Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action. ~W.J. Cameron
I am sure that my precious online friends feel that I have been remiss about keeping in touch of late and I really do not know what everyone is doing because I have not read my favorite people's blogs either. I am missing you all so much! I need to spend some time reading and catching up!
As you know, I have not written much either...and at the first of the month I have an article due that I have not yet even begun to think about! Truth be told, lately I have not much leisure time to spend online, even on my computer. I am still in the process of loading programs and moving data to this new-to-me-but-older hard drive. It is a process slowed by holiday preparations and other in real life stuff and, perhaps, I just am not in a hurry to do it.
We spent Thanksgiving with our pastor and his wife and her daughter's family, so there were six adults, three children, and two dogs, the littlest one in the teething puppy stage, in a home they just moved into the weekend before with most things still in boxes! Most people would have given up on the idea of having a holiday dinner, but they are generous people doing it with what they have. (I am so learning this lesson, my Lord.) My husband does an exceptional turkey in a brine making it so moist and he did the delicious gravy, of course. I made sourdough rolls, crumb top apple pie (one of my best ever I must say), and my red cabbage holiday coleslaw—which for some reason I cannot find a previous post that I thought did on it...maybe I have not posted it before?
It was so nice to have others with whom to share stories and conversation and good food. That is what makes Thanksgiving the holiday it is. I tend to get a bit depressed as the holidays approach because it is not much of a "family" gathering for us. I have always wished for large gatherings, but most years my husband and I had Thanksgiving at home by ourselves because he had to work. If we did go anywhere, it was to his parent's home with just his mother and father. Thanksgiving was usually a quiet holiday. Having had my fill over the years, I think I am now tired of quiet holidays, so being with others and watching the children play and get loud at times, the people in the kitchen working around each other, and the cleaning up of it all was very enjoyable for me.
I felt twinges of guilt knowing that my husband's mother was home alone and she sounded depressed and lonely on the phone. We offered several times but she declined to visit us for the holidays. I am concerned for her with Christmas coming. She has neither invited us nor has accepted our offer to come here. What else can we do?
Yesterday was Black Friday...I usually do not go out shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I did this time. I got up very early and went shopping but the lines were not that bad. The worse lines were for electronics and I was not in any of them. When I finally got home just before noon, I just felt terrible. After I ate my favorite after-Thanksgiving lunch of turkey sandwich with mayonnaise and Dijon mustard, I felt a bit better but I still had this disoriented feeling so I cozied myself on sofa and watched a DVD trying catch a few Z's now and then.
I had settled my brains for a long winter's nap...well, it felt like that but the clatter to which I awoke was a crying child. The Princess had been deleting the unwanted pictures from her camera and accidentally deleted them all. She calmed down after I explained that deleting only means that the program in the camera does not have the path to the pictures now, but the pictures are still there and that they probably can be recovered just as I did with my computer. Now I have to fiddle around with that to find out how to recover them. Here we go again!
It seems our technology attack is not over, unfortunately. On Wednesday, my husband lost his work cell phone also. He has never lost a cell phone before. He lives with his cell phone and he usually has a photographic memory about where he places things...even where I place things! The worse part is there has been something wrong with his work computer, that has not been fixed although he sent it in, so he could not back up all the contacts and calls and text messages from his cell phone as he is supposed to do. About 200 contacts are just gone. It will take him weeks upon weeks to get all that information again. He is scheduled for a new work computer in the spring, supposedly.
Maybe all this better explains why I have not been all that eager to work on my computer in any capacity. It just seems obvious to me that the Lord is allowing all this to get our attention about something.
~ My Lord, thank you for precious friends, those who choose us and become like family in our hearts. Thank you that delete does not necessarily mean gone for good and that things lost are just "things". Thank you for the desire to change and try new or different things, ingenuity to do with what we have when we must or just should, the blessing in sharing our hearts with each other, and the grace You give us every day. ~
