MAMA MIA!!!!!

Ok, Ladies...this is it. The Mama Mia gathering will take place next Tuesday (8/5) Evening @ the 6:45 showing. You might want to get your tickets ahead of time. More details later...PUT ON YOUR DANCING SHOES AND COME ON!!!! (If you haven't seen it, be warned...there are a couple of risque scenes, but most of all it is just kind of a wonderful, make you wanna dance kind of event)

soooooo boring!

I have decided I have an extremely boring life....though to be honest, sometimes boring is good. I really have nothing interesting to post on my blog!!! How sad is that?? The main reason is that I have been doing battle with my utility room for the past TWO WEEKS. A project I thought would take 2 days, has taken 2 weeks. I don't know what to say, except it's too bad I'm not getting paid by the hour. Actually, it's too bad I'm not getting paid at all. :) HOWEVER....the walls and ceiling are finished...I have to clean up the floor and do the trim and the doors, but I'm not too stressed about that. Then.......I know it's hard to wait for the next installment.....BUT......Mae will tackle her dining room flooring project. WHAT COULD BE MORE EXCITING THAN THAT????

Hmmmmm....

Why, you might wonder, has Mae not been posting???? BECAUSE I'M STILL DOING BATTLE WITH THAT STUPID WALLPAPER. I think I probably will hold the record for most time spent stripping the wallpaper and scraping the ceiling in one little room!!!!!!! HOWEVER.....I am happy to report, the wallpaper is OFF, and the ceiling is SCRAPED and almost all is spackled. (SP?) Anyway.....aside from Oliver licking the spackle off one section of the wall, we are getting on towards painting. WAHOO. That is another issue re: Oliver. For anyone who doesn't know, he is my one year old mutt...kind of looks like the Wizard of Oz dog, only black. He is also bad to the bone and will eat ANYTHING. He cost me some serious $$ last summer when I thought he had eaten a bottle of pills one week and then the next licked Kilz paint off an entire cabinet I had just painted. Do you know there is poison control for animals? I do. They were very helpful. So...as I paint, Oliver has to be locked up or at least away in another room. As far as he is concerned it is just a very funny thing that I am "frosting" walls with such DELICIOUS stuff. ha........

Why, oh why does the wallpaper stick....?

why oh why does the wallpaper stick? Why won't it come off the wall?
The glue is stuck tight, it sure puts up a fight....
plus it'd be a lot easier if I was TALL!

I've put holes in the wall, it looks very bad...
Behind the water heater is a mess.....
I've worked really hard, and my hands are so tired...
I'll be glad when it's done, I CONFESS....!!!!!!!!!!

???????????????????

So....who ARE the people reading my blog???? Sign in and be known!!! :)

Some very good news....

There is some wonderful news in the ambiguity of current life. Steve's MRI came back with NO sign of a return of the brain tumor!!!!!! THAT is a PRAISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Home again....

After a week full of ups and downs (not counting the airplane rides...:) I'm home. Very mixed feelings....my mother is frail and shouldn't be on her own. However, greater than her frailness is her stubborness...so that's about all I can say there. Shouldn't we embrace the positive in the changes that are before us???? After a VERY long day of traveling, I'm home. And I'm glad. And I'm happy to see Oliver and Sammy is "still ticking". Amazing.

Change.....

Life is full of changes...some we expect, some we don't. As I visit with my folks in Michigan, I see changes in the making. My dad is doing sort of ok in his assisted living home, my mom is sort of managing being on her own....my niece and nephew in law face huge unknowns as he battles brain cancer. I wish I had something profound to say about all of this but I don't. What just came to mind was "in all things, give thanks"...as I have tried to share that with my mom...that as difficult as their situation is, it is not unexpected and they have soooo many advantages that many other 87 and 89 year olds simply don't have. We did take my dad out today....his first time in many weeks. We went out to a coney island hotdog place and they had a grand time. They acted like they were out on a date. Very cute. So, it was a good day there. I had planned to go stay at my nieces' today to help her, but her husbands' tests were all moved up and they had to go yesterday. I'm not sure how to give thanks for their situation...I'm just being honest, folks. I can give thanks for good doctors and for the family that is helping them, but the rest is so hard. So, if you are a praying person, please lift Lindsay and Steve up....as Lindsay said, they need all the help they can get. Thanks..............

A Different Kind of Fireworks......!

Last night, I had dinner with some friends at Fager's Island. If you know Fager's, you know they play the 1812 Overture as the sun sets....well....there was no sun to be seen....all overcast and cloudy, but the 1812 was played with great fervor anyway. Gotta love those cannons! THEN....we were able to see most of a fireworks display a little ways down which was fun, BUT then the real show started....God unleashed a fireworks of his own with grand thunder and huge lightening. In Fagers, there are a lot of windows....the side room is almost like a sunroom with windows on the top and the side, and we were right next to that....Well, the lightening flashed and the thunder boomed and the rain pounded. I LOVED IT. An unexpected treat...combined with good friends and just about laughing myself sick at the silliness, it was a wonderful evening. KABOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Key Verse.....?

I Peter 4:11b, "If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen."

Isn't this really what it should all be about? Isn't this why we are given gifts and skills? Isn't this the key to who we are in Christ? Now, the interesting part of that is not that the scripture reads, "If anyone serves as a pastor" or "If anyone is paid staff at a church". It says "If anyone serves" and then the absolute key...."he should do it with the strength God provides" So...how do we get the strength God provides?? I guess we could wait 'till we are zapped with a lightening bolt...might happen....with God anything is possible, of course. But within that scripture, a huge responsibility is laid out for us. That responsibility is to access that strength through the reading and hearing of the Word and of prayer. Lots and lots of prayer. God has enlisted us in his ARMY....are we content with sitting on our cabooses or are we ready and willing to act using the strength HE provides? I challenge each and every person reading this posting today.....Are you reading God's word daily??? Are you spending MORE than nominal time in prayer? Let's keep journals this week...journals of what we read and how we pray, thanking God for the strength He has for each of us. Strength to serve which will glorify Jesus Christ. Let's be honest with ourselves and with God. Let us prepare ourselves to serve in ways we never imagined possible. Let us not even THINK of trying to do this on our own strength, but turn to God for HIS strength. Are YOU willing?

Stars and Stripes Forever!!!

I thought this was appropriate for the 4th of July.

Can you spell...........C-O-N-D-O??????????

Whew...after a day of ripping up nasty, disgusting, filthy carpet and trying to pry the tack board up, a condo is looking pretty good. No yard to cut....no insane things growing in my scraggly bushes....no insanity of repairs that I have no idea of how to make. Sounds pretty good....then, I look out the window and see the back, or I think of how incredibly wonderful it is to have space and not have neighbors right on top of my place...well...then I wonder. So...I don't know. I just know, I'm TIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!