Always and Forever

This weeks’ Top Ten Tuesday list is things that will always and forever be part of your life. Perhaps we should know better than to say we will definitely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, no matter what, always do something. After all, we cannot know what life holds in store for us. However, these would be things that we can’t imagine a circumstance or scenario in which we would not keep these things within our behavior pattern.  Items on the list might not all be positive.  For example, my list includes worrying which I would prefer not to do, but realistically I know I always will.  The idea is to quickly come up with ten things (in no particular order) that fit this category. If you wish join me by coming up with your own list.

Ten Things I Will Always Do

1. I will always go to church regularly.
2. I will always pray.
3. I will always worry about my loved ones’ physical and emotional well-being.
4. I will always read books for leisure.
5. I will always cross stitch
6. I will always cry at funerals, weddings and sometimes just because I need a good cry.
7. I will always laugh uproariously when anything strikes me as hilarious.
8. I will always enjoy the beauty of nature, sunrises, sunsets and clouds.
9. I will always feel grateful and blessed for the wonderful people who are part of my life.
10. I will always appreciate the creative efforts of others.

Would any items on my list be shared on your list?

Giving Recognition

I am far overdue in recognizing the wonderful blog Grubbs ‘n Critters.  It is one of the first blogs with which I connected when I started blogging in January.  Ann is a long time blogger who touches on a wide variety of topics in her very interesting blog.  I love her tag line, “Life is what happens when you are making other plans.”  How true that is.  Visit her blog and see all that she offers the blogging community.

My recognition of Ann results from her nominating  my blog for the Very Inspiring Blogging Award.  Awkwardly I must state although the nomination gives me the excuse to mention her, I dot need an excuse. I love her blog. I  must find another way to recognize great blogs without tying it to acceptance of an award that  I may or may not be deserving of.  I think it is wonderful for blogging support to be recognized by others, but for me the significance is not so much in the award but in the opportunity it provides to mention other wonderful blogs that we have discovered.

Bless This Mess – A Cross Stitch Project

Today on my Saturday Stitching Post (which I am considering naming this feature) I step away from the bigger pieces I have done and present a small project that I designed and stitched for my office.  My typical day at work consists of slogging through tons of paperwork.It has been a good day when I have less paperwork on my desk at the end of the day than I had at the start.  My desk looks very unorganized but amazingly enough I can almost always put my finger on anything I need.  I did this small design because the saying is very appropriate for my office.

Casual Friday 2/20/2015

This is the week that was.

My laptop came home from the shop on Friday night.  I feel I have gained back some freedom. I don’t have to be sitting at my computer desk while blogging after spending most of the day sitting at a computer at work.  Instead I can sit back in a lounge chair and relax or work on my blog anywhere. How tied I am to technology!

The biggest family event of the week was that my precious baby girl turned 26.  The Affordable Care Act has made age 26 a new rite of passage.   The Act requires that if a plan provides coverage for children, the coverage must continue until the children are age 26. With this birthday, she can no longer be on my insurance as of the end of the month.   She spent hours over the last couple months researching the different plans available and made her choice a few weeks ago.   Once she enrolled in her new plan she instant messaged me and said, “Holy smokes.  I’m growing up!”  I have been painfully aware of that practically since she started kindergarten when she told me, her tearful mother, “You have to learn to let go.”

Childhood Memories

We Prayed for a Baby [1956]

Every now and then I hear about someone who has vivid memories from when they were three or even two years old.  That fascinates me, but I surely do not remember things from that far back. I do have some clear memories from when I was five years old.  I am confident of the age because my older brothers and sisters were in school and I was not.  In addition, my family moved when I was in first grade and I can identify the old farmhouse as the setting of my memories.

I had two younger brothers,  21 months and 5 1/2 years younger than me.  My first lesson in faith revolved around the birth of the baby brother. My little brother and I told our mother that we wanted to have another sister or brother.  Mom told us that if we prayed to God we might get one.  Oh my, we prayed.  And, voilà!  We got a baby!  And almost immediately! That sure convinced me of the power of prayer and of God.

Spreading Light – A Words Crush Wednesday Quote

Click here for information about the Word Crush Wednesday Favorite Quote Challenge.

You can find links to other WCW quotes here.

Words of the Wise – Top Ten Tuesday

For my Top Ten Tuesday list this week, I can’t resist having a bit of irreverent fun with some word usage errors that appeared on published posts in the blogging world. This is not to suggest that I am perfect and have not made mistakes–far from it.  Rather,  I happen to think it is a great personal characteristic to be able to laugh at ourselves and some of our foibles.

I did follow a few self-imposed rules in coming up with the list:

• I excluded any posts that were full of angst and raw emotion.  Those posts are frequently overloaded with errors but I understand that language correctness may suffer while in an emotional state.
• I excluded any posts that were clearly written by people who do not have English as their first language.  Although non-native speakers sometimes have the best command of grammar and word usage, it is completely understandable that they might fumble.
• All examples came from blogs but I tried to edit the examples so as not to identify a specific blog.  We deserve some anonymity when we are less than stellar.
• I did not use more than one error from any single blog.

The Quest for Wall Art

My home is the place to where I escape at the end of the day. After putting in my allotted time at a job that keeps me overly busy, I relish coming to the place like no other where I can recover from the stress and mentally regroup.

Our style of decor is somewhat eclectic, not at all showy.  Our home feels clean but lived in.  The varying items that grace our walls result from a blend of two separate homes. After my husband passed away I invited my sister, who had become disabled, to move across country to live with me.  She happily obliged. Her decorating tastes are very modern while mine are quite traditional so it was interesting exercise for us to agree on what would be displayed on our walls.  She had sold or given away much of her possessions prior to the move, so I knew the things that she brought with her were extremely important to her and they would be displayed.  Bit by bit some of my things disappeared from the walls to make way for her items.  That was not a problem because none of the items I gave up were of a personal nature.

My Take on Blogging Awards

I published the first post on my blog on January 7, 2015.  I received my first blogging award nomination on January 22.  I appreciated the nomination for the affirmation that my blog had been noticed,  but it did not make me think that I have a superior or exceptionally special blog. There is no voting process so at most it is one person who thinks my blog is deserving.  I was grateful for the nomination because the award process is an excellent way to build blog traffic for myself, for the person who nominated me and for the blogs I chose to nominate.

Casual Friday 2/13/2015

I join Amie from the blog Amie Writes to celebrate Casual Fridays. As Amie explains:

Casual Fridays is going to be my (hopefully) weekly post and it is just that: casual. It is just a way for me to catch up from the week and chat about whatever is going on in my life. No daily posts, no fiction, no poetry, no structure or stress.  It will probably be pretty random and I’m okay with that.  I hope that you will join in too.  Chat me up in the comments or write your own post with a ping back to this post.  Here we go…

This is the week that was.

I celebrated another birthday.  At this age I would prefer that they not come around so quickly but I can’t control that.  It is ok with me if the day passes quietly.  However, people in my life have other ideas.  I got flowers, gifts, phone calls from family, a birthday cake, and many birthday messages on Facebook.  My birthday dinner was a shrimp and linguine stir fry that my sister makes for me every year.