JWalking: The Blog

I can't believe all this stuff happened today! We can celebrate Democracy Day with the Nigerians and Oak Apple Day with folks in the U.K. As fellow Virginians, we can reflect back on hometown hero Patrick Henry, who gave a speech today denouncing the Stamp Act, in which it is believed he said, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" (Can he come back for a re-enactment at the post office someday? Stamps are going to be as high as gas prices pretty soon.) Sir Edumund Hillary (no relation to the Democratic presidential candidate...that would be a stretch, wouldn't it?) and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest for the first time today. Bing Crosby recorded the classic "White Christmas," only the best-selling Christmas album in history, for Decca Records. And his "Road" pictures partner, Bob Hope, came into the picture a few years prior to that. And a few other folks of note also showed up today: auto racing legend Al Uns...

I was ready to write a story about the death of customer service. My car dealer fixed my brake light ( see the blog ) but couldn't seem to reset the computer on the car. So, I still have the "brake light" error message lit up in green. You would think this would be the last thing on their checklist before "Bill customer big bucks." So, I am extending them grace. (Wish they could do the same for my warranty.) No, maybe customer service is not completely dead. Oh, sure, we're eventually going to pay $25 per bag so our luggage can fly less-than-coach on an airplane, but not everything is flying south. I love the self-checkout at the grocery story. I am probably fulfilling some kind of dream, like working for the post office. There's just something about scanning your own items and having the system beep and say, "Place the item in the bag." It's an "I can't believe I get to do this" phenomenon. Well, I was happily scanning away...

Side 1 I cleaned the toaster the other day. Even though we have a very cool secret drawer that collects crumbs, inevitably, crumbs get stuck inside the toaster and never fall all the way down to the drawer. So, I turn the toaster upside-down and beat the sides, which always dumps out more crumbs. I looked at all of the crumbs sitting in the sink, then I rattled the toaster and continued to hear more crumbs. (sigh!) It all reminded me of the struggle with sin. I can rid myself of sin--through Christ--by confession and dumping those bad things I do (a.k.a., repentence). But, inevitably, there remain some crumbs of sin left behind--unconfessed things, things I haven't been able to completely repent of, things I don't even know I'm doing wrong. "If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us." --I John 1:8 Still, even though the Bible confirms that the Christian cannot be a habitual sinner (I John 3: 4-10), that doesn't mean ...

I 've been tagged by Chatty Kelly . So I will now post 7 facts about me. 1. I love the color BROWN , as in coffee, chocolate, cocoa, dirt.... 2. I used to be an on-air radio personality in Upstate New York and, besides my maiden name, used the names Sue O'Neill and Awesome Sue. 3. My boyfriend in high school and I decided to cross-dress for a Halloween party. (I was a great date and brought him a bouquet! I did think his makeup was a bit much. But I looked like a young Paul McCartney with a mustache. Of course I have pictures.) 4. I answered God's saving call on my life as I was driving to Sam's Club to shop on a Sunday. (I was bawling with happiness, much to the chagrin of my fellow Club members.) 5. I am an unbelievably self-controlled window shopper. I have problems once you get me in the store. (Just ask my personal shopper! "She won't try on anything--What's her problem??") 6. I used to do Chinese fire drills with my high-school youth group. (And...

" I f you kiss me, you will be skinny." Daughter #2 is at it again--twisting up a phrase in a funny way. (Oh, to be true.) Unfortunately, the phrase she's twisting up usually goes like this: "If you hit (pinch, kick, bite, insert other painful physical response here), you will go to time-out." (Although she can repeat this line, too, she's still learning what it means.) It's the classic "If...then" statement, perhaps most strongly tied to mathematical equations or scientific hypotheses (or baseball fields, as in the infamous, "If you build it, they will come"). It's called a conditional statement because for a result or truth to be realized, certain conditions must exist. If a figure has four equilateral sides and four right angles, then that figure is a square. If you buy three boxes of Fruity Sugar Loopies, then you can receive 50 cents off the purchase of a fourth box. (And who doesn't want that? The discount, at least....

" W hy should I do something I've already done?" I have to give David Cook a lot of credit for his performances on American Idol last night. Unfortunately, I think Simon Cowell's kiss-of-death remarks will probably shut the 25 year old out of the title, but the show's finale was the best I have seen in the six years I've been watching. I'm sure the judges will talk a lot about song choices as they reflect back tonight, and David Cook will get dinged for not picking songs that were more in the Idol pop direction. (I have to admit that his version of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For was a bit tentative, to side with Randy. But an awesome "push note.") The song composition choices were both weak, and both contestants did their best with what they had--applause to both for that. But, with the final song--contestant pick--Cook goes for something new that reflects "who he is as an artist" and "a different side of ...

W hen you choose to believe that God is in control of EVERYTHING, then you cease to believe in coincidence. But, that doesn't mean you don't recognize when there is "a remarkable occurrence of events or ideas at the same time...," as the dictionary defines 'coincidence.' It's just that when the dictionary says coincidence is something that is "suggesting but lacking a causal relationship," you know otherwise. I direct a handbell choir, which is a true calling and blessing in my life. Last night, we played a concert for patients at a local rehabilitation facility. We are enjoying the opportunity to play "on the road" because it puts us in contact with people we don't know and gives us the opportunity to minister to them through our music. We like to close our concerts by giving the audience the chance to ring the handchimes. We have special "music" that we have them play by color; the words of a song are highlighted wit...

I just finished making another curtain. This is a simple lined panel made of scrap denim fabric. (I may have exhausted my jeans patch fabric with this project! See last night's blog. ) It's hanging in the garage, as you might have guessed. The plan is to block out the late-afternoon sun and, perhaps, keep the garage cooler this summer. What I like about this project is not the curtain (although I worked hard to put in nice hems). No, what I love is that the panel is hung on a magnetic curtain rod, which is critical since the garage door is metallic. I didn't know about magnetic curtain rods until fairly recently, and all I could think about was how drilling holes for the supports would leave a permanent defect in the door (assuming any next owner wouldn't want my denim panel on the garage-door window). To me, that's the big attraction. I revisited the laws of attraction with Daughter #1, who just took her big science test the other day. Opposite poles attract. Like...

P erhaps some might gather that I'm in the hole, as in unable to afford a decent pair of jeans. I'd offer instead that my holey pants reflect a whole-hearted glam. On the whole, I like my jeans. Some would go whole-hog for finding the perfect pair for the perfect occasion. I'm more holistic in my search--finding the perfect jeans for my whole life. "You could shop wholesale," they might offer. But the satisfaction of being holed up to sew one's own patches is a whole lot better than jeans money burning a hole in one's pocket. "But, they look so...hole-in-the-wall." "Do they not fit my wholesome appearance?" "Truly, you could hit a hole in one with a pair of Raven Denims." Try as you might to pick a hole in my stance, you'll have as much chance of getting me to change my view as you would trying to push a Holstein. I'm wholly uninterested. So I patch my holes, and my jeans are whole again, because only God should be hol...

CHECK BRAKE LIGHT T he green display has been up there for about a month and a half. My car has a system that lets you know when things go wrong with it and what's wrong. (Wish the kids were that easy to read!) The day after I brought the car into the dealer for service--THE next day--the warning panel said, "Check brake light." I had a brake light out on the left side. (Sigh!) Decided to ride it out, literally, rather than head back to the dealer, as we were on our way into road traveling for Spring Break. Got the oil changed after the trip and the guys nicely pointed out that I had a brake light out. "Yeah. I'm going to take it to the dealer," I said, wondering how much longer I could go without heading back to the dealer. Until today, that is, when a police officer turned on his flashing lights behind me as I was on the way to preschool with my daughter. I thought I had kept under 25 through the school zone. Maybe my registration sticker fell off the lice...

L emonade. It started with lemonade for snack. Innocent enough. "We should bake something today," I said to Daughter #2, who is home from preschool. She had been talking about lemons all morning, because she now has a thing for how the dishwasher soap smells. ("Mmmmm.....Lemon!" she croons.) So, I found the recipe for Lemon Loaf ( The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook ). I knew we didn't have a lemon in the house, but we had lemon juice--good enough. Well, no sooner had I found the recipe than I heard the plastic cup hit the table, followed by the sound of dripping. Lemonade on the table, #2's skirt, her chair and the floor. This after my husband joked that we should track how many spills happen at our kitchen table! And lemonade isn't milk, if you know what I mean. (That Pledge shine is really a sticky puddle of lemonade to the touch.) Got #2 cleaned up. We pulled out lemon juice and the rest of the ingredients and cooking tools to start our baking...

I saw a great dish towel at Target a couple weeks ago. "This would look so great in the girls' bathroom," I thought. (They have a sea life-themed bathroom.) "But we don't need dish towels in there." (I've moved the girls' play kitchen outside, and no one is quite ready to wash the real dishes yet, so what would they do with them?) But, a short curtain--cool! So, in a zippy stitch across with the sewing machine, I hemmed up the top of the towels to make pockets for a curtain rod. A tension rod fit neatly in the window frame and allowed for me to make the curtains an atypical length--just the length to fill the space. As much as I enjoy sewing and crafting, I could not create the fish motif and embroidery on the towels. But I was mighty gleeful over the prospect of turning a towel into a curtain. As Robert Frost said in a poem, " Take what is given, and make it over your way. " Sometimes the joy is not in creating an original. After all, ...

D aughter #1's Mother's Day gift/card truly shows how much she loved studying Economics in school. My card came with the colored background poster and three envelopes--Human Resources, Natural Resources and Capital Resources. I opened HR envelope first and found three lovely ladies. Next, I opened natural resources and found many cutouts of flowers, trees and rocks ("for a stone walkway," she said). The capital resources envelope held the wheelbarrow, rake, gardening gloves and even a bag of loam. (We've been studying soil for school also.) Pretty cool paper doll set, if I do say. She never fails to surprise me (in good and not-so-good ways). She loves to make these stenciled paper dolls. She loves school more than vacation! And she surprises me by taking everything that she learns--the academic and the insight into others' personalities, likings, talents and gifts--and making it into something unique, memorable, personal and fantastic. My ongoing quest is to ...

Children have a certain way of growing bigger every day, But these little hands and this special smile will stay in our hearts a long, long while. What I especially love about daughter #2's artwork is that she did it with her left hand and arm. (Her right one is in a cast right now!) Someone once shared the idea of taking a mental snapshot of what your children's features look and feel like at certain ages, because it is so easy to forget from whence they came. I think that's why I'll always have room in my heart (and storage boxes...until that precious album gets made) for this kind of artwork. Happy Mom's Day! A "today" to remember, when God brought something special into your world.

O ne of the things I do during the month is to take care of some kids who don't live with me! The Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) program at my church is one of the things that helped me get established after I moved to Virginia, and one of the things that kept me going as a young mom. To be able to give something back to other young moms going through similar circumstances--like watching their children for a few hours--is one of the small things I can do to make something of today. Here's a short video I made with the kids and some of their fellow playground mates. Moms, thank you for the privilege--they're great kids!