The Path of Briars

Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.― Leigh Bardugo

There are times when you see a path but choose not to walk it because all you really knew about it is that it had a hefty toll to be paid and went to the darkest part of a forest with briars you could see and to end you did not know where. Why would you want to choose that path?

But what if God shows you that path again and again and again and then He asks you to walk it?

I think I lost some friends in the last few days because I took this path so that it would protect some other people, including one that they love, but to do so I had to pull them through that path of briars with me. It was one of the most agonizing things I have been asked to do knowing I would likely be hated for it. God had told me to step where He stepped and it was not without its price but they did not hear Him and they were more deeply cut by the briars.

This morning I wonder how my Lord must have mourned for those who did not understand His sacrifice...not just the people who called for His crucifixion, but all who have lived since, are living now, and are yet to be born. Some things God asks us to do have their price...

My Lord, please bring healing.

Thorns and Roses

A critic would sacrifice the entire rose to find fault with the thorn. ~Terri Guillemets

I think God has been trying to draw me back to blogging. I have been feeling this desire for several months back off of Facebook and come back to my sanctuary. I thought of starting another blog but as I read through bits of posts here, I realized my heart is in many of these posts and I am at home. It has been a long while and many things have changed since the last time I posted here. I may make more esthetic changes to this blog eventually—although if you have not been here before, you would probably not know. For now, the simplicity of my original theme is quite comforting in its familiarity.

I had a very rough week emotionally. I learned something that I found both highly disturbing and yet quite enlightening about myself. When someone has said something that makes me feel like I do not meet up to their ideas of how I should be, especially with other people, I still have a tendency to fall apart. It reminded me of the few times I had done this when a manager would give me an evaluation and it was never about my performance of the job itself, but how co-workers perceived me and that I was being asked to fix it.

There was always someone, usually just one or two women, who did not like me for whatever reason and I really did not realize why for a few years until I was working in an entry-level office job with several women where we would process new insurance applications at the regional level. A huge part of our performance for the morning duties was based on speed and when I got comfortable with the job, I would get into a rhythm so that I was processing more new applications correctly than all the other employees there. One was so slow that I would easily do three to four applications to her one and she would make a point to turn back and give me a look as if I should slow down so she would not look so bad. I was her thorn.

So, having been through this with some previous managers, I was a bit better prepared when this manager called me in for my evaluation. Like before, it was not about my work where I was excellent on almost all points, but it was about co-workers' perception of me—as if the woman who disliked me solely because my job performance was at the top of the bell curve was ever going to see me past that? (She was eventually fired for low performance and cheating on her numbers, by the way.) The manager even suggested with whom I should start having lunch! So, that time instead of falling apart because I am an imperfect human being and taking on people's criticisms of how I do not fit with the "in" crowd, I turned the conversation back on my strengths and asked what other duties could I do that would likely get me promoted as soon as there was an opening in a higher level. Fortunately, the extra duty I was given was one I would work alone, and again I excelled to the point that when I was promoted, while people hired before me were not, I had to train two people to do the same duty because one alone could not do it. 

I have never believed that I am a perfect person. In fact, quite the opposite was something I struggled with until I was healed and had forgiven those who contributed to my abused childhood. I was always trying to appear "normal" and always feeling I was not. It was an act that I did poorly so I always felt that people could see that I was broken and messed up. I am past that now but still not perfect...I still have thorns.

Yet, the demons know our weakest places. And this almost always happens after I have excelled at something, which was also the case on the first weekend in March when one of my rabbits won the highest titles at the national show and last weekend when my rabbits placed exceeding well in their classes and won four titles. I used to think it was that "fear of success" thing, but I do not fear success, I fear what it does in the hearts of people, including myself. Last Sunday, I was told some things that took me some time to discern what was or if any of it was a conviction from my Lord and what was from His enemy who wishes to tear me down.

My struggle, which I found highly disturbing, was not in what I was told of itself, but how it affected my relationship with God. The hardest part of this week was that when I dropped into the dark places of my emotions so I could not hear my Lord. I could not discern if I were trying to hide from Him because it was a conviction coming from Him or if the enemy was using it to drive a wedge between my Lord and me as that is always his goal. I even felt too unworthy to call upon Him. I felt that I was a disappointment to Him. Probably the thing that bothered me the most was I felt I was a poor witness for Him and, at that point, I began thinking maybe it was time to stop showing. My husband has always said we do this as long as it is fun—when it is no longer fun, we are done, but beyond that is what does God wish for us to do...? 

As my emotions finally started to subside and I opened my heart up to hear my Lord, the first thing I heard Him again say..."I am blessing you with rabbits." Well, then we are not done.

Thank You, My Lord, for Your guidance and love for Your imperfect child.

Assumptions Without Questions 2.0

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one. ~J. Pierpoint Morgan

I hoped I would not hear this term again from anyone for the rest of my life: "assumptions without questions." The first time a woman used that as a indirect way to claim she was the victim of misunderstanding (and that I did not even care to understand) was the same woman who not only did not recognize that her son stalking my daughter as wrong because he was "in love" at fourteen years old, but also she was encouraging him. This incident caused my daughter to deal with anxiety over being stalked for nearly two years and she still worries about it with any guy she has met. Whatever assumptions this woman thought I had she proved with her actions were quite on target. The second time was recently and I have to say, the circumstances were very different, but the intention was the same.

Using the term "assumptions without questions" is an accusation in an attempt to deflect any shame-blame on the person who has caused the misunderstanding and tries to place it on the persons who misunderstood. Personally, if someone misunderstands me, I apologize...even if I think I was clear enough. That is because I do not think everyone else is in the same frame of mind that I am when I say or write something. As a writer, I try to draw in my reader to see my perspective, because I know they are not coming from the same perspective, however there are times I fail to do that well or a person just is not seeing it the same way as I am.

Case in point, a Facebook friend who has rabbits wrote something quite simple that everyone else seemed to get as I read through the comments, but my first impression was slightly different because I was thinking of his rabbits. His first two lines were: "Doe down! Bear chased all the bucks away." I immediately thought the worse for his rabbits, but the rest just did not quite fit my understanding of the first two lines: "Now to go get her. Thank you lord for this harvest!!!!" I was thinking what would possibly be left of the doe get if bears attacked his rabbitry and he should be looking for the bucks that had ran away.

However, it all makes more sense if one is thinking the man was hunting deer. Did I make an assumption or did he leave out information because he assumed that everyone was on the same page with him thinking he would be hunting? Most truthful answer is both are correct.

This was not that incident; that is just an example. The incident happened over the word "program," more specifically "reporting program." This suggested to the rest of us who were not thinking on the same thing as she was and reading what she had written, that the entire system of reporting the statistics was a failure and that reporting system is managed by specific people. This person is rather smart with a degree in science, so she should be capable of describing things well enough that it does not cause confusion. Therefore, when she said she had no trust in "the program", it sounded like she did not trust the people reporting the statistics, on which I commented. Next thing, I knew I was accused of making assumptions without asking questions. Of course, she believes it takes all the attention off her own assumption that anyone else would have obviously known she was actually talking about a computer program even though it was not obvious to anyone else reading it. "Program" is not a term exclusive to computers.

It is not the misunderstanding with which I have a problem. Misunderstandings happen. It is how people handle it that shows their character. While using "assumptions without questions" seems to make the accuser blameless in his or her own eyes, it tends to make me focus on the accuser's issues of being self-righteous. If fact, I tend to feel set up so that the opportunity to make the accusation of making assumptions without questions is ever present and it just is with some people, sadly.

I can admit that I am still quite raw from the first experience with the term and it may be a hot button for me, but if I had not fallen into the pit this last time, someone else likely would have and I would have been far more confrontational. However, I chose to ignore the insults and simply thanked her for clarifying so that everyone understood what she really meant. Did she intentionally set it up? No, but she did intentionally take advantage of the situation to try to make me look bad...this is not the first time she has told me how wrong I am, yet she lets others off who would make the same references.

There is always things and people to pray about...one more of each on my list.

My Lord, help me to be forgiving of people who try to shame-blame me. I wish to pray for them to be able to see people from a different perspective and consider that they themselves are not without blame when it comes to making assumptions.

In Between

Nothing that is can pause or stay; The moon will wax, the moon will wane, The mist and cloud will turn to rain, The rain to mist and cloud again, Tomorrow be today. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have been consumed with learning the rabbit world: the who's whos, the standard of perfection, how critical people are, the Facebook rabbit drama (that probably make the rabbits laugh at the humans), how to navigate sanctioning and entering shows, preparing for shows, and breeding the rabbits around those schedules. There is a lot to it all that I am not going to be writing about it here because I have a rabbitry blog for all of that.

This morning I woke early as I customarily do, so it was still dark. I decided to finish some updates on some rabbitry records I had started a couple of days ago. It is Sunday, so we should be going to church, but we are again between churches....

My daughter was claimed by a friend, a boy with whom she had been friends for about three years but who also thought of her as more than a friend and began threatening other friends of hers that were boys. We thought we had reached an understanding between the families and the church leaders, but my daughter had become a bit paranoid because of it and did not want anything to do with the boy, whose father is involved with services there. We decided that we would need to find another church and even though the Princess is involved with the youth program at one, we are not entirely comfortable there either.

So, for most of the summer, we have been discouraged about going to services although we have sporadically. Today, my husband's back is in knots, probably due to a very stressful couple of weeks with work, and I have a rash from unknown causes that is making me uncomfortable with wearing anything binding against it as is usual for a woman. My daughter may go to church with a friend.

Such an odd time of life...watching my daughter become an adult and hoping she makes good decisions, but she had made several recently that have pleased us as her parents. She was always yours, my Lord, and I hope I did my part to helping her understand that she always should seek You.

So, I am just thanking my Lord today for the quiet misty morning that obscures the material world and draws me into a more philosophical and spiritual mindset to just seek Him for myself as well. 

Thank you, my Lord, for bringing me to You.

Life is Like a Piano...

Life is like a piano.
What you get out of it depends on how you play it. –Tom Lehrer

I am fasting right now, so my energy level wanes during the day, but I needed to lose a good 15 pounds. (Actually more like 18, but I was giving myself some slack.) I did not work in a cleansing water fast in January as I normally try to do. That in part was due to the fact that as I have gotten older, I tend to get leg cramps at night in the winter, even though magnesium supplements help. I also tend to get leg cramps when I fast. The idea of doubling up this cramping challenge in January was not something I was excited about doing at the time.

I decided to do a milk fast, which means I drink about 2 ounces of raw whole milk with 2 ounces of water in the morning and in the evening. I also have been eating about 2 ounces of yogurt in the afternoon. So, while my digestive system is not complete closed down, the milk keeps my metabolism on a high level spurring my body to burn off fat stores faster. I am about half way to my weight goal.

The months that followed January were still too cold and just as I thought I might be able to give a fast a go, we were almost in April. The month of April...I can only describe it as Piano Month or maybe Crazy Piano Month! This year it turned out to be crazier than ever before.

The Princess, who was not particularly interested in going to college and did not know what she wanted to do even if she did, suddenly decided that she wanted to go to college for piano. This same girl that begged me for a few years to quit, yet in the past year has blossomed in her skills and likes to take on challenges.

First, the Princess had decided to do something new, to apply and submit an audition video for the Reinhardt Piano Festival. Despite she did everything as last minute as possible and it took 3 hours to load her 10 minute video to YouTube, which put it after the deadline, she was accepted.

Second, there was the AG Georgia District Fine Arts Festival in which the Princess won first place last year. This year she did not place, but her score was high enough to be invited to the Nationals in Houston, Texas at the end of July. There was more competitors possibly because Nationals are closer and will not be as expensive to attend.

Then she was to perform in the annual Spring Piano Recital that her piano teacher organizes. This year she played four pieces throughout the program and the final piano piece, which was a great grande finale kind of song. 

And my baby girl then turned 17 years old!  

So, after the birthdays, because my husband's follows hers, I decided to lose the extra weight I have been carrying for so long. It is amazing how a fast can also change my perspective about other things as well. I look around the house and think, this can go and that can go. 

I am in the process of selling off all our homeschool curriculum that has been sitting on shelves unused or that we finished (or quit) long ago. Time to streamline. This is her last year and I need to prepare for the next phase of her life and of mine.

My Lord, thank you for giving my daughter such a wonderful gift and now the desire to use it. May she do so to glorify You.

Downs and Ups

The Lord is in control of our life journey including all the ups and downs. -Crystal McDowell

The Queen Mother was making her bed as she does daily, because—of course—the people who make them at the nursing home do not make her bed the right way. She got dizzy and fell down hitting her face on the bed and her bad knee on the floor. This we did not find out for nearly two days. We were told only that she had fallen and she was being taken to the emergency room of the hospital when we were called late on Monday night.

When we called the hospital on Tuesday morning, we could not find out if she had been admitted or even if she was still in the ER because their computers were down. However, I called again later in the morning and even though the computers were still down, I was told she had been admitted and I was bring transferred to the nurses' station. A woman answered, saying her name followed by "ICU." Then I was rather even more concerned!

She offered to have the attending nurse talk to me and that is when we found out that how and why the Queen Mother fell...and that she was going to have raccoon eyes, because of the nose bridge piece of her glasses being pushed into her nose when her face fell onto the bed. However, what landed her in ICU was her atrial fibrillation, fever, edema, and the possibility of pneumonia. The lab work had not been completed to determine the pneumonia, but she did test positive for Type A influenza.

My husband tried to call to talk to her, but she did not want to talk to him. The nurse said it was because she was coughing so much. However, we found out that she was going to be in ICU for some time as she did test positive for pneumonia and they were having difficulty with her heart rate when they placed her on a diuretic to reduce the edema.

So, she again either was unaware or ignoring signs that she had a fever and should have stayed in bed. But, it also confirms to us that she needs to have a full time staff to check in on her as she does not use good judgement in regards to her health and her condition and what she should and should not be doing. In addition, anything that upsets her health-wise tends to slide quickly down to becoming a life-threatening battle between excessive water retention and her heart.

This picture was from Christmas 2005 in a very rare moment when the Queen Mother was being lighthearted in showing off the scarf that we had gotten her. It is my favorite picture of her and the only time I have actually seen her like that.

We have not gone to visit her because there really is nothing we can do and this week my husband was in negotiations that had to be settled before today's mandatory meeting in Chicago. He was offered a promotion, but the pay offer...well, it was rather more like an insult than a raise. Since the company has not given pay raises for the last two to three years, it was more like one would expect as a cost of living raise, hence the reason he was in negotiations.

An agreement was made, but they have not yet really defined the job. However, all three of the men that were given this opportunity laughed at the absurdity that they could what they have been doing 80 percent of the time and the new responsibilities would only take up 20 percent of their time in their regions. My husband has done this before and, to get the company to have a better reputation with American customers, it is going to take far more than 20 percent of his working hours.

However, the really cool thing is that in December, we had made a commitment to fund a missionary's feeding program in Guatemala and this raise will cover that. Now that is the God I know!

My Lord, so much has been on my mind and heart of late. I ask that You stay close to me and draw me close to you. I thank You for my husband's promotion and I ask You to bring peace to my mother-in-law, who worries so much and often makes life more difficult on herself because she has such high expectations on the people who care for her.

When Things Must Change

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

Did you think I had forgotten my sanctuary? I have not. I just have been learning more about rabbits (and other animals) and I have come to realize that I tend to learn by complete immersion. I actually am reading message boards again, which I dropped many years ago because most people gave them up or the boards changed and then there was the drama...which happens just because people are people. However, when it comes to raising livestock of any kind, people still like to connect with people, pick brains, talk about their experiences, ask questions, etc. 

My online journey has been interesting. I went from a local message board that chatted on things happening in our area, including all the politics, to just homeschooling boards and then I began blogging. There met a few friends that are still friends today, but the lives of many of my homeschool friends have changed. Some are not homeschooling because their children grew up. Some are not homeschooling the same because they have their children in schools, some are private homeschool hybrids and others placed their children in public high schools to get the necessary credits for college. Most of these friends now have jobs outside of the home, businesses they run from their home, or a combination of both. In other words, most have moved on with their lives and I felt a little left behind...and a little lost.

The last few years I could not just call a friend as I use to during the day when I needed to feel in touch with adults or just get a reality check after dealing with a moody and reluctant student most of the day. I came here and wrote about things, but these days I only have one reader, who is a very busy person as she has moved on to a ministry and has home businesses. I do not stay in touch with anyone as much as I used to do.

My daughter has another year in homeschooling then that season of my life ends also. After devoting so much of myself to educating the child, I wonder what she and I will be doing after it ends? I know what I would like to do...well, I have had this desire to homestead all my life, but I wonder if I am holding on to that just because I have always thought about doing it or if it is something I really do still want to do.

I feel as uncertain about what I want to do after homeschooling as my daughter does, but we are looking for land. Actually, I stopped looking because I felt my Lord tell me to not to look as the land would come to my husband, so I am to focus on my house which is a mess, stuffed with stuff from homeschooling, my mother-in-law's stuff, and just stuff that accumulated over the 20 years we have lived here. I will take it one drawer, one shelf, one corner, at a time. Monday, I tackled my sock drawer. Yesterday, the refrigerator. Today...hmm, not sure yet.

So, my sanctuary may be changing, along with me (and my house).

My Lord, guide us through these transitions. Make the path we are to take well lit and welcoming.

One Weird Tuesday in January

Don't learn safety by accident. ~Saying, circa 1949

We have a very nasty flu going around that has caused the deaths of children and elderly. It also mutates faster than most viruses do so no vaccine is really helping and there have been school closures in many parts of the country. My family have been fortunate to not get it..yet, but I was not too surprised that the Princess' piano teacher texted me Monday night to say she had the flu and would not be teaching for most of the week. I did not see it because I was already in bed—not sick, just very tired.

The next day, Tuesday, my husband decided to drive to the account where he was to work, but not with our vehicles, so I had to drop him off to get his rental car. I was just about three miles down the road on my way to the Post Office when he called me to say that he left his computer bag in the van.

I finally made it to the Post Office and to send out payments of my bills. The gas bill was particularly high, but it had been particularly cold. Still, I had called them to be sure that I was not being charged for the gas leak we had at the beginning of the month (after the fireworks fire). I let my Mishka out and smelled gas on the south side of the house, the side with the meter, and realized it was coming from it. The temperatures were in the 20's but within 30 minutes a man from the gas company was replacing my meter, but the next day...there was that smell again. A bad regulator. Now it is fixed, but about two weeks later I smelled gas again on the north side...the firestarter neighbors also had a leak and he smokes outside on that side of the house. Anyway, my leaked gas was before it is metered so I had to pay the entire thing and that was fine because we actually used it.

I also went to the health food stores because we did not go out last week. I had not been feeling so great for quite awhile, but this extra tiredness and weakness—seemingly for no reason, but I think I was fighting off something I did not really get—started that week and I felt a little too weak to try it.

The health food stores are no longer across the street from each other, so after we had finished shopping in the one, we were on our way to the other. The Princess and I had our braces adjusted the day before so we decided what to eat and where. We were sitting at a red traffic light with about eight to ten cars stopped in front of us when we got rear-ended. It was not bad, a bump really, but having worked for a chiropractor, I know that what seems like nothing much right then can feel a whole lot different the next few days.

I called my insurance agent first to ask if we really needed a police report as there did not appear to be any damage to either vehicle, but I was rather shaken up, mostly because I have a sensitive nervous system that gets triggered when things like this happen. They advised to get the report, so the officer arrived and talked to the other driver first and then explained that he would write the report but he was not going to cite the man, who was highly cooperative and admitted what happened. I probably would not have wrote the ticket either. He had a brain-damaged girl in the car with him who suddenly was getting sick and that distracted him. Then I felt so sorry for the man, who was rather nice about everything. The officer could not see any damage to either vehicle, but I knew that bumpers do not always show the internal damage so we shall take it to a shop to have it checked out just to be sure that it will do what it should if it is hit again. I was feeling my upper back on the left tighten up at the scene, but that could have been just me being up-tight about the whole thing. As I write this, it is the next day and I am just a bit sore, like I would be if I had done some gardening, so I am good.

We decided to eat lunch and relax. Then we went on to the other health food store, got the items we needed and some home early to put all our groceries away. The Princess is pet sitting a neighbor's cat and hamster, so she went there to spend about 30 minutes feeding, cleaning, and playing. While I fed our rabbits, the cats, and the dog.

Then I was ready to go to bed early again, but my husband called to say goodnight and mentioned the State of the Union address. I was not going to watch it live and see it in the morning, but...well, I really get sucked into politics and my daughter would have also if she had known, but her mind was on the Super Blue Moon Eclipse that happened this morning...that she slept through. And, yes, I liked Trump's address very much. He is abrasive but he is saying what most the people I know in my part of the country have been saying.

Thank you, my Lord, for protecting us.

First Minutes into 2018 - Fighting a Wildfire

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan (1915–1977), in The Kansas City Star

In the first minutes of 2018, my husband and I were out fighting a wildfire...

On New Year's Eve, many people shoot off fireworks, but if there ever was a night that was a bad night to shoot fireworks it was this night. Or perhaps I should say if ever there was a good night to start a wildfire, it was this night. For one, we have been having unusually low temperatures for a few weeks with no precipitation, making everything particularly dry. The wind was gusting from the northwest. The temperature was in the 20's that night so all the water hoses were frozen. In other words, it was foolish to do any fireworks at all, but people did and some of those people lived next door to us. (Ironically, our other next door neighbor is a fireman, who was not home at the time.)

It was just after midnight and I had just put on my pajamas. The next thing I see is my husband with his jacket on grabbing one of our fire extinguishers. Then I looked outside to see the yard on the corner across the street with streaks of fire like in the movie "Back to the Future" and a few people, the people who accidentally caused it, running around seemingly not knowing what to do. So, I ran to change back into clothes, put on my heavy hunter's rubber boots, and my warm camo jacket. By the time I got outside, the streaks of fire had disappeared and it was just a total burn with embers even going over the road into our yard. I ran to get the hose from our backyard as I knew it would reach all our front yard and even the other side of the street, but there was water frozen in the hose so it would not work.

At that point, the only method was trying to stomp it out. The homeowner had gotten some shovels in hopes to save his home. I know how fire can move, but I personally had never seen a fire on a mowed lawn have flames shoot up four feet and advance fifteen feet with one gust of wind! And the same  people who caused it were trying to get in front of it too, but I warned them not to do it that way. Crazy just runs rabid with these people!

The only thing that saved the house was that there was a huge island that the homeowner had filled with rock in the front. It caused the fire to split into two sections. I was on the road side and my husband was on the driveway side. I could not even see him at times because of the flames. We all worked at keeping the fire from catching the bushes near the house, but it had advanced to the backyard on my side. Just ten more feet, just one more gust of wind, and the flames would be into leaves, brush, and then up trees. Should a fire get up in height like that, the whole neighborhood to the south and west would have been in jeopardy.

I was praying under my breath and that one more gust of wind did not happen, the fire just began to fizzle out on my side. On the other side the flames were nearing cars in the driveway, but that is when the fire department came and it took them all of 30 seconds to douse it all.

My husband and I did not wait around, but started home to shower and wash our smoky clothes as we coughed out what had gotten into our lungs. The next door neighbor man, who never talks to us, made a point to thank us with the kind of scary sincerity that comes from knowing what could have happened if we had not been there to help. His wife said over and over that there was a newborn baby in that house and I assured her that we would have had enough time to get the baby out safely.

After our showers, we were up for several hours. Adrenalin! Our stories were different because we were in different areas with different people. Our dog saw the first streak and my husband watched as two more shot toward the house across the street. He realized that it probably was a Roman candle that had fallen over, more likely had been blown over. He thought they could get it, but realized before he had a chance to finish that thought that the wind was a big factor. When he arrived with the fire extinguishers, they all thought it would put the fire out, but my husband knew and told them it would only slow it down as they were halogen extinguishers that are for inside fires because they remove oxygen in the air. They really would not do much outside, but when you are desperate it is worth trying.

One of the neighbors with the best yard now has a completely black front yard. It is eerily striking.

We had not seen our next door neighbors for over a week since it happened. I feel for them, I really do. One stupid mistake can cause property and people to be in danger. I am sure they wish they could hide forever right now. I am hoping that none of them became ill because of it.

Our daughter missed it all as she was staying overnight at a friend's house and I was thankful for that because I did not have to worry about her jumping in to help and possibly getting hurt. No one was hurt, thankfully.

My Lord, just thank you that no one was hurt and the damage was minimal.

A New Year, a New Direction, and a New Meow!

The same Jesus Who turned water into wine can transform your home, your life, your family, and your future. He is still in the miracle-working business, and His business is the business of transformation. -Adrian Rogers

I cannot believe how long it has been since I have posted here, but there are several reasons I have not. As I mentioned before, I started another blog about our rabbitry and I began to keep detailed records of breedings, births, weights, genetics, and so forth. I spent hours making charts, reading, and learning. I had to urge my husband to build at least two more cages, but I really want about four more...or more.

I had bought quite a few rabbits because most of what we had left are old, but I was pleased to see that my old does are still healthy and fertile. Still, we are phasing out one breed and will be focusing on another.

We have not even culled one rabbit since the beginning of this breeding season as we were trying to sell off as many as we could to compensate for the cost of buying young purebreds for breeders and waiting for them to develop. I also am spending more time with my rabbits, handling them, feeding them by hand and, of course, cleaning. (These days, I so much enjoy being outside whether with my buns or plants.) I wish to develop a reputation for not only our purebred rabbits being healthy and good quality, but also for their docile temperaments. My husband is very pleased that I finally am involved with them as much as he wanted me to be from the start—not like I was not busy enough with the Princess and homeschooling.

However, we cannot expand or advertise much because we do not the acreage to comply with our county's requirements, so we are doing things low-key for now as we are also actively looking for land outside of our present county, which is on a mission to drive farmers out by rezoning their properties when placed on the market to be sold. We are looking in neighboring counties to the west or ones farther north that are farmer-friendly.

On Sunday, we walked a lovely 64 acres with a stream that has a low price per acre, but would be too costly for us to buy it and then build what we want. We walked to see how we might sell off up to half in two 10 to 15 acre lots because it has two road fronts on the front and back of the property. The side I like, the higher part of the property, is on the busier front road, but my husband was hoping for the quieter back side that slopes down closer to the road than the other side. The stream is also closer to the back side. The other disadvantage is that it does not have many hardwoods, as the owner is a forester that harvests the pines, some of which could also be sold and provide us with some extra funds, I suppose.

We are looking at land because we are probably going to have to build. There are just very few houses that have old fashion large farm kitchens with space for a full size freezer and a full size refrigerator and space for a grand piano somewhere with nice acoustics that are not like mini mansions, which would be just too much house for us. We just need a customized plan that will fit our lifestyle and plans.

My husband was also thinking of going into business for himself, but I felt the Lord was telling us that we would have another choice that we could make, but no direction of which we should take yet. Just this week, my husband applied for a newly created position within the company he works...the job he was originally hired to do that they never created seven years ago.

I just keep hearing God tell me that He is going to bless me and He has been. 

In the meantime, I need to focus on my daughter and finishing up some of the redecorating I had started in my house. I feel this strong compulsion to not just declutter but to minimize the amount of things we have, as in if we have not used it or do not use it, it needs to go. I am going to be posting lots of homeschool materials, but I plan to keep some things...there may be grandchildren some day that will use it, even though the Princess sounds like me at her age and has no desire for children, she says.

Yet, my husband and I were picking up a doe at a farm and I looked over to see this kitten:

Now, this is EXACTLY the cat I have always wanted for myself and the farmer did not want it, so offered him to us for free. I had promised myself that I would not have another indoor cat, but my husband said that he would not be mine. That was two days before Christmas so my husband and I made him a surprise last minute Christmas gift to the Princess. When we returned home, my husband got the rabbit settled into her quarantine cage while I combed out the cat, and then we were off to the pet store because we no longer had anything for an indoor cat.

I wanted to name him Lynx from the moment I saw him, but the Princess was between Trevor and Link for a couple of days, finally deciding on Link. My husband calls him the Linkster and I keep tripping over not calling him Lynx (or spelling his name Lync at the very least).

Come to find out, after an hour of searching on the Internet, he actually is a Seal Lynx Point Balinese. Not kidding. How is that for being blessed?

The Princess calls him her child, but that is my lap in the picture. He is an equal opportunity kind of cat and will even snuggle with my husband. When you pick him up, he goes completely limp. I have had a lot of cats in my life, but none that did that. So, the rule is the Princess is not allowed to leave home with him....not really, but he is super adorable. I guess these are the kind of sacrifices a mother makes for her cat-loving child.

Thank you, my Lord, for your blessings that have been falling freely upon my family as well as me. Your promises are promises kept.

Wildly Unpredictable Winter Weather

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
-Bill Morgan, Jr.

Having lived in Georgia for the last twenty years, I have learned to accept that there is only one predictable truth about winters in Georgia:

Winters in Georgia are entirely and quite wildly unpredictable!

 

Friday  
Having said that over and over again, even people who have lived here all their lives still do not seem to understand and accept the simplicity of this inerrant truth. This is why I always expect any winter front to be far worse than any of the predictions.

We were told up to three days ago that it might snow and that we might see accumulation of up to an inch on our decks and in the grass, a dusting perhaps. (We were also told that about a week ago and all we got was some rain.)

Two days ago that changed to possibly four inches of snow. The state had all bridges and overpasses prepared ahead of time. Georgia officials stepped up our winter weather preparedness ever since the terrible fiasco in January 2014: When it Snows in Georgia.

In the dark before the dawning day, it started with a winter mix of sleet and rain. I know because my Mishka woke me far too early for his morning outing and we were out in it. There already was some slippery slush on the steps but nothing that was not easily displaced by my low tread garden boots. (Do not let that sweet innocent look fool you. He is a just wanted to jump back into the snow after we just got him out of it.)

A friend in Arizona, who originally lived in Pennsylvania and may be missing those snowy winters, texted me to ask if we were snowed in yet. I texted back that here it is more about being "iced" in, because just few inches of accumulated snow ends up causing serious icy conditions, but I forgot that one should never say never in Georgia about winter storms.

The wintry mix changed to huge fluffy clumps of snow and by the end of the morning we had that four inches, but it was still snowing. The schools decided to end the day before noon.

The temperature was above freezing but the large fluffy flakes outpaced the melting of the fallen come-befores and my little world was blanketed in a wondrous white. We had a power outage for about two hours and then flickering in the power for about another 24 hours. Trees bowed under the unfamiliar weight and many lost branches, split, and fell over exposing the roots even though there was no wind.

The picture above is pointed in the same direction as the one below. You can see that our neighbor's tree split off a large branch. Those types of trees are notorious for splitting even with just heavy rains or a little wind when they are 20 years old. We just cut ours down a few weeks ago. (Yeah, I really have been doing other things when I have not been blogging.)

Since it was just snow and not ice, it probably would have been better if we had some wind that would have blown the snow off of the trees. So if you can imagine seeing six inches height of wet snow catching more flakes on the thinnest of branches, you can understand how amazingly different everything appeared to us. Well, not entirely because...it did not stop snowing at six inches. I measured it at about nine inches at dinner time and it apparently has continued to snow all night.

Saturday
Although my favored husband did make it home the night before, having to make a couple of detours around jack-knifed semi-trucks and accidents and working around vehicles parked on the side or the road or half in the ditch, Mishka decided to let him sleep and put his sweet wet nose in my face to say that I was the lucky pick again for his early morning outing. Mishka has discovered that he loves, loves, loves snow!

 

I measured and the snow was at twelve inches! TWELVE! (That's 30 centimeters for my metric friends.)

The temperature was just at freezing and it was predicted to dip down a bit and then will be rising enough for a slow melt. The sun was supposed to be hidden behind clouds today, but prediction has changed so today the roads will clear mostly and tonight everything will freeze again and that makes for patches of black ice, but for the most part all main roads will be mobile again—getting to them from the side roads is the problem.

This is the most snow we have ever seen here at one time, although I read that in 1993, before we moved here, a blizzard dumped 30 inches.

Why do I expect the unpredictability? If we had a strong relentless northwestern storm come blustering through like that 1993 blizzard, that would be more predictable, but when we have a weakening or stalling northwestern cold front that is just strong enough to slipstream the warm moist air up from the Gulf of Mexico in front of it making the northwest front turn into a southwest draw...well, it is not easy to predict if the moist warmer air will produce rain or the cold will prevail making snow or sleet. Amounts of any one of these depend on how slowly the storm moves east with one part trying to go southeast and the other pulling up toward the northeast making our area a point of turmoil.

Sunday Morning
As expected, after teetering around the magical temperature that turns water into ice, the weather decided to take a plunge into temperatures in the 20s at night. Then allowed some of the snow to melt in with temperatures in the 40s on Saturday to plunge again into the low 20's, so now what areas of the roads that did not dry out during the melting of the day are icy...at least until around noontime. We might not make it to church services, because our street and the roads to the main ones are icy but we will be able to go shopping and pick up my new bunnies around 3:00 since the sun will be out and temperatures are to be in the 40s again.

Typically, such crazy weather conditions are more likely to happen in January, but...Georgia!

I love its wild unpredictable winters.

My Lord, may we always be in surprised by Your creative ways that we cannot predict, even though we keep attempting to do so.

Chasing November

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? ~Henry David Thoreau

November is nearly over and I have not posted at all! At the end of October and the beginning of November were our annual trip to the apple country in North Georgia (we even took a few steps into Tennessee this time) and the Princess' Coffee Shop Recital.

I actually have a lot I could post, but as you know, it is not just the writing, but looking through pictures to post and uploading the video...and, yes, of course, I know I could just get it done instead of writing about what I should be doing! Sometimes I really hate technology. It makes it very easy to have more demands on my time.

However, the reason I am behind in getting things posted is because I have been focused on another interest that gives me much pleasure: our rabbitry. My husband and I agreed to focus on breeding pure bred Silver Foxes while still crossing with New Zealand Whites at times. As well as what we have been doing, we are going to offer them for sale with pedigrees.

For the past month after G's false pregnancy and then rebreeding, I have been looking at software for creating pedigrees and finally decided on one that allows some customizing and was not too costly. We do not have to get fancy for the pedigrees, but the artist in me never passes up the opportunity to create a logo. We all decided on a name for the rabbitry. I made new and improved cage ID cards, which one rabbit likes to nibble on, of course. (Thankfully, only one.) I also designed several forms to manage breeding and bunny assessments to put neatly in a purple binder, one that I picked up at a Goodwill that was calling to me without me knowing why at the time. Anyway, I am going to be managing the rabbitry unlike we had been doing before by keeping better records.

I was very happy to see no brokens (spotted) in this kindle. which would have eliminated the buck as a breeder in my breeding plans immediately. Although not absolute, having no brokens suggests that the NZW buck is not likely carrying the gene because the En (broken) gene is dominant.

The Steel is the second we have ever gotten and it looks like its mother in that respect, although Steels generally are disqualifying for showing in nearly all breeds, I find them to be pretty and look like typical wild rabbits.

The Ruby Eyed Whites were the most expected, since the mother carries the white gene and was bred with a New Zealand White. The white gene is actually recessive, but when there are two recessive white genes, cc, they will cover all the other genetics, so test breeding is the only way to determine what a Ruby Eye White is carrying. For instance, if the NZW we bred had the Steel gene, it would not be seen otherwise.

As big as a mystery REWs are, this time it is the Black that poses the bigger mystery to me. That one could resemble the Silver Fox fur, as it seems to have the no-fly back fur, but it is highly doubtful that the NZW sire would carry the recessive silvering gene. Like the white gene takes two to dominate the coat color, it takes two si genes to show silvering. The Black could be a self (solid) Black as it looks to be; or it could be a super or double Steel that makes the entire hair look black like a self; or it could even be a self Black with Steel that cannot be seen. Since the mother carries Steel and Steel is dominant, it would only take her one Steel gene for it to have Steel. If both parents pass on a Steel gene, then it could be a super Steel and so instead of the hair shaft looking black at the base and gold at the tips, it might appear completely black. Test breeding him and his father with self doe like my Silver Fox would reveal more about the father's genetics, but we are getting tight with cage space, even though that would be interesting.

Do you understand why I would want to keep records?

G's November Kindle

NZW/SF 75/25

1 Black (maybe with Silver Fox no-fly back fur but probably will not silver), 

2 Ruby Eye Whites, and 1 Black Gold Tipped Steel

On top of that, I decided I would need to break a personal rule...it was more of a guideline, to be honest. I have always said that it is not a good idea to try to maintain more than one blog, because a person cannot really compartmentalize the parts of her life: for instance, at one point I could have had a blog just for book reviews, but I was not trying to be a famous book reviewer, it was just something I enjoyed doing for a time, and what we read contributes to our perspectives in life. Truthfully, I rarely have anything one thing that would be worth a blog by itself because I am interested in so many things and rarely stick to anything for a long period of time. Yet, there are situations that make it quite wise to have a separate blog. This is one of those, so I will be creating a blog/website solely for the rabbitry separate from this blog. I am not even going to state the name of it here because I do not want it linked to this blog at all.

The reason I have decided this is two-fold. First, I want to be able to send prospective buyers and breeders and others looking for information about our rabbits and not know so much about our personal lives, especially those who could make trouble for us, as some people who believe that animals should have rights over people, have been known to do. Second, I really do not need to subject my sensitive readers to all that we shall be doing with the rabbits, which might include recipes and attempts at tanning hides.

So, speaking strictly about blogs, I shall keep the rabbitry apart from my sanctuary.

Thank you, my Lord, that we have choices in our lives and that while we cannot yet do homesteading as we would like, and we may never be able to, that we are able to do this much and that we enjoy it.

Flowing Oil

When a Christian tries to live by reason he is moving out of God’s country into the enemy’s land. We belong in the miraculous and the supernatural realm. –John G. Lake

I have heard of many wonderful miracles. I have seen healings where the person being healed said he or she could feel the healing taking place even though it was completely internal and I saw nothing. I have seen people healed of pain, which is a bit more visually obvious to others. I personally have been healed.

You would think I would not doubt God's love, but I do at times...because I am human and human nature is a harsh reality in a world of reality and harshness. We tend to believe what we see and know what is material. While unbelievers would say things like if there is a God, you would think He would make himself known, I see all His creation proclaiming Him—when I want to, that is. Sometimes—probably most times if I am to be honest—when I am sitting at a desk and typing our my thoughts, I see a desk and computer, same as unbelievers see. What I should see...well, what should I see?

God knows. God knows this. God knows this about us. God knows all this about us. God knows all this about all of us.

Yesterday, I saw a miracle. It was one of those miracles that I have have heard about yet never had seen for myself. This miracle started with a little prayer group in a little room in a little gift shop in a little city...just two hours away from my little space. Just a handful of people who prayed, who sought God, who were told to that He would show them something after the inauguration of the President in January. A new Bible of one of those members began to produce oil.

Oil so pure that it is clear and odorless. Thick and yet when placed in the eye or in the mouth it seems to becomes more like a water-based substance. When it began, they thought a grandchild had spilled something on it, When it continued to spread throughout the Bible, they placed it in a plastic bag. When it filled the bag, they placed it in the clear tote. The Bible stays engulfed in the oil that continually replenishes. In fact, God told them that as long as they do not sell the oil and give it away, it will replenish. It has been analyze and they were told it is like mineral oil but not. It is thicker and has properties that no one can explain.

God told them that they were to go out. Even in the sermon, the preacher mention how we are accustomed to say "come." Come to my church. Come to the alter for prayer. But Jesus told his disciples, told us to "go." So, this little group of people have had their lives changed because now they go out transporting a tote with a Bible producing oil to various churches to spread refreshing news about God and His love.

They have only gone where they have been told by God to go and they do not accept invitations. They give the oil freely but differently than when they first started. Weeks ago friends of ours watched quart jars being filled while the oil stayed at the same level. They watched people dipping their hands in it and yet it stayed clear. However, now that so many more people know about this oil, God has told them to just give out small vials. They fill vials on Monday night and send some out as they receive so many requests. They place the Bible in a tote until it fills and then in another. Oil is also dripping down in the prayer room.

One man, who goes to the prayer room on some Mondays, told us that when they open the Bible, each book has a different aroma! Imagine that from an oil with no fragrance.

What is the oil? They describe it as the presence of God, they call it Flowing Oil. To me, it is that and something that I would describe as a purest white light in oil form. It is like...pure love.

The oil will sometimes multiply on a person, usually one gifted with healing, but not always. Some say a small vial has lasted them a long time or would refill! And while the oil is a gift, I think the miracle was a small group of people, who were seeking God in prayer in a little room, being chosen to share this gift. Whenever we think, who are we...whenever I think, who am I is insignificant, I will think on these people, because I want to live in God's natural realm of the miraculous and supernatural.

My Lord, my world is so small, but keep reminding me that it is not insignificant. I was thinking of two friends of mine in particular yesterday. One who is struggling financially and in need of her finances to be replenish like this oil replenishes. Another, who has a very small church, who may be feeling their efforts are rather insignificant, but are not to You. I ask that you bless them both...significantly. Thank you, my Lord.   

The Intolerant Tolerant

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough. -Bede Jarrett

Where have I been for the last few weeks? I have been home, but my husband has not. This week makes for five in a row although he did come home on the third and fourth weekend. This weekend starts a week long vacation and we all need it!

What have I been doing for the last few weeks (since I have not been blogging)?  Quite a few things but it feels like hardly anything at the same time and that is probably since I spent too much time on a few things that cannot be fixed.

I am so disgusted with a wide range of immoral, unethical, and just plain disrespectful things that are going on in my country right now and those are the things I have been spending too much time on when I have been online.

• Football players kneeling to our National Anthem and Flag so now children are doing it too is one of the latest. I really do not care why they are doing it, it is just wrong and disrespectful to our military, our vets, and all other who serve this country. To top that off, the blacks who are doing it are not considering how their enslaved ancestors, who endured being subservient to all free men and women, would have been appalled that they, who have the freedom to stand in equality, have decided to take a subservient knee. Actually, our founding fathers would have been even more appalled, because they were against kneeling to any man or object; they would only take a subservient knee to God.
• The alphabet crowd that just seem to never have enough letters to fit in every kind of sexual deviancy making more demands about what we all must tolerate.
• Politics and the Anti-Trump crowd, including the media, trying to make him look bad and take him down in any way they can. Enough said there.
• Liberals with their specific agendas are not standing united against conservatives as they did but increasingly they are finding fault with everyone who does not support their agendas, including other liberals. The result: They are now in the process of eating their own! Bernie Sanders bowed out of a speech at the Women's Convention because the women on social media had a fit about a man speaking, apparently they want only women speakers. Black Lives Matter protesters use their free speech rights to shut down an American Civil Liberties Union speech, who is a defender of free speech, with chants, one being that the ACLU defended Hilter (meaning, the ACLU would defend—probably has defended—the free speech rights of any white supremacist). Which all just goes to show what I have known all along: The tolerant only tolerate what they find tolerable and never the intolerable, yet they never see themselves as intolerant. In the end, they tolerate very little, but demand the rest of us to tolerate much.

This world is becoming so wearing on my spirit. 

My Lord, I know it is not as bad as it could get, but that is what bothers me the most...and You, my Sweet Lord, are thought of little in all of this turmoil. Forgive us, forgive me, for that.

Background Workings of My Blog

It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it. -David Sedaris

Since March I have been considering giving my blog a new fresh look, but being that I have so many other more important things to do I decided to put that off. However, I began updating the css codes on my older posts so that all the fonts would be like the ones I have been using since 2011. It was low on the list of my priorities but I have been working this from time to time.

Then something else major happened to my blog that requires a great amount of time and patience to make it right again.

Since before I began blogging, I have had a Photobucket account. I stored all my blog pictures there and every picture on my blog was linked to there. This year, I decided to just up load them to Blogger directly when I make a new post to my blog and use Google Photos, which made it even easier to upload photos directly from my phone. So, I stopped uploading to Photobucket and I would call that a "Thank you, my Lord, for that nudge!" kind of thing, because....

A few months ago, I went to my blog to find that every single picture and graphic and including my backgrounds were replaced with this:

Sweet, right?

I thought I had misread and violated the original Photobucket policies and they just caught up with me, when I first saw this little annoying graphic that now took the place of every one of my pictures and graphics hosted there. But, no! I found that they could be seen not just on my blog but also several others as well as websites and other people were just as unhappy because it had just happened to them also.

Photobucket changed its policy in June of this year and did it in a quiet way, with a memorandum on their blog and then just no pictures. Now if I want to pay for 3rd party hosting that would be for the bargain price of $400 a year. Thank you, but NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Some people use the pictures to make a profit from their websites, but I, and probably a significant number of others, do not. Some people complained that they were not able to download their digital images as if Photobucket was holding them for ransom, but they could. They just could not be see those pictures on their webpages.

I have downloaded all my pictures and graphics from my Photobucket account to my computer, even though most of them were already there. So, now I am working on replacing all my digital images by uploading them on each and every blog post. Photobucket is no longer my friend and I will be deleting my account with Photobucket. This unplanned project will take far more days than I have to spare, but my blog is important to me. I periodically download the entire thing to back up on my computer.

Why bother with all this? Because it is a journal of my journey in life and my walk with my Lord. In between the lines, I remember far more things that I did not share publicly. It not only gives me pleasure but chronicles many things with which I have struggled, loved, lost, and cherished. I am not ready to let it stay in a state of neglect and disrepair. I have seen so many blogs that have been abandoned or that have been deleted since I first found them. I wonder what happened to those people: why they started, why they stopped, where are they now. I feel a lost when they are gone, even though I did not know them,

No, I am not yet ready to give up on my blog.

Well, my Lord, it is not like I do not have enough to do already with this coming up as well. Please, help me to keep my priorities and perspectives in line with Yours.

Back to the Rabbits

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. -Aldo Leopold

We are trying to get back into raising rabbits. With all that was going on throughout this last year, we had only bred for one kindle about a year ago, so we have not really been raising rabbits...just feeding them. Not breeding broke down our cost effectiveness for having them. You see, we feed rabbits and then we buy less meat for ourselves and for our dog and cats. Our grocery and animal feed costs have risen so we are looking forward to getting them back down again.

Then we had another issue to overcome. Of our original three New Zealand White rabbits, two does and one buck, we had one doe who probably should have been put down months ago. She has recently been laid to rest because she was in pain and would have passed in a day or two.

We started with the three NZWs, but later added two Silver Foxes, a black with the blue gene buck and a blue doe. When we bred them together we usually got average of half of them being black and half being blue. We still have the blue doe although this will be her last year for breeding most likely and we had to put down the buck because of teeth and eating issues. I have been trying to find a black buck with blue to replace him, but the breeder we had gotten them from is not breeding them anymore. Silver Foxes are more rare and it looks like we are going to have to take a trip to get some. Since they are so rare and I like them so much more, my husband and I are considering raising Silver Foxes solely. They have smaller kindles with usually six to eight compared to the NZW which have had up to thirteen, but we lose less and the SF does are excellent mothers. The offspring do take about three to four weeks longer to go to full size for culling, but their coats and temperament are worth the bit of extra expense. Plus we could probably sell more as breeders, since they are difficult to find for those of us who are looking.

What we have now:

Whoops is a New Zealand White who was sexed wrong and put in with her brothers so she ended up pregnant, hence the name. Of all our NZWs she has been the gentlest so we decided to keep her as a breeder.

Golden Girl is an NZW and Silver Fox cross that is actually a Gold Tipped Black Steel. She was a real surprise to us after having crossed NZW with SF for two years and getting mostly brokens (spotted). We learn that the genetics causing the albino, called Red Eye White (REW) appearance in NZW also covers a lot of genetic coding, like the broken gene, that cannot be seen unless they are bred with another rabbit that is not a REW. We kept GG to breed with her father who had the steel gene, but we did not get another one and will not since he died of old age. (This is also is a picture of our latest modification in the kindling cage. The drop nest is supposed to help keep the kits in the nest. Even those who get dragged out will wiggle around and end up falling back in, which is very important because they need their siblings covered with mama's fur to stay warm enough to survive.)

The oldest and largest of our rabbits is MB, a Blue Silver Fox. She is also our biggest eater! I think this will be her last year of breeding which is why I am trying desperately to find an SF buck. She is a very good mother. I have never lost any of her kits.

For weeks during this summer we had no bucks. As I wrote, our NZW died of old age and the SF could not eat due to teeth issues, so we had to put him down. I found an NZW breeder who was selling off his stock to move. We planned to buy one buck, but he offered three for the price of one, so we got the three, two are brothers and the other a distant cousin, but we plan to only keep one of them as we begin to replace all the NZW with Silver Foxes. These bucks were a little young, but we tried a breeding with the rowdy distant cousin and GG.

GG was due yesterday and it looks like she is not pregnant, although I have had the does fool me before. Rabbits really do not show their pregnancies. Palpation can be done at two weeks halfway through a pregnancy, but I have yet to master that. In fact, I have rarely felt the babies until the week of the due date and even then if there are many and they are small, I still cannot tell with certainty.

So, if I see nothing in the nest for the next two days we will try breeding her with the same buck to see if he can reproduce.

My Lord, please bless us with some Silver Fox rabbits, which have been so difficult for us to find, and may all our rabbits be healthy.

Heavy Metal

Every tooth in a man's head is more valuable than a diamond. ~Miguel de Cervantes

It is my third day in braces and I some perspectives that are vaguely familiar being that this is the second time around and some I do not remember ever having and some things that are just...different.

Right now I do not have braces on the very back teeth. I might later as this is sometimes done, I was told, or I might not need them on the back ones at all, which I am pretty sure I will because of the inward tipping. So, my back molars are not sore when chewing, but that is not to say that the gums are not slightly swollen due to all the other teeth being moved.

I well remember that the first three days from getting my braces on the first time and every adjustment thereafter were the worse days with pain and it was particularly hard to eat anything that needed chewed. I used to have a big meal after an adjustment and not really eat for a few days. That meal usually was a stop at a mom and pop burger joint just a few miles from the orthodontist office. I had to drive 20 miles to a larger town where they had an office only two days a week from my little town as their main office was another 20 miles further away from the satellite office in another city. It was the 70's and I was 17 years old when I started, so my diet has changed significantly since those days.

I started again with the big-meal-after tradition and take my daughter out when she has an adjustment, but she goes only about every eight weeks. Back in the day, I went every four weeks. New materials and techniques have made for less visits to be necessary in most typical cases. My case is not that typical, of course...it was not when I was seventeen and it is not at fifty-seven. Sigh!

I also ate a bigger meal after I first got my braces this week, because I did not know exactly what to expect. Everyone says braces are more painful as an adult than they are for children, particularly those who have had them twice to know. (It is not all that uncommon to need them later again for some people and I just had to be one of them!) However, I was not very young when I started with braces the first time and I had them for over five years so the last few years I was an "adult" and there are certain natural changes that happen with the mouth in those years making moving teeth a bit more challenging, so actually the last few years for me seemed to be significantly more painful than the first ones and that pain lasted longer too. Basically, I had experience with the difference before, but gradually.

For years now, my diet has been far healthier than when I was in braces before. There are plenty of things I can eat that are highly nutritious that do not have to be chewed, like soups; yogurt; cottage cheese; vegetable, fruit, and protein smoothies; fruit popsicles; raw milk (I know it is drunk but it is a whole food) and such. Of course, there still are all the other things that I now try to eat only sparingly like pasta dishes, cheesecake, cakes, ice cream, shakes, and other simple carbohydrates and sugary foods.

As to needing braces again, part of that might be because of a procedure that was done at the end of my treatment all those years ago that is not done now, probably because it caused more problems than not. In those days, it was common practice to tip all the teeth inward and then bring them back up straight. I was told it set the roots better. I mentioned that to my orthodontist and he said that he had that procedure done to him as well and told the name of it to the technician, which I do not remember other than it started with a "b." He said the problem with the procedure is that the teeth did not always come back to a fully upright position and I can say that I well remember that after that my lower front teeth tipped inward, maybe all of them did, but it was those that I noticed.

Frankly, it was not until the wires were on my teeth that I fully realized how maligned they really are! Yikes!

Here is one thing I do not remember from my first experience. I noticed on the following day that I had them put on that even though I could swallow without any obstructions, I felt like I did not want to swallow anything, not even water. Being that I have an analytical mind, I gave that some thought. I think the mouth being overall irritated has something to do with it, but I also think it is having these unfamiliar rough feeling things on the teeth that I feel behind the cheeks and lips and having a natural repulsion of the possibility of swallowing them. It will diminish in a few more days probably.

The first time I was so very happy to have braces completely for free, I just found everything about them amazing! They were a badge of honor, a sign of the grace of God, and I just did not let anything about them bother me much as to getting used to them. Still, there were some things I could not deny away. I had raw areas and cuts in my mouth that rubbed against the braces at various times throughout all those years. Eventually the areas compensate and toughen up and were more resistant to being raw, but that is a process...one that I am going through right now. I have placed the wax they gave me on every irritating bracket, but still...the corners of the lips are the worse places because of talking and smiling. I have to remember to smile above the braces.

Other things I did not remember until I got them on for a day is that my sinuses run more and...drooling! It is like a baby going through teething, even with a slight headache at times. There is just constant pressure going out in all directions from the braces. I am so much more understanding of the Princess having bad days!

I was wondering if the Princess and I should try to keep our appointments on the same day or purposely not. She is not worth much the first three days and I am thinking I will be the same, so if we take it easy at the same time, perhaps we make those homeschool days light and then jump back into the heavy schedule together. Or maybe it would be better if only one of us is going through this at a time. The orthodontist kind of settled that as he put me on a five week schedule for the time being and the Princess is on an eight.

The reason I am on five weeks is because I had a front tooth that dropped down due to the bone loss I was having because of my bite and he is working on trying to get it back up. I have been told over and over by everyone in any kind of dentistry that it will not go back up, even the orthodontist is thinking he can only get it to to a better position but not where it should be, yet he is giving it a try. Because it is so out of place compared to the length of the other teeth, he had the thinnest wire placed on my uppers and I felt the pressure on it immediately. So it will have to be nudged gently, which is why I need to go more often at first. I was warned that the tooth might even try to poke out as it goes up and to contact them if that is the case. As I said, I am not typical, but I am praying that God works a miracle and the tooth repositions to exactly where it should be.

When I went to make my next appointment, the scheduler looked up the Princess' next appointment which was four weeks out and moved her time to later that day so we could be in on the same day and same time. So, in a month we will be miserable at the same time, but after that that we will likely be on different days.

Last night, my husband and I ate dinner while listening to the Princess play at the restaurant. I had fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp with a salad and, yes, we shared a slice of cheesecake. I had forgotten how much everything gets stuck in braces, which is why it is always wise to brush immediately after eating, except I have wax on so many areas that I have to take all that off first, then brush, then put them back on. Also, I lost some of the wax when I ate my salad.

I have spent quite a bit of bathroom time on my teeth and gums to keep them healthy for years but now it is like everything takes nearly three times as long. I have a water pick, which works great after I removed the wax. I still have to floss with floss, which requires the floss to be threaded under the wire and it takes me ten times as long to floss that way. I also use those dental brushes that go between the teeth at the gum line. An electric toothbrush and a hand toothbrush are also used each day. Then I have to carry many of these things with me at all times in case I eat anything, which I actually already had been doing for years also.

For several months, I have added one more treatment that I have kept a secret. I read about a device that orthodontists use to lessen the time needed in orthodontic care. This device is usually used with those having the plastic braces that go over the teeth and are "invisible." It is simply a device made to produce micro-vibrations through the teeth to stimulate the gums for twenty minutes. The one that orthodontists sell is highly overpriced but it is rechargeable and keeps count of how often it is used. I found a knock-off device that is a battery operated that runs for ten minutes and does not keep count on Ebay. I have been using it for months at night for twenty minutes and many of those deep pockets I had between my teeth and gums improved, so much that the periodontist only found two. I know I had more months before and I was taking extra care but I still think the little device (which is still overpriced for what it is, but way lower than the other) did stimulate my gums.

So, I am hoping with my orthodontic work and this gum stimulator and God 's blessing that my front tooth will go farther up than they think it can. Also the gum stimulator reduces the pain. I have been using it about four to five times a day, when I am feeling more irritated and it does take the edge of the pain.

So, all is going well. This is just me making adjustments to the braces.

My Lord, this will be for a short time, but presently it seems long. Help me to adjust quickly and well. Also help me keep focused on the results.