Things on Thursday: Dogs

I found this picture on Pinterest recently and absolutely love it...and the sentiment with it. I find it not at all odd that doggies illustrate this saying perfectly.

Of course, dogs can hurt people and each other, but it's usually because they themselves have been taught to hurt through neglect or abuse or selective breeding.

There's a lesson in that. We reap what we sow.


This morning, I read THIS ARTICLE on Happy News about the SPCA National Dog Hero award. Good dog, Bear. Good dog. His owner sowed something good when she rescued him.

And here's a picture George took recently of our dog, looking uncharacteristically regal and serious, like King Solomon deciding what to do with the baby those two women were arguing over.  She looks so wise and old and sad.

It's hard to believe that this is the same dog who's currently going gremlin and growling out the open window at...wait for it...birds hopping around our yard.

The birds are not worried.

I guess where Daisy is concerned, we've sown goofiness and enthusiastic affection, which we're reaping in abundant harvest, along with giant golden fur bunnies. Perhaps we should have sown wisdom, but we only get that misleading look when she's really tired.

Dogs are pretty amazing, aren't they?

The Organized Life

I've started the special page on my website for organization...The Organized Life. You'll find it on any page of the blog, just under the blog header on the third tab. Just click and there you'll be!

My plan for the page is to add tips and useful links over time. In other words, like organization itself, The Organized Life will be a work-in-progress.

It will NOT be a comprehensive organization plan...that's best left to the experts. Besides, the world has enough comprehensive plans out there.

Instead, it will point people in the direction of comprehensive plans (Roman numeral I on the outline), provide inspiration and motivation (Roman numeral II), and offer quick and/or brilliant tips I and my readers have found useful in organizing and purging various areas of life.

My vision for this page is a collaborative effort. Any time you have an insight or find a useful organizational tip that helps you, please share. The more people participate, the richer the resource!

I've decided that this organized-life elephant is best eaten one bite at a time. That's why my first project will be very small...organizing my cleaning supplies. Right now, they are scattered throughout the house (some are still in the garage!). I will pull them all together, see what I have, and go from there.

What sort of organization do YOU have for your cleaning supplies? What works for you?

Thoughts on Memorial Day from a Navy Veteran

The following was written by Tony DeRosa, a veteran of the Navy, who spoke in our church yesterday. He has graciously given me permission to post his thoughts here.

The first known Memorial Day celebration was on May 1, 1865 in Charleston South Carolina, held by newly freed slaves to honor Union prisoners of war who died there. For years after, Decoration Day events were held, typically in May, to honor those who died in uniform during the Civil War.

Starting in the early 20th century, Decoration Day events and parades evolved into Memorial Day as a remembrance for all Americans who died serving our country, even for those who served before the Civil War. If you go to the small cemetery on Factory Street in old Springboro, where members of the Wright family are buried, you’ll find the grave of John Mullen, a veteran of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 with a Memorial Day flag marking his service.

We do honor to ourselves and to those who fought and died for our country when we pause, however briefly, to remember.

As I was thinking of what to say about Memorial Day, I couldn’t help but wonder how we continue to find young Americans willing to serve, generation after generation, war after war. For more than 35 years, they have been exclusively volunteers, stepping up again and again, knowing they may be sent into harm’s way.

There are many individual reasons for why people put on the uniform. Adventure, travel, unique opportunities, escape, all these reasons and more lead many to fill our volunteer military. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my mother’s uncle who was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I know I caused my teachers and parents much angst with my childhood fascination with all things military.

And last week I became a victim of the mother’s curse – the one where your mom says “I hope when you become a parent you have a child who behaves just like you!” Our 8 year old, AJ, brought home a school project where he wrote about being a Navy SEAL and drew a picture. His teacher, Donna Miller, commented that it was “interesting.” And Karen would rather have bought him any other book from the school book fair rather than the one about Navy SEALs that he wanted.

I think she suggested one on sea otters, but he would have none of it.

I don’t think we can simply assume that the next generation will automatically step up. This is why Memorial Day is important. Ronald Reagan said that freedom is only one generation away from extinction. His words are certainly a warning, but also I think a call to action. Those who served and fought before us did it because someone taught them it was important. They learned because someone took took them to a Memorial Day parade or ceremony in the near or distant past. It is likely no one told them Reagan’s words explicitly, but they absorbed the meaning just the same.

They learned the importance of serving a cause greater than one’s self by watching and listening to others remember. They learned how the service and sacrifice of so many preserves the freedoms we cherish. And how, some day, it will be the next generation’s turn to answer the call to keep freedom from becoming extinct. This is the greatness of America, the ability to pass these ideals to the next generation for more than 150 years, despite ongoing changes in our society, politics, and culture.

But it’s scary because preventing freedom’s extinction still requires sending young Americans into harm’s way and no one wants that. We should pray mightily to avoid that. John Adams wrote that he studied war and politics so that his children could study math and philosophy. His dream is yet unrealized.

Until that dream is a reality, we have to do our part to ready the next generation to prevent freedom’s extinction. So take your child or grandchild to a Memorial Day parade. They’ll learn what it means to serve just by being there. And pray that maybe their generation will know the peace that has escaped the previous ones.

Thank you.

And thank you, Tony, for your service and your words.

Gratitude Journal #140

Today, I am grateful for this symbol of my nation.

Today, I am grateful for each and every person who has died in service to my country, whether in war or peace, action or accident. When these men and women signed on the dotted line to serve, they committed fully to what this flag stands for, and I am grateful.

Today, I am grateful that men and women continue to serve faithfully and with honor each and every day.

To my American readers, may your Memorial Day be a day of remembrance as well as celebration.  To those outside the US, I encourage you to take a moment to remember your nation's fallen and all who fight for liberty and justice.

Let's all remember.

Serendipity

I've decided that calling my random posts Random is boring. Let's spice things up by calling them Serendipity. It's fun to say. Say it out loud five times fast. Hard not to smile when you get to the dipity, isn't it?

Besides, I feel like a dip most days anyway.

1. Last night, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that there were two bags of frozen french fries in my freezer. One should never swear on a stack of Bibles, I guess, because dinner was already running late when George opened the freezer and asked, slightly panicked, "Where are the fries?" Does anyone else have memories--very distinct and clear memories--of doing things for which the evidence proves otherwise?

Does that question even make grammatical sense? No matter.

Dipity-do and all that.

2. Also last night, I went to the basement to bypass the water softener so I could water the yard, seeing as Mother Nature has seen fit not to grace us with rain for the past two weeks but a few counties south of us got flooded a week ago. Moderation is good, Mother N. Anyway, as I exited the unfinished area of the basement, Nick's friend Zach popped around the corner and stuck a Nerf gun in my chest. In the instant he realized he'd tagged his friend's mom in the boob, his face contorted in 12-year-old-boy embarrassment and made me laugh out loud.

3. Internet meanness makes me sad, and when it's directed at a friend, well, that gets me hopping mad. Cyber-bullying is cowardly, hateful, lingeringly hurtful...like a mosquito bite that infects you with malaria. It's the disease that keeps on giving out repeat attacks of battered self-esteem and withering pain for a very long time. There is a special place in hell for people who anonymously wreck other people's emotions on the Internet.

4. I must make this.

It's no-sew, so perhaps I can pull it off. Source

5. I have a stack of twenty-seven magazines that are half-read or completely unread. They've been accumulating since October when George decided we needed to move...a good impulse, actually, but one that threw my brain into a perpetual state of chaos from mid-October through last Monday night. My goal is to blast through the stack in the next two weeks because I really, truly love reading magazines. But not on my Nook. Reading magazines on a Nook is deeply unsatisfying. Even George agrees with me on that one.

6. And speaking of my Nook tablet, I found an awesome app for just a buck. It's called Write Notes and lets you, um, well, write notes in several different ways. My favorite notes are the sticky notes. You can enlarge them, shrink them, move them around with your finger, color code them. You can email them, too. I know I'm late to this whole tablet-app game, and some of you are saying, "Well, duh, Susan, of course there are cool apps out there...otherwise, what would be the point?"

Dipity do, again.

7. Never, ever go to a Bible study without reading your lesson because that will be the day the pastor has to leave early for her daughter's preschool promotion ceremony and hands the class off to you to lead. Seriously?

8. It's hot. Africa hot.

9. Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the U S of A. I hope those of you in America enjoy a day off and barbecue and family fun--we will be--and I hope you'll remember the reason you have the opportunity to do that.

Channeling Miss Daisy

Ha, ha!!!!

I has my blue rubber toy. Feel urge to growl viciously and force it in face of my human!!!!

Grrrr, RRRR, Uuuurrrrr, Grrrrrr!!! Fear me! I will KILL you with blue thingie!!!! DIE!!!!! Grrrrrrrrr. Double uuurrrrrrrrr. I am scary golden retriever!!!!! Grrrrr...

I sorry. What was that? Did you say, "Drop!"?

Oh, okey dokey, here ya go! If I sit and look cute and quiver with anticipation, will you give it back? Then I will terrify you again.

You're not terrified?

Not even a little?

Grrrrrr?

I has a sad. When you has heart of lion and face of golden retriever, nobody takes you seriously.

Photo by George

Words, Words, Words about Home

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body." --Benjamin Franklin

"It was good to walk into a library again. It smelled like home." --Elizabeth Kostova

“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house--home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.” --Dennis Lehane


Home means different things to different people. For some unfortunate souls, the word conjures the scent of bitterness and pain, insecurity and fear. Most people, however, smell fresh-baked cookies, warm wood, and safety from whatever mysterious monsters are "out there." Home can be a place of refuge and recovery, nourishment and nurture.

Home is important. Home is here.

I had no idea how divided I felt over my home until I unloaded the extra one. Monday night, we finally closed on our old house. What a weird experience this move has been, a Dantesque Limbo, perhaps, or, even better, Purgatorio. It was a long time of transition, moving stuff and moving hearts to arrive at a place called home.

I'm here now, and finally moving forward.

I think George is here, too, especially when we sit on the patio and listen to the birdsong and breeze rustling the leaves, and saturate ourselves in green.

Jack is here. On his last visit at the old house, I said, "We're saying goodbye to the old house." So he walked up to the closed garage doors and told the house it was a good house and he would miss it. And then he got into the car and buckled up. "Are we going home now, Mom?"

Yes, Jack. We are.

Nick isn't here yet. Poor child. His heart still feels divided between the old house and new. He misses the old, and letting it go requires a period of grief for him. His time in Purgatorio isn't over yet, which breaks my heart, but he'll get here. Eventually.

My task now consists primarily of nurturing this brick building into something comfortable and useful, a place of communion and unconditional love. A place of peace. A place that smells of books and food and hearth fire. A place we all, including the reluctant Nick, call home.

Are you home? Why or why not?