Last Post was 2019?

Wow. A LOT has happened!

• Boy Wonder started dating, Covid happened, and he got married.
• Goldilocks became a nurse during Covid, and is great at what she does.
• Red met a girl. Dated. Brought her home.
  Covid happened. They got engaged. Both graduated college. They married.
  
  That’s a lot to not have written about. But these are now there stories, and I give them their space. I don’t share their stories much anymore. But the weddings were delights to me. The “girls” are a delight to us. And they are all now out of the “nest” and flying in their own after…being back and forth to home a lot due to Covid quarantines. About the time we thought we’d grieved and were empty-nesting, they’d be back home. And we weren’t mad about it! Covid gave us all a lot of time to know one another and spend time together.

Now, the next stage of our lives. I’ll write more about that later.

Moving Kids

I moved my daughter for her senior year of college, Part 2. So glad she’s back home for a few days until her roommates arrive.

I’m drained. A lot of big events, crazy social seasons. I’m not a huge event person. But, here we go, trying to make an impact for Christ.

Lord, I need your help again. Always. Thank you for yesterday. And today. I’m sorry where I fall short. Meet needs of us all. Use me better. I blow it. You redeem it. As always.

Senior Day at Church

Senior day at church. For my youngest. I put on a polka dot dress. Try to tame this humidity spring hair, and am late for family breakfast at McDonald’s, which I’ve never much enjoyed on Sunday. Nothing like a need for an unexpected bathroom trip by the second song to spoil the mood. I’ll have a key lime flip yogurt. Maybe coffee, if there’s time.

And this is how most of life thoughts go right now. Something monumental and and important alongside non-morning person grumpies, clothes needing ironing for a lot of special events and a lot of photos requiring good hair. Lol.

I’ll probably get emotional today. Maybe not. Pack Kleenex needs to move up my list.

Thankful. Great and much needed quiet time though the night in 31 Days of Praise. Lord, keep refining necessary praise that we may experience the victory you win for us. Let us focus on You and all you have done in thanks, surrender, and response. Let us affirm one another in ways we can and forgive where we do not understand.

Let us come before you, knowing time is short. We must all be at full velocity. Let us do as little as we can to hold each other back for His glory and the good of us and all those around us.

Peace be still. Be still and know. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. Rejoice always. Each of these scripture verses hit my mind this morning. Sorry I don’t have the references handy or memorized. Psalm. Psalm. Paul. I know that much. It is enough for today.

It’s Not About You- a Peach Nehi Drama

Sometimes, we go through things in life that have little to do with us. Inconveniences, frustrations, irritations, suffering. The way of the cross says to surrender to those moments, trusting that God has a bigger picture.

Yesterday, I was at Walmart and I seriously wanted a peach Nehi. I thought about it on the way there and looked in every land for an over-priced cold one. Could not find it. That was to be my reward for going to get hubby’s toiletries, and it did not materialize. I settled in a Cherry Sprite, cracked it open, counting on a delightful substitute.

I downed that first gulp into parched lips and…I had to look to make sure it wasn’t diet. It was awful in comparison to my beloved peach Nehi.

I checked out, acquiesced to the sad situation.

I looked at the elderly man behind me and then down at the belt as I swiped my card.

There sat a cold peach Nehi.

Seriously?

I said to him, “THE PEACH NEHI! YOU FOUND IT! WHERE WAS IT? I LOOKED EVERYWHERE!”

He pointed and described the same location I thought I’d checked. Apparently, not well enough.

Either I needed to know I’m not nearly as good a “looker” as a I thought I was, or he needed to feel like he’d done something someone else valued and couldn’t do.

I hope he enjoyed his peach Nehi. Half of my Cherry Sprite is still sitting in the fridge!

Mixed Up Messes

I can’t think of a stage of life or a photo where everything was happy. There is a strain that runs along with even the happiest times of life. There is a growth, a pulling, a ripping, a stutter.

God is okay with that. He looks for unfinished, messy, mixed up people.

The most beautiful smiles often cover the deepest pain. That’s okay.

We cover other unseemly things in life, just as Christ always covers us.

A Place To Vent

1. Going through the end days of a parent is consuming. It’s like taking on any other consuming task. It makes one of us cranky at all times in cycles. I hate it when I’m that person. I was today. I miss down time.

2. Unresolved communication and closed doors drives me nuts. When it all comes down to it, I guess sometimes my thought processes don’t even matter. What needs to happen needs to happen. But I feel so undercut to not have ever had a discussion about things. Honestly, it’s not something I’ll recover easily from. I read today a quote that spoke to me. It said.

That’s sort of it. Tired of big smiles with a lot of discontent and irritation underneath I never see until the hammer falls. I guess you’re just supposed to be smart enough or grown up enough or mature enough to avoid that.

I’m reading this week that all discipline comes from God. I need to focus on the refining He’s doing in me and not everyone else.

Will I fight bitterness and resentment and probably act out for a while? Possibly. Probably.

But, in the whole scheme of things, He answers my prayers, and I will thank Him for the thorns.

I read thorns kept Paul humble for exceedingly great revelations. I’m hoping those make thorns worth bearing.

3. Trying to review my scripture cards for Lent. I’ve gone back to written cards I started on New Year’s three years ago and made an audio file. I need to also go back to digital cards and make folders. Those are very meaningful to me to keep me focused.

4. Easter dresses. Always something to celebrate, but I’m sure not feeling it this year. Praying for the Lord’s help. I’ve gotten lazy.

5. House and home. Lord, help me finish what I started and find order and peace in my home again. Freshness. Life. Newness.

6. Thankful for time to go get RED’s tux ordered for Senior prom. How can it be? Need to get his senior pics ordered.

7. It’s late. I read tonight that crowds pressed in on Jesus and he loved and taught, but then “withdrew to lonely places to pray.” I feel the need to withdraw. Nearness to death does that to people, I’m sure. I also want a chocolate injection. I would eat it, but I don’t want to brush my teeth again.

Honesty

We need to find places to be honest.

We need to find places to line up our honesty with God’s Word.

When our honesty lines up with all God is doing, we find much less room to be irritable.

Only when we get into public do we find out how well our spiritual lineup is actually lining up with our healing. We act out. We are afraid. We choke. We hurt.

We realize that no matter how we know know the facts, healing just takes time.

And perhaps that’s the point. Fire is hot to remind us to not touch it again.

Beth Moore says she prays God would let her never forget the excruciating pain that got her into trouble. She prays He would keep it very real and raw so that she remembers not to ever go back to any sin.

We sometimes have to step back into the firing zone. We wear the armor of God for a reason. Let us wear it well, representing integrity, faithfulness, and loving compassion to the One we serve.

I don’t fake it well. I don’t like to be smiled at when it’s not real. Don’t give me cheer and feel distain. “A wound from a friend is better than the kiss of an enemy.” Proverbs says.

Lord, be all. And all in all. It’s all we have. All we need. All we long for and hope for and depend on. Fill every gap, every hole. Truly fill us to the full, and overflowing.

“Bread of Heaven, feed me til I want no more. Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.”

Photo: courtesy Pixabay

The Last Clear Word

When you aren’t sure what to do, go back to the last clear word God said to you.

Okay. Verses came to mind like four years ago. Holy Spirit fell. They remind me that God is unstoppable, sees my heart, and provides. He has plans for us.

Everything that happens is part of the process making me. Ready-ing me, teaching me.

I get irritated at advice and incohesive tips that don’t add up.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” seems to mark every season. Maybe soon it will not be quite so hard. (Then again, maybe I wouldn’t wait on Him so much if it let up! God forbid.)

Swimming deep. Swimming, swimming, swimming. Trying to learn to rest in Him more, float on my back? Maybe learn to walk on water instead?

At least the battles I’ve fought before I know are just battles, not the end of the world. Not easier, but there is scripture and skills and experience and knowing I can thrive anywhere. Find joy. Be thankful. Be blessed.

I’ll make new goals. I’m not dependent on people or the opinion or understanding of man.

I can refresh disciplines. Focus. Find solid holds.

I’ll have fresh encounters with Him, the joy of my life, he’ll draw me even deeper into the Word into fresh trust. He can handle everything I’m not a fan of.

Yes, sometimes things very much upset me. Unfairness. Inequality of standards. Seeing friends get away with what I can’t.

It’s whatever. My walk is my walk. Doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I wasn’t asked, and don’t get a vote or discussion, nor is it going to change anything. I can’t rewrite what is.

God just has a plan for me.

I need to do well and quietly what I’m called to do, and forget any side stuff.

I can’t imagine what life will look like tomorrow, but I know I’m okay worshipping in this spot right here. I’ll be ready. Doesn’t really matter what happens anywhere else.

Maybe I wanted too much all the way around, and maybe it’s not mine to build. Then again, I want more. I need more. I pray for more. And God only puts desires in our heart for good things He intends to fashion.

Maybe He’s making me willing to go somewhere else to get it.

I’ll try to bloom where I’m planted until He moves me. Though I keep remembering a quote, “If you don’t like where you are, move. You’re not a tree.”

God can move me when He’s ready, and maybe I need to be keeping my eyes open for it.

Words

Sometimes, words are “rhema”-teaching, healing, soothing. Like manna-good for the need of the moment, but little else hours later. Jesus is present. Always. Now. Then. Later. Just give me Jesus. So thankful for the Word. I may not understand or interpret all of it correctly, but it’s still a balm. Soothing. Speaking. Teaching. Directing. Helping. Warning. Guiding. A light in the dark. I love it. I could cuddle up with it to sleep. It stills and steels my heart. It speaks all that is true, leaves nothing out, and doesn’t hold back.

Going Curly

It turns out the my naturally lumpy hair has some potentially to be wavy-curly.  Who knew?

It all started with an internet query while trying to grow out my hair past shoulder length.  My hair wasn’t doing well with the flat iron without cutting it.  Then, I started “plopping” to see if waves could do anything useful instead.  I ended up adding a few layers to see if that would help shape my hair into something other than a poodle or triangle look.

Now, I’m searching for the ultimate hair gel/mousse.  Aussie’s trial today is making my head itch.  UGH!  Gel works, but makes it a little crunchier than I’d like ideally (wrong gel?), and mousse works pretty well, but doesn’t seem to last as long.  I’m diffusing it, which it a totally new thing for me.  LOVE the results.  Until now, I’ve had the same hair-dryer my mom gave me when I left for college.  Cold air diffusers are amazing.  Even $20 cheap ones from Target.  It takes a lot longer, but replaces the time needed with a straightening iron or curling iron.

My Hair:

I have like 2A-2B hair, so not ultra curly, but “scrunchable”.  I need to add clips during the last twenty minutes of drying through the crown to give it some life up there.

The Pros:

If I get out in drizzle winter air, I don’t fear for my life…er, hair.  I’m like, “Bring. It.”  It get up, spritz, curl some of the bottom layer under, and I’m generally good to go, sometimes adding a few clips up top for volume, letting it dry while I do makeup.
The Cons:
Washing takes longer due to needing to let it dry naturally.  It’s really better to do that in the morning, except I hate having wet hair in the morning.  I’ve not figured out how working out and sweating in the winter and my hair wash routing are all going to merge.  I can’t have my hands in my hair a lot.  Sometimes, in the evening, I just go for it.  All the restraint from the day is gone.

Color:
I need to have my color redone, and I’m a little freaked out by the best thing to do with curly hair.  High and lowlights would probably be ideal.  Do I want to maintain that?  No.  Do I want to pay for that?  No.  So, I’ll be looking at some sort of solution I can manage, probably at home.

I’ll try to add some pics of my journey and some of the products I’m using.  I’m interested in what others are using as well.

Rooting My Galaxy Note (Original HGH I717)

So, tired of my slow and slowing phone, I decided to bite the bullet.  Some fourteen hours later, I’m almost there.

I wish there were a more straightforward guide, but alas, it’s piecing together a lot of information.

You can pretty much figure out how to find an app to help you back up your phone…be sure to put that backed up file on the computer rather than just the SD card…loading a new ROM can wipe the card.

Do a secondary nandroid backup to card.  Load and use Titanium backup with some online instructions.

Chose a ROM…this is very hard to do. I lost TouchWiz…native only to Samsung operating systems.  Honestly, just cleaning off the bloat from the root, the phone sped up a lot.  I may have been able to stop there.  But, I had to try.  I chose Padawan Kang.  It’s the Padawan app, stripped of anything unnecessary to try to increase speed, battery life, and performance.

So far, the most frustrating part of reinstalling apps from Titanium is my lack of forethought to how much time photo data would take to restore.  Honestly, had I thought it through, I would not have restored even my pared down “Gallery” PHotos and videos…I would have copy and pasted them in from files on my desktop.  Google + is another I would NOT backup data on.  I’ve already saved everything to the online cloud anyway….all I needed was the app.

It’s amazing how fast the “USB” storage area fills up.  I hope next to most more apps to SD card, and also to figure out ways to increase the available space on my phone for apps.  I don’t use a ton of apps, but I still feel I do not have enough space for them.

All in all, the camera and phone were taking about 10 seconds to load, even after cleaning the cache on the phone and closing all unnecessary apps.  Now, it’s 3-5 seconds.  Still not as fast as an iPhone, but this is a 3-5 year old phone, so I’m happy that I breathed some new life into it.

UPDATE:  A week later, I tried the KitKat 4.4.2 for i717.  It is even faster, but the camera is unstable and crashes OFTEN, this issue apparently even one for NEXUS users…I would be irate if I bought a new factory phone and the cam wasn’t stable!

Tried 4.4.4 KitKat which fixed that issue, but the back key didn’t work a lot of the time, and there were odd ghosting issues with odd icons that looked like gallery icon search bar UNDER my google NOW search bar and ghosting of status screen.  I spend 5-6 hours on the issue and eventually decided to revert back to 4.4.2 and try to overload a “fix” I found while working on 4.4.4 that supposedly fixes the camera.  It’s a Pollutions_rom_patch.  We’ll see how that goes.  I was pleased with pretty much everything else about 4.4.2, especially with the Epic Launcher to reduce the size of icons…I couldn’t deal with the large KitKat ones.

 

 

That’s been the theme for me this week.  Along with tax season comes the ever mindful question:  Where DOES it all go?  So, I’ve been in a trek backward, and trying to get a bigger picture of changes in our landscape and how we need to offset.   Tiring work.  Depressing work.  Frustrating work.  Work that restrains, binds, reminds.

But, every discipline is like that.

“No discipline is pleasant at the time, but produces a harvest of peace and righteousness for those who have been trained by it.”  Hebrews 12:11

 

Setting Up A Canon Printer on Wifi (specifically the Pixma MG5422)

I initially had no problems setting up the printer or even the other computers and devices in the household, or none to cause serious delays.  It did take me a while to figure out how to get the APP set up on my phone, but relatively painless.  

HOWEVER, when I moved the primary desktop,  having helped my son build a gaming computer over Christmas, it took TEN DAYS for me to get the printer back up on the network.  Here’s what it took.

A.  A call to customer service.  

   I really feel this is something that should be accomplished without calling in professionals, so I never do.  However, after having my mother in the hospital for 8 days, suffering the loss of a family friend, and being physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted, plus having the graphics card rebate due in two days, I managed to find the fortitude to pick up the phone.  

  West Virginia helped me with these facts, which are not stated on the Canon website.  

• in order to reseat your drivers, the drivers need to be downloaded from the Canon website, especially if you are like me and can’t find the installation disk.  
• in order to download said drivers, you HAVE to use Internet Explorer.  Having used Chrome for 10 days, I was very irritated that there is no warning on the website to this effect. 
• you HAVE to delete your prior printer from “printers/devices” before updating the driver for it to work well, again this is not on the website.  
• There is a way to get a printout of your wifi strength, and see whether the printer has found your IP address.   EVEN IF it says it is connecting to your WIFI, if it has forgotten your IP address, you still have problems.  The only way I found to translate that information was to get a computer close enough to the printer to hook it up by USB.  After that, you can go through the process of telling it you want to switch to LAN (which is another name for WiFi, which the average person does not know…why all the lingo to get a printer set up?  I have no idea.)
• Once the IP is submitted to the printer, it should feed over the network, BUT EACH device on the network has to have the driver update done in the same way (through IE, having deleted the old one first). Also, it is good to clear out the print jobs in the printer cue, and reboot the computer before downloading the new driver, otherwise, you have to start over. 

I hope these helps some other soul.  I was at my wits end, and though I was initially pleased with the printer, this was annoying.  As annoying as setting up my HP after it lost the settings.  I had to call customer support every time, and they only did it free up to a year.  With inadequate documention.  Listen, printer companies, if you want us to do it on our own, give good directions.  

 

DIY SmartPhone Non-Slip Phone Gripper

Use your card-making tools to create a non-slip grip for your smartphone!

Project Life and the Cricut

I was looking at all the cute tags and arrows and contemplating some serious die purchases, when I realized my Cricut and SCAL might have some of these shapes. Boy, was I right! In the basic SCAL software, there are tons of arrows! And it’s very easy to make some of the other tag shapes I was wanting, in any length or width. Definitely worth checking out if you have an old copy of SCAL laying around. If you don’t, well, too bad, it’s not available for Cricut anymore. If you have a Silhouette, you’re in luck, SCAL IS available for it, which is why a lot of people are moving from the Cricut to the Silhouette.

It was as easy to make these word cards I’ve been seeing for sale on various websites. Just make a rectangle slightly smaller than 4X6 to fit into the pocket, add a word to the top in the font of your choice, then “weld” the two elements together for a united cut. FUN! You can trace this one if you prefer. I’m not going to take the time to upload a file, mainly because it’s so easy to make, and file sharing isn’t really the point of this post…it’s to get people to realize they really don’t need a die for every little thing for Project Life. Just cut on your cutting machine, if you have one already!

 

 

You could only do the words as well…I’ve seen them resting on top of photos and it looks super cute! I would make it like this:

 

 

with a rectangle welded to the bottom to help in keeping up with all the letters, ease of gluing, and help with spacing and keeping all the letters perfectly vertical.  The rectangle would rest under another element most likely, or it would even be cute as is!