I love that line: “Let every heart prepare Him room.” It’s an old-fashioned way of saying, “Give Him space.” He is the One who clears out the chaos and dusts the cobwebs in the heart that has given Him room. He beautifies and enlivens the old place, brings out the shine in the furniture, and provides the places of comfort.

This realization inside me has changed my view of housekeeping into one of homemaking. I get to partner with Jesus in my home, filling it with grace and goodness, because that is what He has done for me. That sounds so nice: good food, warm places, and happy hearts. However. You can’t have fragrant gingerbread without some flour puffs and icing smears and possibly even a deluge of frustrated tears. It also involves taking out the trash and washing a lot of dishes. I guess technically you can light a gingerbread candle, but that doesn’t quite count the same.

When I was handed a different house to turn into a home, it was a dark and gloomy place, floor to ceiling. It ended up being a long paint-splattered process, with only two rooms completely finished when we moved into it. Decorating brings out my insecurities and exhausts me, but homemaking has become a delight. Just ask my children how many times I rearranged the living room furniture this fall, finding the sweet spot where everything looks peaceful and happy together. Not matchy -our furniture is carefully curated (Don’t be afraid. That’s code for used, thrifted, or on clearance.) from many different sources- but cozy.

Because of how unsettled and chaotic the last few years felt, it became imperative to me to make our home feel lovely and secure. I am not good at visualizing things in my head, and Pinterest gave me anxiety. I ended up making a list of things that are important to me: light, cheer, comfort, practicality. Stabbing at a feeling meant sleuthing out little end tables at the thrift store so we can set our mugs and books on them. It meant soothing blues and uplifting yellows. It meant putting the old ratty towels on the dog-towel stack and investing in fresh ones.

We have large south-facing windows in the main living area, one of the big selling points for us when we checked out this house. I wanted to let all the light in, yet be able to close the fishbowl at night, and decided on sheers with metal rings and linen looking panels to keep open most of the time. I bought curtains and hung them so I could feel them, then returned curtains and got others until it looked like I wanted it to look. (Sorry, Big Lots.) My windows are dressed, not like anything I saw on Pinterest, but I like them.

I take the same approach every time I decorate the mantle piece. A few weeks ago I bought some placemats that say “JOY” because I wanted to use one as a wallhanging above the fireplace. I was tempted to buy silvery fake eucalyptus, but decided on the dried dusty millers from the garden, some twigs spray painted white, and sprigs of rose hips instead. When I am done with them, I can throw them away instead of figuring out storage. Every time the season switches, I decorate and step back and rearrange and step back and throw out some stuff and step back and go look for different elements until it feels right to me. This is probably not how you’re supposed to do it, but once it feels cozy, I feel done. My heart tells me so, and in this case that’s what I go by. I refrain from comparing with what others are doing, because that is not the point. Their house is their house, and ours is ours.

Home is a sensory experience. The atmosphere really does matter. Lights are very important. My husband blessed me and installed can lights everywhere. I also hang many strings of twinkle lights for the long dark winter. We light candles and fires and feel the blessing of darkness pushed back.

Gabriel’s work is as stressful as it has ever been, so the feeling I strive for at home is peace. Imagine with me a 12 to 14-hour shift where you are aware the entire time that you cannot possibly give patients the standard of care that you were trained to do. You are only one, and you can only do so much. When you come home from work, what is it that you want to feel? I can’t do much for the masses in the hospital, but I can make a place where one of their nurses can recharge and find cheer and hope.

This is different for everyone. I read articles about how the pandemic has changed people’s perceptions of what they want in their homes because they actually spent a lot of time in them. The all-vanilla, sterile hotel room style is out, and colors and comfortable furniture style is in, as well as personal touches and hand-made accessories. (I know I should have made my curtains, but I am only one and I can only do so much. :D)

We can take part in preparing room, in building a culture of redemption and safety, one homemaking day at a time.

“And heaven and nature sing!”

(Disclaimer: I wrote most of this post last year before Christmas and didn’t publish it, for some reason, so here it is, fluffed up a little, not your average Advent post. My “Restoration” issue of Daughters of Promise came in the mail yesterday. I was happy with my little garden feature, but really inspired by all the articles on taking waste spaces and discarded goods and giving them new life. It’s a core value that resonates deeply with me. I dug out this article and decided to send it out. Blessings all, as you invest in wherever it is you are called to beautify today.)

Before I forget, which I have done for the last month: Some of you asked me to let you know here when I put pottery on Etsy. I use Instagram for my free advertising, but if you are not on Instagram, you don’t get the announcements. So, here’s the link if you wish to check out what’s left in the shop: Black Oak Ceramics. I am sorry I forgot to alert you. There are still some mugs available, if you are interested in supporting small business. 😉 I might add that shipping seems pretty steep, (They just upped the rates again for the Christmas rush) but as it happens, I can usually ship two mugs for very nearly the same price as one. Not that I want to sell all my mugs, or anything. I asked the Post Office about last dates for Christmas delivery, and they said probably December 15.

When I was setting up online banking on an app last week, I was given a list of security questions for the future. They ranged from things like, “What was the name of your first pet? What is your mother’s maiden name? Who’s your favorite musician?” I was supposed to pick 10 questions, and some of them had no concrete answers. I don’t have one favorite musician. “What’s your dream car?” I thought that might be a good one because I can see it in my mind, but I could not think what it was called at that moment. There was no way I was going to be sure I could recall my dream car when the security question popped up. I remembered later. It’s a Mini Cooper, just because it’s cute and after years of parking a Suburban, I’d find it restful. Memory experts say I need to associate that tidbit with something else in my mind so it doesn’t get lost, so I am seeing myself in a tiny green car, pulling off a flawless parallel park in Pittsburgh.

The same blank thing happens when the pharmacist asks my child’s date of birth in that brisk professional tone, and I stand there stammering, all five of my children’s birthdays gone away for the moment. Where has my brain gone?

I’ve gone to the chiropractor a few times in the last month. This is not an attempt to improve my memory, but more to do with “potter shoulder”, let’s be clear. At every visit he instructs me to turn my head to the left. Every time I struggle to find the correct left. Does he mean the back of my head or the front of my head? It’s very humiliating. I have had left/right confusion my whole life, but it’s the spur of the moment times that really show me up. I find myself making extra effort to act intelligent in other ways to try to offset this lapse.

I’ve heard of women who always face a certain direction for family pictures because they have “a good side”. The problem is, looking in the mirror is not the same as looking at a camera lens. I’ve given up on remembering a good side. It is what it is. What you see is what you get. This fall I wrote an article about my garden experiments at this property and submitted it for Daughters of Promise. They suggested that it would be good to have pictures taken of the actual garden and me in it. I found a talented young lady locally who took the pictures, and when I was looking through them, I made the comment, “Well, I guess that’s how I look.” My daughter is very astute, and she said, “You don’t look fat if that’s what you mean.”

It’s astounding how often I spill coffee when I wear a white shirt. I have a niece who has joined me in this club. We prefer not to wear white. That’s one of the best ways to keep from spilling our coffee.

I suppose it’s human nature to want to appear pulled together, a person who does not forget stuff and make messes and flub up in general.

We learn coping mechanisms and scramble to cover our tracks. We look around quickly when we fall, checking to see if anyone has witnessed our lack of coordination. I do have a wide streak of dignity that I get from my father’s side of the family. I suspect it is healthy for everyone to keep things to themselves that nobody needs to know. I am not talking about secret sins, of course, but personal issues such as sucking one’s thumb to fall asleep. (I don’t.) My mom used to ask, “Is nothing sacred anymore?” when she felt like her children were skirting the edges of what was proper to talk about and what might be called ‘Eskimo’.

Sometimes I spout opinions without thinking about the person hearing them. Last week I wore a dress to church that had white flowers on a black fabric and a white sweater layered on top. A friend asked me if I had a new dress, and I said, “No, it’s just a new combination. I usually wear this dress with a black top, but I decided the world is dreary enough right now.” Then I looked at my friend and saw she was wearing a black dress with a black sweater, and what was there to do but to laugh and try to delicately extract my foot from my mouth?

I do consider my best defense mechanism to be able to laugh at myself, to find the humor in humanity. I only came to write this post to let you know about the Etsy sale. It seems like I found plenty of foibles to cheer your day, as well. Wouldn’t you like to know all the stuff I didn’t say?

Cheers! Go forth to brighten your world today, and if something funny happens, laugh heartily and tell somebody about it!

If you give a housewife a gallon of cider, and she finds it in the back of her refrigerator, going fizzy, she will google “how to use fizzy cider.” She will find an idea that makes her mind sizzle, and she will latch onto it because it’s called Apple Cider Brined Turkey.

When she thinks about turkey, she suddenly feels hungry. She went to her mother’s house for Thanksgiving and consequently she does not have leftover turkey in her own freezer. She decides that she did not have enough turkey in her life recently, and she should purchase one for a second feast after the feast. Alas, the housewife can find none anywhere in this year of turkey shortage, but she figures that one fowl in brine is pretty much the same as another fowl in brine. She goes to her freezer and pulls out chicken quarters. When she sees how icy the freezer has become, she knows that she will have to defrost it before her family butchers the deer her men have brought home. She fixes the brine and drops the chicken quarters into it, then she tackles the freezer. It looks very nice when it is done, and she finds a loaf of stale bread to make stuffing. It only tastes a little bit freezer-burned and the butter will mask that, she decides. She even has a bit of limp celery in the produce drawer to give it flavor.

If she makes faux turkey and dressing, there will need to be mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. She has seven potatoes in her pantry, and that is considered a good sign. She has a large sweet potato that she needs to use, so she cooks it to make sweet potato pie, AKA “almost pumpkin pie.” While the sweet potato is cooling, she makes a quick grocery run for cranberries and pie crusts and chicken stock for gravy.

She drains the brine off the chicken, and she bakes her first ever sweet potato pies at the same time as it is roasting. When the chicken starts to go golden brown like the recipe promises, she slides the stuffing into the oven and cooks the seven peeled potatoes. She turns the chicken stock into gravy and she mashes the potatoes.

If you give a housewife the ingredients for a Thanksgiving feast, she will cook and mash and add more butter, and then she will call her people to partake of it. She will boast unwisely to them that the pie is sweet potatoes. Because she has funny children, she now has sweet potato pie leftovers in her fridge. She does not have stale bread or limp celery or any more fizzy cider though.

(And her freezer is very clean.)

On Sunday morning Olivia was not feeling well, so she stayed home from church with Gregory and Addy. Since our church doesn’t stream the service, I found a sermon by Alistair Begg for them. As I was going out the door, I heard him reading from the Sermon on the Mount, “Therefore take no thought for your life… For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things… Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” Well, guess what? The preacher read the very same passage in church. Not only that, but I had been looking at Hebrews 12 and Romans 5, at the passages about chastening being an indication of being beloved of the Lord, and all the good things that tribulations work out in our lives. The scripture reading passage on Sunday was Hebrews 12. Sometimes God just gets my attention this way. I would do well to listen, don’t you think?

I have been in a bit of a quagmire of anxiety. It’s not important that everybody knows what the anxiety is about, but I can assure you that I have “legitimate” reasons to worry. However, this is not the will of God for his children. I know this. And sometimes He taps me on the shoulder and repeats Himself, and I’m so grateful that I can hear His voice.

I am sure that many of us are facing uncertainty when we look around. The covid continues it’s strange patterns of deadly ebb and flow. Last week most of my husband’s ICU patients died. Seven of them, four on his watch. He is assigned to a small hospital with only six ICU beds. Occasionally there are people waiting in the emergency room until someone in intensive care dies, and then there’s a bed for them. Then there may be a stretch of days where he is assigned only “regular” patients. If you know someone in healthcare, please take a moment to pray for God to sustain their spirit. It’s a continuing strain. I believe that we, all of us, are here for such a time as this. We can change the world with our compassion and kindness. I can see great courage in the world when I look for it. Or I can see strife and selfishness. It just depends on what I want to see.

There’s a lot of emphasis on the labor shortage and how nobody wants to work anymore. It is a problem, but it is not entirely true. The ones who are working are carrying a lot more weight on their backs. What if we all made a concerted effort to bless the people in the service industries, who are doing their best? We can look into their faces, smile genuinely, and cheerfully express our appreciation for their service. It might not make less work, but it could give them the stamina to keep going.

Switching gears here…

I got a coupon in the mail for 16 free Hello Fresh meals and free shipping. Wow, I thought, that might be fun. When I went on the website, I had to make a profile, and then I had to enter my credit card information. That should always be a red flag, if you haven’t even ordered anything. However, I pressed on. I entered my coupon code. It wasn’t valid. I took my glasses off and strained closely at the coupon. Oh. That 1 was actually just a straight line. I had to do some fancy keyboarding to figure out how to get it, but at last my coupon was valid. Then I saw that the sixteen free meals are spread out over four orders, so that you only get four free meals in an order. Okay, I figured it might be fun for the children to cook on a busy day. I selected the maximum, three meals for four people, the meat and veggies option. Then I got sticker shock: nah, that’s going to be too expensive. I never concluded the order. The next day I got an email saying, “Since you didn’t choose from our menu, you will be receiving your meals from our weekly menu. You have been billed.” Well then. I guess that was meant to be. I promptly went into the innards of Hello Fresh and canceled my subscription, but today our box came. Rita and Addy were delighted to sort through the contents and each of them cooked a meal in short order. They were charmed with the little pre measured seasoning packets and the careful instructions on the recipe cards. I oversaw operations, and helped chop the scallions. Our meals turned out fantastic, and we had a buffet for supper, with lots of leftovers. I suppose if you divide $47 into 12 restaurant plates, it’s not too shabby. But it was a once in time fling for us. I think this could be a great option to send as a gift to someone who is having difficulty, especially if you can’t physically take them a meal, and more especially if they enjoy cooking.

Speaking of coupons, this is the time of year when I always like to look at the Christian Book Distributors website because they frequently offer free shipping, and have deep discounts. My ESV journaling Bible is 5 years old, tattered, with coffee stains on the cover, and the margins full of notes. I like to read a new translation every couple years, so I’m planning to get a New Living Translation Bible next. My only problem is that I really like having margins for notes, but the NLTs all they have these pretty coloring page style illustrations, which is not really what I want in a Bible. I thought maybe I can do my regular notes in the margins and let the girls color the illustrations?.. I also ordered four NLT Proverbs illustrated study guides for my students to study in the new year.

As I write this, the last kiln of glazed pots is firing for this year. I draw the line here, at the end of November, and if my tallying is correct, it was 640 pots this year, give or take a few.

After I got the kiln firing, Addy and I cleaned the basement thoroughly with our floor cleaner that we got at a yard sale for $5. It has a hot water tank, and brushes that help to scrub the concrete while it sucks up the dirty water. While we manufacture enough dirt to use a commercial cleaner down there, it does help and is easier for the children to handle than a mop.

Meanwhile Olivia was doing the laundry and Rita was cleaning the kitchen. Sometimes I can hardly believe I am in this season where people can be told to do things and they do them. Mostly. The degree of thoroughness is often relative to how much oversight they get. You may have noticed that I kept Addy working with me. She is willing and swift, but last week when I went digging into the attic in their room, I discovered that when she cleans their room, she opens the attic door and shovels in the things she doesn’t want to deal with. So we work together and all is well.

My friend who organized the church house cleaning this fall had made detailed lists of what needed to be done in each room. She told me that she used to make spreadsheets for her children to clean their house, room by room. I thought it was a brilliant idea, so I did the same. Now the kitchen cleaner has a little list of things that have to be checked off before she can initial that she cleaned the kitchen. I came upstairs and was startled at the sight of Rita wiping out the microwave because I hadn’t even told her to do it. Ah, the list! There’s a small stipend with the bigger jobs, and that becomes the allowance at the end of the month.

Gregory had a full day of school, but the rest of us took off. We decided to have school vacation this whole week, and work later to do a little catch up. It feels amazing. We never do this. But this year we are, because we can.

Would you like to know what our weather is like right now? It’s unspeakable. But we have boots and sometimes I go out and puddle around with the girls. Yesterday we waded across the creek and explored the deer trails in our small woods. The only bright spots of color I saw were the rose hips. Everything else was monochrome. I will be very happy for some brilliant snow.

We’re burning candles, and getting out the twinkly lights, and making things like pumpkin whoopie pies. I made a batch of latte mugs a few weeks ago, and this morning I tried one to see how it works. It tasted fine, and the mug made me happy. What are your coping mechanisms for November? We’d all love to hear about them. 😘

Our cell group was recounting the year past, with an emphasis on thankfulness. I personally don’t feel like the year just past is very fun to look back on. “Sometimes I find myself just waiting for the next disaster,” I said, “but I do not want to live like that.”

A week after that conversation, Addy came to my room at midnight with acute stomach pain. Gabriel was working in Pittsburgh, so I couldn’t confer with him. Her pain was right under the ribcage, not lower right lateral like I thought appendicitis would be. We tried everything we normally do for stomach pain: a warm bath, massage with soothing oil, warm drinks, rice bag heated up for the affected area. I finally called Gabe in the middle of the night to see what he thinks, but it is hard to tell when you can’t see the person in pain, and maybe even harder if you know this is a child with a lower pain tolerance than some. At 2:30 I decided we would go to the ER to check her out. She was doing her best to be brave, but she was chilling under mounds of blankets, writhing in pain.

Upon arrival, she was given an IV and some morphine, after which she became quite chipper, chatting with the nurse and watching while they drew blood for labs. Suddenly she threw up all her supper on the bed and the nurse looked at me with eyebrows raised. No fever, no obvious flinching when they palpated her stomach, and less pain once she had tossed her cookies. I thought for sure that we had just gone to the ER to be diagnosed with a stomach bug.

It didn’t take long for the CAT scan results to come back. It actually was an inflamed appendix. Since she is still a child, we got sent to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh for the appendectomy. I had time to drive home and pack some extra clothes and supplies. I woke the other children and told them what was going on, then Addy and I had a nice, bumpy ambulance ride in the chilly morning. By the time we got to Pittsburgh, Gabe was already working just a few minutes away at another hospital. It was good to know he was right there if we needed him.

Meanwhile we got VIP treatment, escorted by the EMTs straight to a private room. I could have cried when I saw the couch with pillows and sheets ready for weary parents. We were warned that it might be a day before they could add her into the surgery roster, and we settled in. I crashed hard on that couch, but had only slept an hour before a nurse cheerfully informed us that she could go to surgery right away, since she had not eaten anything recently and it looked to be a fast and routine operation. Probably it will take about 60 to 90 minutes, they told us.

I decided to grab some food and eat in the courtyard in the sunshine. My stopwatch was set so that I would for sure be back in the waiting room when the surgeon came out to tell me how it went. At exactly 55 minutes, he breezed in and said she did great, appendix was out, and she could probably go home in a few hours since there was no leaking or infection. I was astounded, grateful, relieved.

Gabriel had a motel room reserved for that night, so we decided it would work out well to stay with him there, get a good night’s sleep before heading home together. This was a double blessing because I didn’t have a vehicle in town. Gabriel picked us up at the end of his shift and settled Addy on a cot. She choked down a large syringe full of cherry flavored tylenol and fell into a sound sleep. So did I! Twelve hours later we woke to sunshine and renewed energy. Addy walked very carefully and slowly, but she was hungry and happy to be going home.

Sometimes a potential disaster is a simple little interruption where God shows Himself present, able to take care of all the little details on the surgical floor, the other children at home, the lodging, and the transportation. This is a week later, and Addy is bouncing like usual, no more cherry medicine necessary. I am very grateful!

A few of my friends did a one day challenge on Instagram where they posted a photo of their ordinary or extraordinary lives every hour. I haven’t had time to catch up with them, but I thought it was pretty interesting, and it would be fun to take a photo every hour, then look back at the day. Here, without further ado:

And that’s when I quite taking pictures. The day was far from done, but it was tired. I face-timed with my husband for a bit but he was too whooped by his shift to do much more than yawn and try to listen to what I was saying. He is working in the Pittsburgh hospital currently, because they are having severe staffing difficulties. That means he stays overnight and works all the shifts in a row, then comes home for a nice chunk of time. (That’s about the best spin I can put on it. Also, bonuses are nice.)

I cleaned up the frying mess on the stove while Gregory did the other dishes and the girls had a howling fun time in the basement. It was a good day, and since I went to the bother of taking the pictures, I thought I might as well share them. How was yours?

It has been a year and a half since we bought this cottage in northwest Pennsylvania. The house was liveable, but so dated it was like time traveling to the 70’s. I like the 70’s. I was born in them, but why so much dark paneling and dark woodwork and fake brick? As we brainstormed renovations in the house, it became obvious that the kitchen would be the biggest project. We decided to keep it till last.

“Do you think it’ll be done by Christmas?” I asked.

“Aren’t you feeling pessimistic?” Gabe said. So I tucked my expectations away and made the best of things, which ended up being a good idea, because we were so tired of renovations in 2020 that we made a mutual agreement to wait until 2021 to do any more in the kitchen.

Here is how we started, straight out of settlement. The dishwasher, a Very Vintage Maytag, still worked; it sounded like a small jet was taking off during a rainstorm in the kitchen. The refrigerator was the newest appliance, but it was small and a week’s worth of milk and apples pretty much filled it up, with some cracks for ketchup and ranch dressing. What else could you possibly need? But still… See the wall oven across the corner? There was a vast space above and below it, perfect for hiding runaway slaves. You had to send a small child in to get stuff in the back. The stovetop was in the countertop, where the red kettle is sitting.

(WordPress is giving me absolute fits with all these photos. They don’t cooperate and the edit buttons are without pattern or mercy. I will need to go somewhere and breathe different air for awhile.)

We started by tearing out walls, and since the ceiling was low and claustrophobic, we decided to take it up to the rafters and open up the walls from one small doorway to an open floor plan including the living room. There was an ungodly mess when we took down the ceiling and all the blown-in insulation fell onto the floor. We took out the upper cabinets at that time, as well, knowing we weren’t planning on using them. Gabe saved them for storage in the basement.

Occasionally I feel almost guilty about my beautiful kitchen. It feels like an overload of goodness. Our cabinet maker did a lovely job, worked with us to make everything just how we wanted it. I marvel at the ease of preparing large amounts of food in a space that we carefully thought through for our needs. I am grateful! I said no to a lazy Susan. Life has improved!

The whole point of having stuff is to share it with others. I have not always seen kitchen work as a way to bless and minister to others. It seemed like a necessary evil because I didn’t like it, but I have grown a little. (Thank you, Sally Clarkson.) This space- this is for daily bread and fellowship and feasting.

I told the girls we’ll go to Sally and Wally today after they are done with school. We haven’t done any shopping together for weeks, and they love to check out the deals at thrift stores. As we were pulling into the Salvation Army parking lot, Rita said, “Oh, goody! We can get candy out of the quarter machines.” Before I could protest about how germy those little metal chutes are, where people dig their fingers in to make sure no fruit runts are left behind, she said, “And I brought sanitizing wipes for the machines before we get our candy.” How can a mother object past such preparedness?

I get a lot of private amusement from their purchases. Today one of them bought a 1/4 cup ladle for her playhouse, a crocheted shawl for dress-ups, and a baggie full of mini figures. Another bought a purse, and the last one found a scarf and a tiny notebook/planner with a pen that doesn’t work but looks cute. As for me, I bought two books, some steak knives, and a hoodie for one of my teens.

We kept our Wally stop very short… Just a few health and beauty aids, some chicken breasts, lead for mechanical pencils, and stuff like that. It’s astonishing how quickly Wally can gobble up all the carefully saved money, and Addy walked past at least two displays of Kinderjoy eggs without caving. I was so proud of her.

In August I noticed a few volunteer tomato plants that were unaffected by blight. They are now ripening on the vines, still untouched by frost this late in the season. The dahlias are weak-stemmed and bowed down with the weight of the riotous blooms they keep putting out. They have fallen over all the other plantings in the bed, nearly smothering them. I cleared out most of the annuals and vegetables, and I planted my garlic yesterday under the stick trellis. If all goes to plan, the dill will volunteer there next year as well. The pine straw was hauled to our house one little lawn trailer load at a time from the neighbor’s generous pine trees. He has been mowing them into piles, so we picked them up, with promises to rake them up again as they fall. Everybody wins in this deal. Except the weeds. They lose.

I had some enormous Jerusalem artichokes that needed to be relocated, and when I dug them up, there were plenty of bulbs for us to sample them. We washed them well, then tossed them in olive oil and garlic seasoning before roasting them. They were deliciously nutty, yet soft like potatoes inside. I decided that they merited a nice long row along the privacy fence, so that in future we can forage from them again. Also, they grew tall as sunflowers, so they need a bit of a backdrop. Our neighbor on the other side of the fence is a lonely old man who peers through the cracks and visits when I am out in the garden. I tell him to come on over, and sometimes he does, but often he just stands there and talks through the fence while his yippy little dog bounces and barks around him. I made sure there are spots where he can still peek through to see the action once the flowers grow along the fence.

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A row of 8’s makes a fancy sort of divider. This is a day later, and I can’t remember how I was going to conclude that post, but I’ll give it a shot by looking back over pictures from the past week.

Gabriel just passed the ten year mark of working for UPMC. It (he? she?) has been a good employer, and we are grateful. In a gift bag with an assortment of thank-you’s for his service, there was this mug. I pulled it out and got the giggles. I think it’s supposed to be a joke for such a time as this, for a person in healthcare.

Last weekend was the annual training for ski patrollers on our familiar Blue Knob Mountain. We have camped there many times in the past while Gabe trained, but this year we asked some old friends to join us. These are people who were in our youth group, some were co-teachers, and all had babies around the same times as we did. There is a richness to these friendships that never change.

Usually the campground is nearly empty in October because it is always wet and cold on the mountain this time of year. To our surprise, it was teeming with campers. But we had a great time anyway. I thought I knew these trails about as well as I know our backyard, seeing as our family had hiked them many, many times in the past. But when the dog got away during a hike, I told my friend Michelle that I would join her and a passel of little hikers by using a short cut as soon as I had the dog leashed again. I ran back to camp, shut Lady into the vehicle, then ran my shortcut trail, only I had forgotten to tell her to look for a fork and stay right, so the crew ended up hiking a lot further than expected before I rejoined them. They stayed very cheerful, and it was warm, even though it was damp.