Room With a View - E. M. Forster YES
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
18. Don Juan - Lord George Gordon Byron
19. Love in a Cold Climate- Nancy Mitford
20. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
21. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
22. Middlemarch - George Eliot
23. She: A History of Adventure - H. Rider Haggard
24. The Fight - by Norman Mailer
25. No Easy Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela
26. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
27. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
28. Notre-Dame of Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) - Victor Hugo
29. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
30. The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
31. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
32. Bram Stoker's Dracula - Bram Stoker
33. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley YES
34. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
35. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
36. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
37. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
38. Baby doll - Tennessee Williams
39. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
40. Emma - Jane Austen YES
41. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
42. The Odyssey - Homer YES
43. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck YES
44. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
45. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll YES
46. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald YES
47. Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
48. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
49. The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
50. Against Nature - Joris-Karl Huysmans
51. The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X
52. The Outsider - Albert Camus
53. Animal Farm - George Orwell
54. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
55. Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
56. The Time Machine - H. G. Wells
57. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
58. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
59. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
60. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
61. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
62. Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga - Hunter S. Thompson
63. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens YES
64. Another Country - James Baldwin
65. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
66. Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk - William S. Burroughs
67. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
68. Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey
69. Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac
70. Monsieur Monde Vanishes - Georges Simenon
71. Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell YES
72. The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey
73. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli YES
74. Bound for Glory - Arthur Miller
75. Death of a Salesman - Georges Simenon YES ? (Author?)
76. Maigret and the Ghost - Georges Simenon
77. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
78. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
79. A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan, Sir Doyle
80. The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan
81. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert YES
82. Therese Raquin - Ãmile Zola
83. Les Liaisons dangereuses - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
84. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne YES
85. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy YES
86. I, Claudius : From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 - Robert Graves
87. Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton
88. The Beggar's Opera - John Gay
89. The Twelve Caesars - Suetonius
90. Guys and Dolls - Hal Leonard Corporation
91. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
92. The Iliad of Homer - Homer YES
93. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas YES
94. From Russia with Love - Ian Fleming
95. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
96. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
97. The Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith
98. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
99. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
100. Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis

Chip Ross Park Loop Trail

We did another trail today to Chip Ross Park, but Sheri and Adam knew a longer route to take. It was very nice. It took 1 hour 4 minutes, and we burned 500 calories! WOOOHOOO!

Silver Creeks Falls Trail of Ten Falls

Silver Creeks Falls Mosaic, originally uploaded by carolfoasia.

What I did last Friday. I love living in Oregon!

TWEM Classics Left

AD
100 Greek Lives/Roman Lives by Plutarch

426 City of God+ Augustine History
731 Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede History
1580 Essays+ Montaigne Autobio

1600 Poems* Donne Poetry (British)

1754 History of England, V.5 Hume History
1757 Songs of Innocence and Experience by Blake/Poetry (British)

1776 Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon Wormsley(Ab) History

1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women+ Wollstonecraft History (British)
1798 Lyrical Ballads* Wordsworth, Cooleridge Poetry (British)

1819 Odes* & Poems Keats Poetry (British)

Tennyson Poetry (British)
Whitman Poetry (American)
1835 Democracy in America* Tocqueville History

1848 The Comunist Manifesto+ Marx&Engel History

Rossetti Poetry (British)

1860 Civilization of Renaissance Burckhardt History

1872 Dunbar Poetry (American)

1878 Sandburg Poetry (American)

1883 Williams Poetry (American)

1902 Hughes Poetry (American)
1903 Souls of Black Folk DuBois History (American)

1904 The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism Weber History (German)

1907 Auden Poetry (American)
1908 Ecce Homo Nietzsche Autobio (German)
1913 Poems* Frost Poetry (American)

1922 Larkin Poetry (British)

1925 Mein Kampf Hitler Autobio

1929 An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth Gandhi Autobio
1932-1963 Sylvia Plath Poetry (American)

(1865-1939) William Butler Yeats (Irish)
Auto of Alice B. Toklas Stein Autobio
Born 1934 Mark Strand Poetry (American)
Born 1929 Adrienne Rich Poetry (American)

1937 The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell History

Born 1939 Seamus Heaney Poetry (Irish)
1938 The New England Mind Miller History *

Born 1940 Robert Pinsky Poetry (American)

1948 Seven Story Mountain Merton Autobio

1955 The Great Crash Galbraith History
Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis Autobio

1956 Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) Poetry (American)

959 The Longest Day Ryan History

1965 The Autobiography of + Malcolm X Autobio

1973 Journal of Solitude Sarton Autobio
Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn Autobio
1974 Roll, Jordan, Roll Genovese History

1978 Distant Mirror Tuchman History

1978 Jan Kenyon (1947-1975) Poetry (American)

1985 Rita Dove (1952- )Poetry (American)
1987 All the President's Men Woodward & Bernstein History

1990 A Midwife's Tale Ballard Autobio
1992 The End of History & the Last Man Fukuyama History

Recap of the 2008-2009 School Year

I am going to be better about blogging here. Here is the run down of the school year that just ended:

HISTORY - Big score with a combination of Biography of America from Annenburg Media, the CLEP US History I book, The History of US by Joy Hakim, and the history component of the American Literature class. My kids are studying for the CLEP now. We only got through Reconstruction, but we are good with that. We tried to follow along with the American Literature timeline, and she really spent a very short amount of time after Reconstruction.

AMERICAN LITERATURE - Big score here too. Thelma English is the bomb. I was able to edit out her tangents on the lectures, have the kids take the quizzes in the quiet of their own homes, and leave enough time for a little more freedom for the two hour class time as a result. We all learned so much about the different eras of literature. My kids really loved it. They especially liked reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and Huckleberry Finn. Two thumbs up.

They read author biographies and syllabus (300+ pages), and books. Here is a list of the "works" they read:

"Mayflower Compact"

"Arabella Covenant"

"How to Spend a Day with God"

"Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson"

"Narrative of Jonathan Edwards"

Declaration of Independence

Constitution of the United States

Anna Bradstreet - To My Husband and Other Poems
Thomas Paine- Common Sense
Benjamin Franklin – Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Ralph Waldo Emerson- "Self Reliance" and "Nature
Henry David Thoreau – "Civil Disobedience"
Henry David Thoreau – Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Just 25-35 pages)
Frederick Douglas – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
Louisa May Alcot- "My Contraband" and "A Night" (they thought they were boring)
Mark Twain- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (loved)

Mark Twain- Humorous Stories and Sketches (loved)
Great American Short Stories (including Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart, Melville's "Bartleby", Harte's "Luck of Roaring", London's "To Build a Fire", Hemingway's "The Killers", Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair", Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown", Crane's "Open Boat" and "Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", Steinbeck's "The Red Pony".)
101 Great American Poems (Just Poe's "The Raven", Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!", Crane's "War is Kind", Dickinson's "Stop for Death".)
O’Henry- (W.S.Porter) The Gift of the Magi
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin (their favorite)

ENGLISH/WRITING - The kids had fifteen writing assignments for the American Literature class (I skipped one and adapted another though). Paul did Daily Grams and Michael did Nitty-Gritty Grammar review.


MATH - Bob Jones Geometry and Pre-Algebra. It wasn't broke. So, we didn't fix it. Michael will switch to Teaching Textbooks Algebra II since I got it for only $30 used! It is also beyond my schooling. So, he will need the tutoring. Paul will do Algebra I.

SCIENCE - Michael completed the entire Cornell Handbook of Bird Biology (Michael says it is "No handbook. It is so huge!). I am going to order the tests now and have him do the course of certification because some colleges accept it as credit. Paul started the BJU Biology, but it is a high school text, and he just wasn't ready for it. I am going to switch him to Apologia Biology next year because that is a little bit more user-friendly for him. He isn't as much of a science guy as Michael. We started the Biology lab in co-op, but they used a different text, and it was too much work to have to match the two courses. Consequently, Biology lab will be a part of summer school, and I am going to get GEORGE to handle it by doing "Biology Blitz" Saturdays where we do a bunch of labs in one day. It should be fun for them to do together. :) Sherri is selling me Adam's book and lending us his cool microscope. :)

BIBLE - Michael just informed me that he finished the Pentateuch! My goal is to have them read through the entire Bible by the time they are done with high school. They both read through the New Testament last year. So, they are on their way. Paul is in Exodus. They are also journaling daily. :)

READING - My kids still do a "DEAR" time, and I think this gets lost in schools and even homeschool with the onslaught of more rigorous subjects.

Michael's Pleasure Reading:

The Tin Woodman of Oz
Rink-i-Tink in Oz
The Lost Princess of Oz
The Case of the Blazing Sky
The Quest for the Great White Quail

Paul's Pleasure Reading List:
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle
Tripod Trilogy
Hank the Cowdog (about 5 of them)

CO-OP - They did American Government in the fall with many presentations. That was really healthy for my kids to get in front of people. Paul did great for his first time. Michael was very well prepared for both and had fun doing video with Adam and Joe for his Bill of Rights talk. They switched to Critical Thinking with Nikki and learned quite a bit (she is a very good teacher). They had a debate unit too and debated some aspect of renewable energy production. Then, we finished up the year with studying the history of the abolition of the slave trade using the movie Amazing Grace as a springboard. It worked out nicely, but it was too much for me to do that AND the American Literature class on the same day.

MOVIE MAKING - Another aspect of the co-op was the movie Road to Freedom written and directed by Bethany. Michael had a minor part, and Paul helped hold the boom microphone during those scenes. It was quite a bit of time and driving around, but it was really fun for the kids. Two thumbs up (even though is was sometimes a royal pain to have so many last minute schedule changes). Thinking about signing them up for the Corvallis High School film making camp so they can use their equipment. The boys also did movies with their friends every other Friday and one Saturday a month

PLAYS and FIELD TRIPS - We didn't do that many field trips this year. Trying to think of any? We did go to about four plays. This is much less than we used to do, but the kids are getting too old for some of the ones that are offered. So, we are good with phasing that out since we had their "fine arts" in the movie making.

DRAWING - Shannon P. led a drawing class that was really good. I didn't particularly care for the hassles associated with the Tuesday School, but the kids learned some wonderful things, and I am still looking for a teacher for Michael and Paul to improve their drawing/art talent.

PIANO - Paul did great at the slower pace of every other week. We liked this much better and combined it with our Dial-a-Book days to combine the driving time (so green!).

TYPING - Mavis Beacon

COMMUNITY SERVICE - In addition to our regular Dial-a-Book twice a month, we served at the Southside Youth Outreach dinner twice and Benton Food Share twice (labels for their mailing and postal workers can drive). We also raised money and walked in the Alzheimer's Walk in Eugene. It was a good year.

WHEW! This post has taken me entirely TOO long, but it was fun to review the year.

Tuesday Musings

I don't write here as much as I did back in 2006-2007 when I was still processing my "detox" from an unhealthy situation. Now that I have such healthy leadership and caring church family, there is not the need to process a bunch of stuff. Thus why I don't journal here as much. I should do it more though because when I started this blog is was all about what I was learning with my kids.

The year of 2006-2007 was a journey to wellness emotionally so that was the majority of my musings. It was amazing how much I was stifled and held back from emotional health because of the environment that I continued in for so many years. I knew that it was REALLY unhealthy for the last fifteen years of it too! I guess I am just an eternal optimist about things like this.

Well, there went my morning. I was planning on journaling here for a while, and E. Smith called, and we were on the phone for 1 1/2 hours.

Ack!