Tag: dailyprompt

or maybe a Threefer…

This girl likes a deal! I go shopping for an item that I want and come home with a whole bag of other stuff… why? It was on sale! Today, I will answer the prompt and give you extra as well… why? As Castle says, “It’s what I do!”

Upon thinking over the years and what my goals and accomplishments might be, I find that I can actually name not just one… not just two… but three goals ladies and Gents… three!

The first goal was my children. I was told not to hope too much for a baby, due to permanent damage done by medications my mother took while pregnant with this girl. I conceived 8 times in my motherhood years, losing all but 3… but it was worth all of the effort, pain and struggle… They are such lovely creatures!

The second was to quit smoking tobacco… I started when I was 11 years old. I smoked for many years, stopping during the years of my childbearing goal. This girl did that part by the book, as they say! Finally, after 40 years I lay my last cigarette down and walked away.

It was one of the most difficult times and yet one of the sweetest. Why? Because God walked with me through the whole process. I was not alone through the night sweats, the headaches, nausea and agitation that comes with withdrawals. For the first time in many attempts at kicking the habit, I kind of just knew it was God removing this burden from my life… I had inner will power that had never been there before. Whatever you want to call it, I call it a Gift from my heavenly father.

The third goal was to write a book! Well, thanks to each and every person who stops by and visits the Lobby, I was able to finish writing my own story, which had been on my heart for many years. You kept coming back week after week to read the next part, so I found myself compelled to finish the painful parts. Thanks for that, by the way.

I always wanted to steal away somewhere quiet and serene and type out a story that maybe, just maybe would help another hurting soul. I never did find that special somewhere to write out my life, but I wrote it out none the less… and now I am diving into my next book! I cannot seem to stop writing, now that I’ve started.

This sort of stuff is what God can do, for me anyways. Not one of these goals could ever have been accomplished on my own, not my babies, my strength to kick the habit, or my ability to write. Every thread of my life belongs in His tapestry by his hand, not mine! There is so much power in surrender…

Maybe that got a bit heavy there for a minute so lets lighten the day back up with a treat.

Normally, I don’t give one named answers to these sort of inquiries, as I am not one to swoon over any particular artist verses another… I simply don’t think on it all that much.

However… if I were given no choice but to answer, well then, I choose Julie Andrews hands down!

I could give you a full list of all that the woman has accomplished, but I don’t intend to do so, because it would take me all day to look them all up and give you a rundown of each one . I will stick to my favorite of all favorites… The Sound of Music!

I’ll begin by saying that she made it look easy to raise that many kids at once, like she did in this movie. Maria could sing, she could dance, sew, tell bedtime stories, give young love advice, and hike! She was a trailblazer over those alps. A woman after my own heart!

When Julie Andrews sings, we can honestly say it seems like she is telling a story… like we do when we write. I raised my girls singing about raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens…

Julie brought Maria Von Trapp alive for millions of people, and I personally think this ability is what makes an Artist really great! I’ll bet she had you wanting to dance across that mountain field like she did, with a guitar in your hand. I know that I did!

I will tell you right now, it was that movie that gave me the idea to make my kids own clothes, so I taught myself how to sew and created my own design for the kids pajamas, rice filled teddy bears for colds and flus, and even a pull over fleece dog jacket for our furry family members. I suppose she gave me some creative inspiration.

Anyway, Julie Andrews is my pick for a fav, but let this not reflect poorly on any other artist out there… aren’t we all artists of one make or another?

Have a cup of tea… I am nervous over my eye appointment this morning so I am not hungry… besides, I don’t know about all you but all the sweets lately are making my teeth hurt, so for today it is simply tea. I have an assortment of flavors for you to pick from, so take your time and find your favorite flavor… mine is peppermint.

There are so many unbelievably wonderful things to choose for my favorite, that I am not sure it is possible to pick just one, so I shall go against the stream and say Passion is my favorite pastime.

The purpose of choosing Passion for my hobby stems from the idea of selecting anything I want for a pastime as long as it stokes the flames of my inner fire. That place within the soul that comes to life as you pursue your dreams… I am sure you know of what I speak.

My soul will rise to the surface of life’s waters, by passion brought about from activities of many kinds. I have traveled, I love to cook and bake, I can sew and crotchet, I have grown gardens, I homeschooled my three girls for nearly 5 years when they were small, I have bred and raised dogs, cats, and horses… see, the list goes on and on… Passions.

I am not able to do most of those things anymore, due to age and life interuptus, but that which does not kill us will make us stronger, as they say. Where there is a passion there is a way… and baby I got A LOT of Passion! Why? Cause I got Jesus, that’s why!

As you may have noticed, I have yet to included this blog or even the ability to write, among our choices and it’s for a very good reason. I suppose you could say writing is, in fact, considered a pastime or hobby… as I am sure, for some, this may be true… just not for this human.

For this woman of Faith, writing is so much more than a passion because of the one whom I am most often writing about… God! It’s my father in whom I find myself constantly writing about, talking about, singing about, and dreaming about, and I shall make no apologies for being a Jesus Spammer.

So, to sum things up for you… Jesus is who I am, and stays off the table for a pastime or hobby, and I choose Passion for my hobby so that I can pick whatever I want. I am such a rebel!

One of my favorite baking passions is Cheesecake, to be specific, my homemade Snickers Cheesecake. In honor of this we shall all share in some …

I will not bore you with another day of history on our story after Covid, but I will say that I have learned to start storing up my possessions with the Bank of Almighty. Once I started putting my important treasures into this Safe Deposit Box, I have not had issues with losing things anymore. You should consider trying it!

I have adopted a different viewpoint in regards to possessions, as I literally had to, if truth be told. Letting go of material things is hard to do, so hard in fact, it took loosing everything to discover I had misplaced my priorities of what was truly important on my journey. My walk with God, my marriage to my best friend, loving my children and grandchildren with all my heart, and writing to you every day… these things are really all I care about.

I find it sort of funny that the acronym KISS is actually the best way to consider the whole affair… the God part, the possessions part, and the life part. Keep it Simple Stupid!

Have a candy…

When my husband and I married 17 years ago, one of the first places we lived in was a mobile home. No, I am not going to talk smack about the industry itself… just the houses we actually lived in. Throughout the years we lived in a good many places… some regular houses and some with wheels, as I like to say. I decided early on that I wanted a REAL house… NO WHEELS.

I have written before of some past experiences in trailers… you know… the Kool-Aid Ant Party in my mouth, or the spider and the shoe, and we can’t forget the hole beneath the bunkbed story. After those days, I actually remember saying that I would NEVER live in a House with Wheels ever again!

Let’s do a quick pic of the way things went since then. We spent 5 years living on wheels, with my husband driving a Semi Tractor Trailer from one end of this beautiful country to the other… coast to coast. I thought that it would be hard, but in truth, we made some wonderful memories and I loved the freedom of movement. We eventually bought our first real home… no wheels… in a small town outside of Roanoke, Virginia. It was small and did not have even one matching doorway… I was in love! I called it my crooked house!

When Covid forced the shutdown, my husbands company decided to take this opportunity to file false claims of termination for over a third of their employees… trying to slow the process of paying out benefits to those that earned them. Unemployment stopped answering their phones… money dried up… local resources became exhausted. We fell through every legal gap there was to be found in this country. We were not finished paying off our Rent to Own home, so we were evicted when it was not even legal. I will always feel a pang of sorrow, every time I remember that Sherriff posting our 72 hour notice on the front door of my tiny crooked house.

We gave away everything we possessed to any local person willing to walk through and take what they wanted. I was not about to let anybody sell and make money off kicking us to the curb, so we gave it all away.

It was literally less than a week after loosing everything we had, Unemployment called back… thanks for nothing guys! We never received even half of what we were owed from the government, and my husband was desperate for a way to survive this garbage. He took what we got from his unemployment and bought us an RV.

WHEELS! Why does it always have to have wheels God?

I won’t bore you with details anymore, but needless to say, I have come full circle since that day we moved away from the Kool-aid ant hole house with wheels. Not only do we still live in that same old RV we bought, but guess where we live? We rest our heads not 5 blocks away from where we started years before.

Not only have we ended up back where we started, I find that I would not want to live any other way, besides traveling in our house with wheels! I can say without a doubt that I have changed my mind on this issue… It’s WHEELS FOR ME!

Have a traveling snack…

From the time I was a small girl, I felt out of place… like I didn’t fit into this world. It did not help being raised in a dysfunctional family, and then having the world ignore it. Add to that, the fact that my family were of a certain religious belief, that we didn’t celebrate a single secular holiday… not one! I got teases, picked on, beat up and ostracized by everyone that I encountered in public, yay me!

That being said, the daily prompt question brought about a different thought for me, and I will share…

Look at the life of Jesus. Can you imagine being born into a world where everyone around you knew that your mom got pregnant, but not by her soon to be hubby. I know that there were a good many years of difference in the way society functions, but I am sure that gossip was still gossip no matter how far back we want to go.

Jesus was not only born with this little blip on his moms record, but then he arrived into our world in a barn. The babe could not even crawl yet and there was a king already trying to kill him… just for being born. The God of ages stepped down from glory to change the world, and they wanted to kill him.

Jesus walked his entire life with folks wanting to discredit him, make him look a fool, and finally just kill him to make Him go away. And yet He saved the world, walking a life of perfection and love!

If Jesus could walk his whole life in the skin he was born with, for a purpose not his own, then I too can walk my life in this skin I was born wearing. Besides, with Jesus always walking with me… my skin feels pretty good!

That is the purpose of The Lobby… a place for anyone to visit and never feel out of place. I may not have a full understanding of what Christ went through in his life, but I know enough about feeling like the odd man out all the time. God is always in my lobby and no one will ever feel out of place when they are in His presence…

Have a cookie…

Don’t judge the strange treat… have you ever tried to find a picture of a cookie with a SKIN theme? This little piggie was as close as I could get.

Are you kidding… it would be a dream for me, you see… traveling around in our house with wheels. Wherever we travel, there would be libraries filled with those seeking knowledge and adventure… no computers to glean research, read about other people and places in the world, or travel virtually to get away from it all, as they say.

Without computer technology there would be no smart phones, so it is safe for one to assume that mobile phones are also on the no fly list here. Can you imagine having a house of 3 to 5 kids with only a television and public school for child size learning. You are going to look forward to my visits to your community, aren’t you?

I can just imagine being able to hold a book in my hand… slowly turning the pages as I read. Young minds on fire with the adventurous tales I weave, head home to build their own pirate ships in backyards and neighborhood parks… usually with blankets, sticks, and anything in the garage that looks like it might work.

I must admit that I have had a love affair with books for my whole life… well, for as long as I can remember anyways. I spent as much time as possible in either the school library or the public one. I even had a job once in a library, but it was mutually agreed upon that I was not suited for that work… I would get so comfortable and cozy every time I put books away, I simply fell asleep on the rolling chair that pushed me back and forth along the rows of books. This occurred numerous times. Don’t judge! It was just so doggone quiet!

As I am a writer and do pretty much all of my storytelling on my computer, I will admit that it would take some adjusting for me to switch back to writing with pen and ink, but F.Y.I. I would do in in a heartbeat gladly. Well, that is if you all showed up at your local book hub to join me when I came to town. We could go back to the days where a trip to the library was an event… mine usually kicked off with a trip to A&W for burgers fries and a root beer float. Then it was off to the library for a fill up on the maximum number of books allowed for check out. There was often a librarian reading out loud in the children’s section, for any little ones curious enough to gather around.

I continued this tradition with my children for all of their young years, trying to imprint the same emotions and memories for them… dragging them to the library each week. I say dragging them because, apart from them checking out the books they wanted, they were bored to tears. Where I had memories of wonderful adventures, there was now a cell phone. Unfortunately, as useful as computer technology is, there are many not so useful side effects of such advancement.

We are LAZY by nature folks… and I will admit that I am not immune, which is why I said WE! Currently we are in a time where an Artificial Human can live inside your smart phone or system and do pretty much anything you want it to, and you don’t even have to type… SIRI what time is it? Alexa what is on the news? See what I mean?

Humans scare easy too! All one has to do is imagine life without a computer and the panic sets in… you mean we might have to engage in face to face human interaction to get anything accomplished? Lord have mercy… what will things come to if we did that? Then again distance is what probably keeps more world peace… because sometimes people do things that make me want to flick their ear.

Back to the prompt question I was supposed to be answering, perhaps if we went to a place of no computers, we could undo many of our own bad habits… perhaps not! Humans will be humans in whatever form we allow the world to shape us into, both good or bad. The goal should be to become better, smarter and healthier regardless of how far we can advance technology.

Here have a CHIP… hahahahahahahahaha… get it… computer chip…

What skill would you like to learn?

I am sitting in bed watching my husband single handedly replace the whole floor in our RV. He is also replacing the desk area so I have more of an office to work.

I want to help, but I would be more in the way than any help. Still, though, it hardly seems fair to just watch.

If it were possible, I would really like to know how to utilize household tools and such… to be more helpful.

It’s funny that he just happened to drop a new Samsung Tablet into the grocery food bag on the kitchen counter last week. This is the only way I can work right now, so I think he was planning ahead.

In a way, I guess I have learned a new skill… using this tiny lightweight wonder has been my schoolwork this last week. It’s pretty amazing, and I can even type on a little separate keyboard.

While it can’t handle all of my writing, it certainly works in a pinch for answering prompts, as well as navigating the reader with great ease.

As far as learning tools, maybe I will just let my husband handle the big stuff, and I will stick to the power of the pen!

As for the new floor, I will take pictures for you… it is so beautiful!

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

Since my life’s details have already been attended to, there really isn’t much I could mention that’s worth paying more attention to aside from maybe one.

It is rather small but then again rather big. It might seem rather hard at times, but it’s actually rather simple.

To do or not to do, with the operable word being Do!

Doing good, doing right, doing that which edifies others, and doing what I know I should even when it’s hard.

In the end, I want to pay more attention to the details of doing unto others as I would have them do to me… as the good book says.

I will start this morning off by DOING you a solid and making breakfast for us…

I personally prefer the saying, “Why put off tomorrow, what you can do today”?

In the overall scheme of things, the idea of focusing on tomorrow is not going to help anyone, so I will stick to the plan of doing what I can with what I have at the moment… make it work in the here and now!

In the simple literal way of things… mind your manners WordPress, it is none of your business!

Here, have some waffles…