“Ma’am, you should never put water on a grease fire.”

I loved the entries of Deb, Kay, Tauni and Carolyn for the caption contest, but this one, entered by Carolyn, made me laugh the most, and it edged out the other ones just a bit.

This is my grandson Elijah in his fireman costume and I think the photo was calling for a caption.

I thought about not choosing this caption, because Carolyn is my daughter and some might cry nepotism, but if anyone else had come up with this entry I would have chosen it. 🙂

Carolyn wins a Target gift certificate as September’s bloggy giveaway winner! Yay!

Thank you all….

For September’s bloggy giveaway, I’m having a Caption Contest!

Take a look at this picture. This is Elijah David, one of my two handsome grandsons, wearing his happy fireman costume. This photo makes me laugh, and I thought it could use a good caption, but I just can’t think of anything.

That’s where you come in, dear readers. I know you (at least most of you, I think), and I know there are some witty and wordy people out there who could come up with a fitting caption for this pic.

The winner of this month’s bloggy giveaway will win something nice. So far, See’s candies, Target gift certificates, books, CDs and amazon.com gift cards have been won in the monthly giveaways. It’s your turn! Be brave! If you’ve entered before, enter again. If you never have, what, you don’t like books, CDs, candy or gift cards? 🙂

Comments/entries will be taken until Sunday, September 6th. The winner will be announced on Monday the 7th.

Now, name that photo!

Today’s quote is a little longer than most of what I post, but since I couldn’t stop crying as I read it, I think it’s worth sharing here. This is excerpted from James Dobson’s most recent newsletter.

“ ‘As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.’  (Psalm 103:15-16 – KJV)

“….What an incredibly important scriptural concept this is. If we really grasped the numbering of our days, we would surely be motivated to invest ourselves in eternal values.

“Would a 50-year-old man pursue an adulterous affair if he knew how quickly he would stand before his God? Would a woman make herself sick from in-law conflict or other petty frustrations if she knew how little time was left to her? Would men and women devote their lives to the pursuit of wealth and symbols of status if they realized how soon their possessions will be torn from their trembling hands?

“It is the illusion of permanence, you see, that distorts our perception and shapes our selfish behavior. When eternal values come into view, our greatest desire is to please the Lord and influence as many of our loved ones for Him as possible.

“I ask each of my readers this important question: If we really believed that the eternal souls of our children hang in the balance today – that only by winning them for Christ can we spend eternity together in heaven – would we change the way this day is lived? Would we ignore and neglect so great an opportunity if our eyes were fully opened to this awesome responsibility? I think not. I pray not.

“Addressing myself now to the mothers and fathers of young children, I urge you to keep this eternal perspective in view as you race through the days of your lives. Don’t permit yourselves to become discouraged with the responsibilities of parenting. Yes, it is an exhausting and difficult assignment, and there are times when you will feel like throwing in the towel. But I beg you to stay the course! Get on your knees before the Lord and ask for His strength and wisdom. Finish the job to which He has called you! There is no more important task in living…”   (James Dobson)

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My children are all grown now, and as I read this I can certainly look back and see countless times where my behavior was influenced by my selfishness and not from an eternal perspective. Even now that I’m old enough to have seven grandchildren, I sometimes plod through my days like I used to when I was young, caught up in the myriad things that must be tended to daily, with nary a thought to what eternal value my words, prayers and actions might have.

Lord, help us to number our days. Give us an eternal perspective about our loved ones, and all of our choices, and help us to walk in Your light. In the name of Jesus we pray…Amen.

My granddaughter Vivienne (age 3 1/2) spent the night recently and we had a great time. We read books, sang songs, and played make-believe doggy. Depending on the day, Vivie says she is a little doggy named either Scratchy, Boney or Shorty.

She came to sit in my lap and snuggled against me. Soon she sniffed the air (she didn’t know I had put on a spritz of “Beautiful” by Estee Lauder a few minutes before), looked puzzled, and then asked me, “Grandma, why does it smell like appley-glump?”

I wonder if I should write to the Lauder Corporation.

Autumn is making itself known now in our little part of the world. Even though the first day of fall isn’t officially until the end of September, when you live this far north, the earth apparently doesn’t consult the huge wall calendar I bought at Office Max to time its autumnal behaviors. The earth just does what it wants. And at the almost-47th latitude, the earth mostly wants to chill out.

The sun’s arc doesn’t reach as high as it travels across the sky now, and the light coming in the windows each day is different, more golden, than it was last week. I could stand in my kitchen, not knowing the date, and tell by the lower sunlight that summer is dying.

Here, summer usually awakens the birds around 4:30 a.m., and the cardinals, robins and chickadees are in their full Mormon Tabernacle Choir mode by 5:15 a.m., which I have always thought is one of the loveliest things in life. Now, things are pretty quiet in the mornings. Some of the birds may have already migrated south, and I’m not sure what the ones who stay for the Minnesota winter are doing. Maybe putting caulk on their windows and otherwise battening down the hatches to prepare for possibly nine months of cold.

When I got up this morning and came downstairs, I didn’t open windows and breathe in the comfortable fresh air like I did last week. I considered turning on the furnace, and then thought better of it. It is August, I reminded myself. But the house is chilly.

Michael and I took a walk yesterday and there are a few leaves beginning to turn color on the trees already. Here’s a photo taken by my good friend Bob King that was in our local paper recently.

Many people in northern Minnesota live a pretty hectic summer. Our summers are so short, maybe people feel they must fit all the warm-weather activities they can into the three warm months out of the year. Picnics, camping, hiking, barbecues, biking, house projects, cabin trips, gardening, fishing…are all squeezed into three months of living because Minnesotans know that by late October it will be dark and cold, and for most people, life will slow down.

There are the hardy ones who go camping and ice fishing in the winter of course. And many have decided to make the best of a long cold winter by learning to ski, snow-shoe and roar through the forests on snowmobiles.

But for me, the changing of a leaf’s color on the maple in our front yard doesn’t mean snowmobiles or sitting on a frozen lake dangling a line into a small hole in the ice. For me, the arrival of autumn means removing our lightweight toile quilt from the bed and pulling out the heavy down-filled toile comforter. It means wearing sweaters instead of t-shirts, and the comfort of SmartWool socks under my Birkenstocks (Carolyn, I’m going to buy you some Birkies and thick wool socks this Christmas to complete your Drama Mom look), and it means pulling out thick and pretty scarves to keep my neck warm in the chill air.

And, the shortening of days stimulates a mostly dormant and atrophied portion of my brain called the cookothalmus that suddenly makes me want to bake loaves of crusty bread, simmer hearty soups on the stove, and stir up pans of spicy apple crisp. Summer’s waning makes me want to take long meandering walks. It makes me want to hunker down with books and sit with friends in front of a fire.

And for some reason I don’t understand, the change in season makes me want to pray. And write in my journal. And sit in my plaid chair, looking over one or two verses and meditating on them until the riches rise to the surface and I sit astonished at the depth and layers of God’s Word. I surely need that.

The change from summer to fall and fall to winter has always stirred up something in me that I can’t put good words to. I only know that it it makes me aware of fleeting life and inevitable death in a more acute way, and it brings on a wistful, yearning feeling that reminds me how quickly my days will pass from this earth, how in no time at all my grandbabies will be adults with children and grandchildren of their own.

Why does this thought make the tears run down my face? I don’t know. It’s a wonderful, terrible sort of ache that comes with the passage of time.

If I had my druthers….

…we would have a little cabin in the woods like this…

…and it would be just a short walk to the dock, the Adirondack chairs, and of course a daily swim in a lake like this…

…and just down the road from our little lake would be this lighthouse on a much bigger Lake…

…and in the evenings we could look out on our little lake and see this…

…and when taking our morning walks on the road near our cabin in the woods, we might meet up with this…

…and as autumn began to fade we would look out of our bedroom window and see this…

…and we would know that all too soon our driveway would look like this…

…and the groan-inducing sight on a January morning would without a doubt be this…

…and a glance at the night sky almost any time of year could reveal this…

Oh, but wait…all this would mean that we would live in northern Minnesota…

…but that’s only if I had my druthers…

Oh, Mothers of young children, I bow before you in reverence. Your work is most holy. You are fashioning the destinies of immortal souls. The powers folded up in the little ones that you hushed to sleep in your bosoms last night, are powers that shall exist forever. You are preparing them for their immortal destiny and influence. Be faithful. Take up your sacred burden reverently. Be sure that your life is sweet and clean.

J.R. Miller

Our family used to listen to music by Wendy and Mary in the 80s and early 90s, and I still pull out an old CD on occasion to enjoy.

Wendy has a popular song out on youtube right now, and she has put it to her own simple animation. This sweet and simple song made me smile and think.

I hope it brings a smile for you too.

Blessings,

It’s sort of a joke in our family about what bad dog owners we are. We love our two Schnauzers Edith and Mildred more than they deserve, and they’re a bit spoiled, but they are not well-trained, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Schnauzers are rodent-hunters by instinct. In Germany, their land of origin, people kept them as “ratters,” just as some people who live on farms in my area keep barn cats today – for mouse control. Schnauzers are alert and curious, friendly and loyal, and so hyper-vigilant that they never seem to stop barking. Good owners take their Schnauzers to twelve weeks of dog training classes to teach their pooches how to walk nicely on a leash, how to stop barking with one dark look from the owner, and how to do a variety of commands, like sit!, stay!, down!, and don’t even look at me right now because I’m sick of your incessant barking!

But as The Dog Whisperer so regularly reminds us, we are really not good dog owners. Our Schnauzers would stay perched at our den window all their waking hours, if allowed, to be ready to bark at the slightest movement from down the street. If a person jogs by, if the mail-woman parks her truck six doors down, if a squirrel darts by, we are alerted to it no matter where we might be in the house. Edith and Millie have shrieking barks that hurt the ears and make the adrenaline flow.

Anyway, on to the rabbits. Our city is overrun by rabbits. In the past few years there have even been newspaper articles about our burgeoning rabbit population, and we’ve certainly had more than our share of bunnies in the yard. I wrote about our bunny experiences here. Rabbits are large rodents, and Edith and Millie are instinctive bunny haters, so any rabbit who crosses our property line will be chased within an inch of its life.

We have an electric fence, so our dogs remarkably never, ever go beyond the boundaries of our fairly large yard. We’re pretty certain that all the rabbits in our neighborhood have learned that those two yipping and hysterical gray dogs with the mustaches can’t come past this pine and that apple tree, because the rabbits have taken to sitting calmly just beyond the dogs’ reach, and tormenting them. “NYAH-na-na-BOO-boo!” we think they’re saying to Edith and Millie. And it’s driving the Schnauzers crazy.

And maybe our neighbors aren’t enjoying it very much either. So when we hear The Rabbit Shriek Duet, we run to the backdoor and say authoritatively and ineffectively, “GET in here! STOP that barking right now! KNOCK it off you two!” and they come slinking in, but they are never rehabilitated. They never stop it, and we’re not sure they can, because they are Schnauzers and this is what Schnauzers do. At least that’s the excuse I’m holding to so I don’t have to add “Take Edith and Millie to Twelve Weeks of Dog Training” to my already piled up to-do list plate.

Here’s a photo of Millie, stopped just at the electric border in our back yard near the house, shrieking her diligent best, at a calm rabbit several feet away who’s doing the nyah-na-na-boo-boo thing right back at her. You can see Sara and Michael in our hammock, turning to see what all the commotion is about.

I want to be a courteous neighbor so whenever I hear The Schnauzer Shriek I’m quick to bring them in and give them long lectures about being better citizens. They seem to understand what I’m saying at the time, but then the next time I let them out it’s all forgotten when they spot a chipmunk or a fawn or another dog two back yards away.

I haven’t decided yet if successfully getting Edith and Millie to instantly stop barking at a simple command is possible or not. It seems like it would go against every cell in their stout little German bodies. I know that the road to better dog behavior starts with the owners. But the thought of taking them to classes every week and then spending time daily practicing with them makes me want to take a nap. I don’t know where I could fit it in.

I guess I won’t think about that today. I’ll think about that tomorrow. Or the next day. Or maybe the next.

There’s always the chance that a rodent-only virus will mutate and arrive in Minnesota next week, killing off the entire population of critters that torment our dooginses.

That would certainly save me a lot of trouble. And our neighbors’ ears. Would someone please get on this?

Not long ago at a local church in our city, many people participated in something during the morning worship service called Cardboard Testimonies. I didn’t see it, but heard from friends who did that it was very moving, even though the participants didn’t utter a word.

On Sunday, September 6th, our church will be presenting Cardboard Testimonies. My husband, daughter and I will all hold cards as a witness to what God has done (and is doing) in our lives.

I found a few videos online of other churches who have done something similar, and this one I’m posting is my favorite. Michael and I have watched it again and again, and cried each time. I hope you will watch it and share it with someone who needs to see that God can put broken lives back together. The end of the video is amazing.

I could hold up at least half a dozen cardboard signs of my own. I’m so thankful that God can take any broken person or broken situation, and rebuild the ruins of their lives. He has done it for me, yes, and is still doing it.

He can do it for you. Be encouraged. There is nothing God cannot do.