Plaster Fail

Today I had the idea that I would plaster my front entryway. To be more accurate, I was going to texture it with Topping Joint Compound in a holey-smooth texture. This requires the plaster to be loose and smooth.  I found a 5-gallon bucket of it on our back porch. (Which also doubles as a tool shed.)  I opened the bucket and realized that the compound was still great to use, it just had separated, with the water settled on top.  No problem! I would just mix it in.  I looked for something to mix it with and found a power-mixer.  Awesome! This should make it go faster and the mix would be more consistant in texture.  I plugged in the mixer and started, well, mixing up the compound.  Things were going good until I realized that a bunch of the plaster compound had settled towards the bottom of the bucket.  So I jammed the mixer to the bottom of the bucket to mix that in.  What I failed to realize is that nothing was holding the bucket in place.  So the bucket began to spin! It flung plaster in a 360 degree slop all around my back porch! I basically had white, powdery pudding dripping from garden shoes, paint buckets, shelving... gross! I just started laughing so hard! I wish that I had caught it on video! It was a total "fail" moment!

Jones came out and asked why I was laughing.  I said that it isn't worth it to be mad when I make mistakes, sometimes I just laugh about it and then fix it.  He stayed and "helped" me to clean the mess up.  He said "You should just call Dad to come clean it." I told him that I made the mess and I have to clean it up.  It was a good lesson for him to learn.  But then he taught me one in return.  I said, "When you make a mistake you can learn from it. Now I know what NOT to do."  Meaning that I would make sure that I held the bucket in place when I used the power mixer.  He said "Yeah, you learned to mix the plaster outside where it doesn't get everything messy!"  Touche'!  Humbly, I finished mixing the plaster outside.

Thanks!

     I know that it is a bit cliche' to talk about being grateful because it is November, the month of Thanksgiving.  But it is something that has definitely been on my mind lately.  Daniel and I have often talked about the idea of "placing your burdens at the feet of the Lord." What does that truely mean? How do you do that in a practical way? I know that I have only just begun to understand this concept but here are some things I have discovered.  
     The first lesson I have learned is to give thanks.  Everything that I am and everything I do is a gift from God.  This is a perspective that requires diligent tending.  It is so easy to start taking things for granted- to think I deserve this.  Or to think I'm not worthy of it.  Feeling entitled and feeling worthless are both deviations off the true path. Like any good parent, the Lord wants us to feel happy and blessed, but very grateful.  When I give service to my children, I do it out of love. They are my children and I want them to be happy. But as any parent can attest, a spoiled child who doesn't express gratitude or worse -complains, is less likely to get help until their attitude changes.  But just as heartbreaking, is a child who feels worthless. They have a difficult time accepting love because of the blinding, numbing affect of not feeling good enough.  They are stunted in their growth because they can't see the love and blessings that surround them.  The way to overcome being spoiled, entitled, or worthless  is to begin being thankful.        
     Some days are easy to find things to be thankful for: my family, my home, my neighbors, the schools my kids attend, their good teachers, my husband's job, my health.  These are obvious blessings.  Some days, when I battle depression, it is difficult to be thankful.  I have to start with being thankful for a beating heart, for breathing.  Then I can move on to sight, and sounds, for a comfortable bed, for the heater that kicked on, the hot water in my shower, and the soap that smells good.
     The trick to true gratitude is to find it in your heart.  It is easy to make a list.  But when you can feel it in your heart, imagining what it would be like to lack those blessings, then comes the change in your heart that gratitude can bring.  I have always thought that sympathy is knowing how someone feels because you can imagine it in your head.  But empathy is knowing how someone feels because you experience it in your heart.  True thankfulness allows for empathy to grow which allows for greater charity and love towards our fellow men.  When anger, callousness, impatience or sadness struggle to take over, true gratefulness, felt in the heart, is a comforting warmth that changes those feelings and helps to heal them.

Why Everyone Should Get A Carbon Monoxide Alarm

It was 7pm and we were finally sitting down to eat dinner. The kids were spooning up pasta and an alarm started beeping. I thought someone had left on the tv and asked Moni to go shut it off. She replied that it was "that dumb alarm thing upstairs."  The Carbon Monoxide alarm was beeping. We have had problems with it going off before- once was a false alarm, once because the battery was dead. I told her to go grab it for me. I checked the battery and pushed the test button and it stopped beeping. Hmmm. Oh well, I turned to the kids and we said a prayer to eat dinner. Just then Daniel came home and said "Why does the house smell like gas?"  None of us could smell it. We had been home all evening. He went around the house checking appliances and every pilot light was on. Then our neighbor Kim came knocking and asked why our house smelled of gas. She said she could smell it before we opened the door, it was so strong. She is taking EMT classes and they had just studied carbon monoxide poisoning. She told us that by the time you feel sick from it, it is very bad.  Daniel called the gas company, and we went to go hang out at Kim's house.  Within a few minutes of breathing fresh air, I started to feel dizzy and my head started hurting.  All the kids felt fine as we sat and watched a movie cuddled on Kim's couch.  The gas guy showed up with multiple gadgets and checked everything out.   I guess while cooking dinner, the pilot light on my 1950 oven had gone out and slowly filled the house with gas.  Because we were sitting in it, we were desensitized to the smell. It wasn't until breathing in fresh air could I even smell it in the house.  We were able to air out the house and every one went to bed last night, a bit more grateful for the safety alarms that we have.

A New Start

So I decided that maybe I should blog again. It has been a while since my Yahoo.360 account expired. This seemed like a good place to get going again. I don't have any grand intentions about this blog- just a place to share. It will take some time to get used to a new format, but I'm not afraid to learn. I guess I'll see what happens :)