an early morning

God woke me up about 4:00 this morning for some time together. It's been a long time since that happened, and it was such a blessing.

I was reading in Matthew 17 & 18, and was impressed at the lengths God goes to, and wants US to go to, in restoring those who have sinned (and ME, when I sin). He hates the muck that clings to our feet, and rather than rejecting us for it, He seeks to win us away from it. And He wants US to seek to win one another away from it.

A friend is going through a hard time right now. She & her husband disagreed on whether he could have a girlfriend, and he's divorcing her. It's easy for me to be furious with him ... but God wants me to seek his restoration. I think I'm being led to write him a note ... though I'm really not liking the idea. I'll need to pray for a softer heart in this one!

Another unexpected treat I discovered in getting up so early this morning was that I was ready for work, and able to sit down with a cup of coffee to watch the lunar eclipse at 5:30. My attempt at a picture is above. I was able to see the moon go into shadow, but the clouds covered it when it was coming out. It was a beautiful way to start the day.

the raccoon story

This is my tent. The tent design is significant to the raccoon story.

You'll notice there are three "rooms". The center one is a screened area, where our supplies were sitting. The left side is where we were sleeping. The right side is empty, and only set up because we were too lazy to figure out how detach it.

Among the supplies in the center section were a couple bags with bread and hot dog buns.

We had gone out to a free concert by the Niagara symphony on one of the canals in Welland. It was beautiful, and got us back to the camp-site quite late.

Not thinking much farther than the pillows, Caroline and I tucked in and went to sleep. It was cold, and she thought that zipping the flap between the small section and the screened section might help keep us warmer.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, raccoons started fighting outside the tent, and sniffing around the base.

It was then I remembered that I hadn't put the food away properly.

It was also then I heard activity INSIDE the tent ... just on the other side of the flap into the screened room.

There was much flailing about, as our nocturnal friend got the food he smelled, and then discovered he couldn't get OUT.

I got up and unzipped the screen room doors, but it was impossible to tell when the critter(s) were exiting and entering, so I never dared zip them back up again, lest we have another prisoner.

It was a MOST long night (for me). Caroline is gifted at being able to fall asleep immediately, and in almost any circumstance!

At one point, I realized that not only was the food in the center section, so were my car keys. Raccoons love shiny things. Car keys are shiny.

I woke Caroline up to mention this. She mumbled something about raccoons not being able to drive, and went back to sleep.

When the sun came up, the fuzzy fellows retreated to the woods. Any un-sealed food was picked clean, but there was remarkably little chaos otherwise. They did refuse to eat the heel of the loaf of bread, and left it crumbled in the middle of the room, but other than that, everything was fairly orderly. I was picturing what a fearful animal could do when trapped in a room, and the mental picture was everything-but-orderly!

We made the choice to spend the next night at her parents' house. It was much more peaceful. :)

stay tuned for

the racoon-in-the-tent story ...

subtitled

How the girls rememberd in the middle of the night they forgot to store the food in the car.

bringing out the vigilante in me

I'm a pretty passive sort of person.

Until ...

I'm on a highway with one lane closed for construction.

There's nothing that enrages my sense of frustrated justice like having people go whizzing past a whole line of people, and cutting in line just before the highway narrows down.

Today I found myself driving straddling both lanes, clenching my teeth. One fellow drove on the shoulder to get past me, and then tried to nudge in front of me.

Nope.

Not gonna happen.

I was prepared to DIE on that hill.

I parked my front bumper an inch off the back bumper of the pickup in front of me, and refused to move.

Weird. Just ... weird.

Weird because - don't they realize they're causing the whole line of cars to have to slow down for them, because they weren't willing to wait their turn (a skill, I believe, most of us learned in Kindergarten, if we hadn't gotten it before that.)

But also weird, because ... why am I making this my personal crusade? There just seems to be far more significant issues I could choose.

Speaking of crusades, I heard a quote from Hillary Clinton this afternoon, mentioning that the government doesn't care about daycare for single moms, and health care.

My question is. WHY do we expect the government to fix this stuff? I just don't get it.

Families, and churches, and communities are SO much better equipped, yet they've ceded the responsibility, and the government has picked it up, and we've passively let it happen. To the point that now, it seems taken-for-granted that the government is the best institution to solve these issues.

A radical change of thinking is needed in that regard, and it needs to START by the family, and the church, and the community re-claiming the responsibility to meet the needs of our own.

OK, end of rant. SEE - I knew there were issues I wanted to blog about. :)

the unfaithful blogger goes camping

It seems the more blogs I read, the less often I post on my own. I find other people's stuff is SO much more interesting than my own, since it hasn't already been floating around in my head for weeks.

I'm looking forward to meeting some folks in Ontario to go camping this weekend. One is a friend who's living on Cyprus now, teaching school, so it will be great to hear about her life there.

Hmmm ... anything blogworthy ... anything at all ... ??? Nope. Can't think of anything.

patting self on the back for SOMETHING

The exercise and eating-right thing is NOT going well this summer. It's just not.

But I CAN say that I've quit drinking diet soda. I know the stuff is just a conglomeration of chemicals, and serves no purpose. But I love sweet stuff, and it's one of the diet-friendly sweet things out there.

So ... I've been a month without it so far, and I consider this at least ONE good-health thing I've accomplished this summer, along with the fact I can now swim for a half hour without stopping. I don't swim FAST, but at least it's moving. :)

I'm also reading Watchman Nee's Sit Walk Stand, and really enjoying it. I've been listening to Harry Potter in the car, and it is a good story. I find myself lingering in parking lots trying to get to the end of a chapter.

Gave up on the running program temporarily - I want to take off 20 pounds before I re-start it so my knees will protest a bit less.

There ... a conglomeration of updates ... none particularly interesting. :)

I've finally decided it's time to read it

I'm a big fan of well-written children's literature. I have very fond memories of books that captured my imagination for days on end

So when I hear of new books being published that have that kind of transporting influence on kids, I'm immediately prone to think positively of them.

So, I've decided to give this Potter kid a try. I've waited until now, because I knew they were a series, and I VERY much dislike having to wait for another book to be published to be able to continue the story.

Now that they're all out there, I'm ready to go. I'm picking up an audio version of book 1 from the library today.

If they're as good as people seem to think, I may disappear for several weeks. Don't worry ... I'll come up for air (or dinner) eventually. :)

Love a good story ...