Some Work Out; Some Work In.

A Rough Morning. Doesn’t sound very pretty, does it? It started out just fine.

Abby and I woke up to Follow the Fleet, with Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire, and we loved it! So far so good.

But somewhere after feeding the chickens I just felt like crying.

Mama was out repairing the lawn. As you know, we have dogs and they can be rough on a lawn that was already struggling when we bought the place. Anyway, Mama was out spreading Tegro on the lawn.
Here is one of the culprits and he's sulking about it.

I believe Tegro is a mixture of dirt, manure, and a little bit of sand. I sprinkled some Tegro on a few lilies’ I’m growing, and then I did start crying. After being hugged, I was sent in to do up some breakfast.

Mama gave instructions for sausage gravy and hashbrown potatoes. While the gravy was cooking, I emptied out the dishwasher and set the table with fresh periwinkles and hyacinth.
In the microwave to save time, I baked some potatoes. When they were cooked and I went to cut them for the hashbrowns, that didn’t work out so good (they turned out to be smashed potatoes instead!).
Abby called Mama in from her work and the three of us sat to a yummy brunch and I was cheered up.


Rough Morning? I mean Good Morning!

Aye, Begorrah. Be Readin' Wit ta Gaelic in Moind

Ta sun, she be shinin’ and ta birds a-singing their spring ditties on shooch a foin morn.

Aye, ‘tis a grand day, indeed!

On tis bleset day o’da year, we’re sure not to be spekin' ta crown’s anglish but spekin' wit ta mooter tung. All day, I be sayin’. Áine woke tis foin day not skippin’ a beat on tat one. Ta lass had her ‘th’’s dropped like a hot potatoe in a good harvest! Tis a bit o’fun we like ‘avin’.

Áine an Abigeál be craftin’ soom special tings for ta grandmooters an coosins an makin deliveries.
Not even St. Bridget herself can keep us from enjoying our lamb stew an colcannon, washed down wit a pint o’stout (mmm, Smit''icks)wen Da comes home fer soopper.

St. Martin o’Tours! I ploom fergoot me goodies bakin’ in ta ooven!

Ah, me! Enjoy tis blesset day we honor St. Padraig for bringin' ta good news of ta Christ to Eire!

Lutefisk and a Hot Cup of Tay

My children’s heritage is so…so...Vikings-invade-British-Isles…they ought to have been red heads!
(and Abi-Dale has the temper to prove it)

Oh My Throbbing Thumb

Post- Short. Using hunt-and-peck typing method. Note: not useful.

Dear Friend brought poultice components to relieve pain, break up congestion, and aid circulation.
Alternating every twenty minutes hot and cold packs, herbal goo to mineral salts, the pain is improving, but the swelling? Eh. So,so. Time heals all wounds?
Competent Anne is my extra hand today.

Here’s the procedure, each timed 20 minutes:
Paste made of ginger and castor, smeared on wool felt, fitted around offending thumb, secured with plastic wrap and heated with a steaming hot towel.
Thumb submerged in an icy bath of Epsom salts.
Paste of comfrey and castor, smeared on wool felt, wrapped as ginger preparation, again heated.
Another icy bath of mineral salts.

Mr. Long says it looks like I have a burrito stuck on the end of my thumb. Yup, it kinda does.
Thank you, Dear Friend, for bringing such a basket of healing! Along with N’Braskan taking me out for bathroom tissue, we’re doing okay!

How about the redheaded stepchild where all the trouble started? No, no, I mean the hardwood floor.

The radius is completed which means the miter saw and router can be put away, making more room around the workspace. Now it’s a matter of placing the boards and stapling them to the subflooring. This job can expect to move to finishing next week.

We’re pleased with how it’s turning out. Mike and Pop are certainly craftsmen. We look forward to having the existing hardwoods and those newly laid, homogenized as one floor, one room.

I'm hungry, who's up for burritos?

Beware of swinging mallets.

This is what happens when you’re not paying attention.
I say ouch! And you? 24 hours of non stop throbbing pain finally ended with a the cutest little percocet you've ever seen! Today I was able to dress myself. I’m afraid this little mishap ended an otherwise productive evening.

Pop and the Boss-man spent some time fashioning pieces cut from a 12x12 red oak board to fit around the newly cut radius in the floor; the tie-in pieces that transition from the kitchen tiles and into the new and pre-existing hardwoods.

Pop is a journeyman woodworker, over 40 years in the fixture (cabinets, doors, mill work) business. His last job was for a yacht-building outfit and in that field, cost and precision increase several notches. Boss-man is no slouch when it comes to wood constructing, however, Pop knows how to give it the finesse that comes only from decades of experience- he’s the master!
Tonight after AnnePants has fed us (remember that nasty purple thumb, I can’t do a thing!) Big Daddy gets back to installing the wood slats so we can be that much closer to having this house put back together!

Living Christ

Good bye cold, insensitive, hard, hard tile floor.

Flooring can be cold on the tootsies first thing in the morning regardless of the season or the degree in which the woodstove is cranking out the heat. The last owners of our house preferred ceramic tile to the hardwoods that my aunt and uncle previously installed (they built the house in 1966). The tile incongruously placed in the great room, as a replacement for the hardwoods, was to indicate a dining area, which divided the room with conspicuous absurdity.

(Sunshine outside and mid 50’s, so we’ve got our groove on Chicago IX. For those of you who have issues with ‘Greatest Hits’ albums, we’ll talk about this later.)

Meanwhile, back to the tile floor; we are returning it to its previously oaken status.

You see, hardwood floors are chilly enough to the pigs, but ceramic tile, well, that sucks the living daylights out o’ ya, robbing a creature of the warmth it needs to stay alive, icicles off the tip of your nose (or toes as it were), if you know what I mean.
Tile is also extremely unforgiving to plates and drinking glasses and antique baby food dishes in the shape of Donald Duck, that say, maybe your father ate from as a tot, or something like that, when they slip from the butterfingers attempting to hold them. Children and adults alike; no one is off the hook from the curse of the pitiless tile.

So onward to hardwood flooring! The great room will be great once more! Design unified throughout the room! Form and function, hand in hand!

Interesting post title, you say (some of you forgot already because it didn’t seem pertinent to tile floors). Anyone still hanging in there with me waiting to see the connection? Living Christ.

Those tiles coming up meant work…

but we never work alone.

We live in a remarkable family of believers. Here in the hedgerow we don’t go to church, we are the church.

“Going to church” for us and the Longs this week mandated pry bars, flat shovels, hammers, saws and cold beer and pizza. A burden needed bearing and it was bore on the backs of Papa Long and his boys. Mama Long and and I dusted the china hutch as we tenderly removed its contents and boxed it up for the duration of the project.

Removing a tile floor is unpleasant enough, but the men found a snag within the first few tiles. The tile was of course glued and grouted to backerboard. The backerboard, however, was not only nailed to the subflooring; it had been glued. What, the contractors were worried the tiles would float away? Yeesh! Out with the Skill saw and up with everything but the kitchen sink! Aye(waving nonchalant hand), so we replace chipboard with plywood, it’s only money, they print more everyday.

We “churched” two days in a row. Wait now, it will be three. We’s a-heading out to the family sheep farm tonight (as the lambs are dropping like cherry blossoms on a warm spring day) for more communion and partaking of the bread and the wine as Jesus said to do often and in remembrance of Him.

Being the Church is everyday life. There is no building for us. It means folding someone else’s underwear, sitting up all night in Holy Ghost provoked prayer, giving a scripture that is not easy to give, perhaps un-pleasant to receive, loaning someone your car while you’re repairing theirs, driving hundreds of miles in a day solely to fellowship.

It means ripping up someone’s tile floor.

(wiping brow)Fhew, this living Christ stuff takes work! Nobody has a day to himself because our days do not belong to us. To avoid sin in the church (people remember, not building) we are to encourage one another daily, while it is still called “today”, redeeming the time. Remember: Time plus opportunity equals trouble no matter who you are. If we don’t stay in contact daily, in one accord, from house to house, breaking the bread, how can we keep our brother from the fire. Daily contact and being held responsible for God’s children is a mighty high call. And if you don’t do your job, it’s a mighty high price.

Bearing one another’s burdens takes on a fully new meaning. The responsibility no longer is on the shoulders of a youth program, men’s breakfast leader, women’s retreat speaker, or “Pastor”.

It falls on ours.

Heb 3:13

Heb 10:24,25

Luke 17:1,2

Acts 2:42,46

Eph 5:16

Gal 6:2

1Cor 11:24-26