I had an interesting conversation with an American this weekend. I said I loved the flowers at a specific place and started taking photos of them. The person responded that I should plant some flowers myself to enjoy here at our flat.
We live on the 3rd floor.
Plant some in front in your entrance area anyway.
The entrance area is cared for by/belongs to someone else.
Plant some on your balcony.
We have a grapevine that covers our balcony that blocks most of the sunlight. Plus, I'd have to find the dirt, carry it up to our flat, buy some small pots and then find the flowers, etc.
(All of this IS do-able, of course, if I could find shade loving blooming plants that fit in a 3 inch pot.)
Well, just find some pots and plant some flowers!
So, this morning, I look out at the balcony, all of 2 feet wide, with bars all around like a cage, and my sheets and pillow cases out there, blowing gently in the breeze from one side to the other, the grapevine covering most of the bars, the railing all of 3 inches wide, all of the sticks/linoleum/boards I had collected to make triangle-shaped shelves each summer across the 2 railing corners thrown away by an over-zealous housekeeper who stayed here 2 years ago while we were in the States - and I just kind of laugh to myself. It's a slightly hysterical laugh, I admit.
I throw up my mental hands and say - you gotta live here, you gotta walk 10 miles in my shoes - and THEN you can tell me what I can and cannot do, am able or not able to do. I've lived in this flat for over 10 years and I've tried a number of things, including trying to grow ginger out on the balcony and trying to keep a sun/shade loving houseplant alive out there with the a/c unit blowing hot air on it all summer.
I gave up and love the grapevine instead.
Sigh.
I really did like those flowers and I liked taking photos of them, and I like looking at them on my computer screen.
The balcony, however, will remain flower-less.
Two more of my house plants have died due to the neglect they got last year while we were gone. I've just put the planters out on the balcony in a corner with the other ones. One of these days I'll give them all away or throw them away.
I've given up for now.
I am going to have a large garden in heaven.
I hope.
On the other front - one of the female guppies committed suicide while we were gone this weekend. Finally found her poor dried out lifeless body this morning, hiding in one of the designs on the carpet. There are a whole bunch more tiny guppies in the pond with the remaining male and female, tho, so maybe she had just 'had enough' of mating and motherhood? :) ha ha!
Showing posts with label fish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fish. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
My Critters
I have a few critters here in our flat. Some I do not want to show you - like the spider I tried and tried to kill a couple days ago but it escaped me anyway, through a crack between the window and window frame. Or the ants in the kitchen that come and go now and then. Or the flies. Oh what the heck... I have photos of them all! Why don't I show them to you? :) :) :)
My cat, Cheyenne, sunning herself in the doorway to the balcony, in the morning before it gets too hot. Her fur is a little scruffy in this photo - she's lost a lot of fur this summer due to the heat, I think. Also, she's an Old Lady Cat now, 12.5 years old! Hard to believe, but true.
Supervising my last weaving project, which still is not completely finished, so I haven't posted about it yet, but I will! She has her own little pillow to sit/lay on while she makes sure I'm doing it all correctly.
My goopies! The Russian pronunciation of guppies. :) :) Yes, I finally broke down and bought 3. Two females and one male. Aren't they pretty? (I had to darken the photo, tho, to bring out the colors because through the water they look rather pale and gray. Also, you can't see the male's tale in this photo - it's orange and black and much larger than the female's tails. Just regular, normal guppies like at your local pet store in America.)
And yes, they do reproduce. They also eat their young. :( But this one has survived so far!
They are really hard to photograph, darting here and there, somewhat scared of me still. I think there might be one other one in there right now, but I also am pretty sure that when I went to feed them this morning that I saw one of the females eat one. So...who knows how many babies are really in there? :)
We've only had one dragonfly in the flat this summer, not like the hordes we had a couple of summers ago! Maybe because the balcony door has been closed much of the summer due to the heat and high humidity?
Flies, flies, flies. Everywhere on the underside of the window bars in the bedroom window. So weird. They 'rest' there for long parts of the day. Sometimes they come in through the open window and rest inside. I could only see one today however, but this is what they do:
I like it when they stay outside. It is interesting to see them there sometimes. I've counted up to 13, some in groups of 2 or 3, others in a line, and some just here and there.
Ants! Yes, we have ants, especially in the spring. Oh my! They were all over the flat at one point. I'd be sitting here at the desk and realize an ant was crawling up my arm. Only found them in the bedroom once, but they are in the livingroom (we eat there) and of course, all over the kitchen. I did take a photo of them on the trash can, but you don't want to see that one. :) :) This is the kitchen wall, and I think that is a tiny piece of frozen spinach they found. After I took this photo, the poor little things just slowly slipped back down the wall a couple inches. I felt sorry for them and left. I have no idea if they ever made it UP the wall, where they were trying to go when I so rudely interrupted them.
This photo was from May. They are mostly gone again now. I wonder where they come from? I wonder where they go? I have no idea. I've tried to find where their trail ends, but it seems to be behind the cupboard - maybe through a nail hole into the wall? The walls are made of stone "bricks" that have holes like very hole-y Swiss cheese (less weight in multi-story buildings). I always think of the ants in Proverbs when I see them, and try to remember that I'm supposed to be like them.
And of course, there are the birds that come and sit on the balcony bars and clothesline, or even on the windowsill and peek in at me, too. :) This is one, another one actually poked his little head up over the window sill and looked me over real good before flying away. Others have sat on the bars and watched me. Should I be scared of The Birds? :) :) haha!
Spider alert!!!! If you don't like spiders, don't scroll down!
Ok, I did not get a photo of the spider, did not even think of taking one (but I should so I can identify it!!). But here is it's web - I did take a photo of the web the day before, in the sunlight. Left it so I could hopefully find the spider and kill it. The web is gone now, the spider, unfortunately, is not. :(
Yikes! I finally really looked at this photo and what do I see???? The spider!!! Took 2 photos and it's in both of them, but this is the best picture. Do you know what kind it is? Ei yi yi. Gives me 'the creep out' just looking at it!! I've got to kill it.
Ooops! Almost forgot this guy, a victim of the spider who lives between the windows in the office room (the other one was the livingroom spider - I have got to clean between the windows again!!! but I can't in the livingroom until the a/c unit is put away for the winter.) He appeared overnight in the window.
PS - Am I nuts???
hahahahahahahahaha
My cat, Cheyenne, sunning herself in the doorway to the balcony, in the morning before it gets too hot. Her fur is a little scruffy in this photo - she's lost a lot of fur this summer due to the heat, I think. Also, she's an Old Lady Cat now, 12.5 years old! Hard to believe, but true.
My goopies! The Russian pronunciation of guppies. :) :) Yes, I finally broke down and bought 3. Two females and one male. Aren't they pretty? (I had to darken the photo, tho, to bring out the colors because through the water they look rather pale and gray. Also, you can't see the male's tale in this photo - it's orange and black and much larger than the female's tails. Just regular, normal guppies like at your local pet store in America.)
We've only had one dragonfly in the flat this summer, not like the hordes we had a couple of summers ago! Maybe because the balcony door has been closed much of the summer due to the heat and high humidity?
Flies, flies, flies. Everywhere on the underside of the window bars in the bedroom window. So weird. They 'rest' there for long parts of the day. Sometimes they come in through the open window and rest inside. I could only see one today however, but this is what they do:
Ants! Yes, we have ants, especially in the spring. Oh my! They were all over the flat at one point. I'd be sitting here at the desk and realize an ant was crawling up my arm. Only found them in the bedroom once, but they are in the livingroom (we eat there) and of course, all over the kitchen. I did take a photo of them on the trash can, but you don't want to see that one. :) :) This is the kitchen wall, and I think that is a tiny piece of frozen spinach they found. After I took this photo, the poor little things just slowly slipped back down the wall a couple inches. I felt sorry for them and left. I have no idea if they ever made it UP the wall, where they were trying to go when I so rudely interrupted them.
And of course, there are the birds that come and sit on the balcony bars and clothesline, or even on the windowsill and peek in at me, too. :) This is one, another one actually poked his little head up over the window sill and looked me over real good before flying away. Others have sat on the bars and watched me. Should I be scared of The Birds? :) :) haha!
Spider alert!!!! If you don't like spiders, don't scroll down!
Ok, I did not get a photo of the spider, did not even think of taking one (but I should so I can identify it!!). But here is it's web - I did take a photo of the web the day before, in the sunlight. Left it so I could hopefully find the spider and kill it. The web is gone now, the spider, unfortunately, is not. :(
Ooops! Almost forgot this guy, a victim of the spider who lives between the windows in the office room (the other one was the livingroom spider - I have got to clean between the windows again!!! but I can't in the livingroom until the a/c unit is put away for the winter.) He appeared overnight in the window.
PS - Am I nuts???
hahahahahahahahaha
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
What I've Been Doing, Part 1
I'm having a bit of a problem uploading photos today. Hope this eventually works!! Very frustrating, to say the least.
Oh my - 10 days without blogging. Yikes! And I'm not even in the States playing with my grandkids. I think I need to post a whole lot of photos, not just the ones I was originally going to post. Oh well - we'll see what happens.
I've been busy. Busy working on this room. I totally rearranged it, except for the desk. I'm going to keep this desk so I can look out the window at the trees and sky and birds and clouds. Don't want to look at the wall. Don't want to look at the rest of the room. I want to look 'free'!!
I left the shkaf where it is - it's too heavy to even consider moving unless I totally empty it and have Mel move it in pieces. So, it stays where it's at. However, I did clean it out again. Seems like I'm always cleaning it out.
But I moved the bed, and I moved the table, and I moved the empty and full of winter clothes now suitcases and I moved the empty boxes. And I threw away 2 full boxes of old video cassettes that we don't watch anymore, but kept another box full of ones we might watch again. The throw-aways were recorded off of tv - Columbo, Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder. Kind of sad to see them go - but I needed the room!
We are downsizing. The greater team is downsizing. We are letting the office lease go. That means that all of Mel's books, and anything else we have downstairs in that room, need to come up here and go into storage here.
Ei Yi Yi. We do NOT live in a large flat to start with, so I needed to make room. I'm going to have to go through boxes and shelves of books next and get rid of books. Many books. Books that are so-so but I might read them again will go. I'm not sure where they will go, but they are going. Probably in bags out by the dumpster to someone can haul them off and sell them as used books in the market. That's fine with me. I will tear apart any that I don't want sold (we've been given a few books that are questionable - and I've bought a few that looked good, but when I started reading them, I ended up knowing that I won't share them with anyone, so into the trash they will go. Unfortunately, sometimes I just set them aside later to rip them apart and they end up getting shuffled back into the mix....) So, I need to go through at least 2 boxes of books and a whole bookcase and discard with a fury. Then, I'll have room for Mel's books - seminary books, theology books, study books, just for fun books that he has.
We like books.
haha
So, it took me at least 3 days to get the room where I have it now. And it will take a few more days for me to get inspired to do the books next. But in the process, I also weeded out old papers. I killed the shredder by plugging it into an extension cord without a transformer. Whew! The room stank for days! It sure did work really fast until I got it unplugged, however - like a chainsaw roaring away over there on the table! Poor thing. But I killed it in the process. 220v does not do good things to 110v electrical appliances and machines. So, all of the stuff I weeded out I had to shred by hand. Some I just tore into pieces, but names, addresses, dollar amounts, receipts no longer needed, etc. all got cut into tiny pieces and thrown out. Of course, two bags out in the dumpster were very appealing to someone who tore them open, rummaged through them and then left them for the garbage men to scatter all over the place when the dumpster emptied into the garbage truck. :( sigh. Looking out there and seeing that bright neon pink paper in the middle of scattered tiny pieces and knowing it was mine was not encouraging, but embarrassing. Should have taken a photo but didn't think of it, so here's a photo of what's out there right now (not ours!).
On Monday this week, Mel and I went over to Nova Linea. As you can see from this photo, we've had some dark, gray clouds recently and a couple of very heavy rainstorms. There was a little lightning and thunder, but not much. Mostly heavy rains. We really needed that rain, tho - it's been very dry. Fortunately, the temps also dropped, way down into the low '60's. Unheard of for summer here! :) I'm glad they dropped. It's been wonderful.
Along with other things, I bought a new fountain at Nova Linea. It's not as pretty as my blue jug fountain, but it has a light! and that is something I was trying to figure out - how to get a light to shine down into the pond so I can see the fish some day when I get fish again.
Mel helped me fill it with filtered water and in the process we discovered that the room is not level. Really? A room not level? Here in Ukraine? Wow. I'm shocked. Not. No, not shocked, just very sarcastic. :P How did we find this out, you ask? Well, we were filling it to the top so that the water would be deep enough for the fountain to circulate the pond water, not just the fountain bowl water - and the close side is apparently about an inch lower than the far side. Good grief. Water everywhere cuz we were watching the far side, not the near side. :) (Sounds like a comic strip or something.) I plan to get a couple guppies or maybe 3 or 4 goldfish to put in it on Friday or Saturday. Right now the water is sitting, recycling through the fountain and de-gassing or whatever it does while it conditions for fish. I'm hoping that whatever was left on the sides of the pond and on the rocks of the algea and stuff that fish need will "come back to life" and grow again and make it ready faster than if it was all brand new or freshly scrubbed (I didn't scrub any of it for that reason). We'll see.
And what else have I been doing? Well, that's for another post!
Oh my - 10 days without blogging. Yikes! And I'm not even in the States playing with my grandkids. I think I need to post a whole lot of photos, not just the ones I was originally going to post. Oh well - we'll see what happens.
I've been busy. Busy working on this room. I totally rearranged it, except for the desk. I'm going to keep this desk so I can look out the window at the trees and sky and birds and clouds. Don't want to look at the wall. Don't want to look at the rest of the room. I want to look 'free'!!
I left the shkaf where it is - it's too heavy to even consider moving unless I totally empty it and have Mel move it in pieces. So, it stays where it's at. However, I did clean it out again. Seems like I'm always cleaning it out.
Well "always" is too broad of a term. It's more like "whenever we get ready to go home, I clean out the shkaf" in this room. I seldom put anything in the cupboards and on the shelves any more, so I don't know why it always needs to be cleaned - but there you have it.
But I moved the bed, and I moved the table, and I moved the empty and full of winter clothes now suitcases and I moved the empty boxes. And I threw away 2 full boxes of old video cassettes that we don't watch anymore, but kept another box full of ones we might watch again. The throw-aways were recorded off of tv - Columbo, Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder. Kind of sad to see them go - but I needed the room!
We are downsizing. The greater team is downsizing. We are letting the office lease go. That means that all of Mel's books, and anything else we have downstairs in that room, need to come up here and go into storage here.
Ei Yi Yi. We do NOT live in a large flat to start with, so I needed to make room. I'm going to have to go through boxes and shelves of books next and get rid of books. Many books. Books that are so-so but I might read them again will go. I'm not sure where they will go, but they are going. Probably in bags out by the dumpster to someone can haul them off and sell them as used books in the market. That's fine with me. I will tear apart any that I don't want sold (we've been given a few books that are questionable - and I've bought a few that looked good, but when I started reading them, I ended up knowing that I won't share them with anyone, so into the trash they will go. Unfortunately, sometimes I just set them aside later to rip them apart and they end up getting shuffled back into the mix....) So, I need to go through at least 2 boxes of books and a whole bookcase and discard with a fury. Then, I'll have room for Mel's books - seminary books, theology books, study books, just for fun books that he has.
We like books.
haha
So, it took me at least 3 days to get the room where I have it now. And it will take a few more days for me to get inspired to do the books next. But in the process, I also weeded out old papers. I killed the shredder by plugging it into an extension cord without a transformer. Whew! The room stank for days! It sure did work really fast until I got it unplugged, however - like a chainsaw roaring away over there on the table! Poor thing. But I killed it in the process. 220v does not do good things to 110v electrical appliances and machines. So, all of the stuff I weeded out I had to shred by hand. Some I just tore into pieces, but names, addresses, dollar amounts, receipts no longer needed, etc. all got cut into tiny pieces and thrown out. Of course, two bags out in the dumpster were very appealing to someone who tore them open, rummaged through them and then left them for the garbage men to scatter all over the place when the dumpster emptied into the garbage truck. :( sigh. Looking out there and seeing that bright neon pink paper in the middle of scattered tiny pieces and knowing it was mine was not encouraging, but embarrassing. Should have taken a photo but didn't think of it, so here's a photo of what's out there right now (not ours!).
On Monday this week, Mel and I went over to Nova Linea. As you can see from this photo, we've had some dark, gray clouds recently and a couple of very heavy rainstorms. There was a little lightning and thunder, but not much. Mostly heavy rains. We really needed that rain, tho - it's been very dry. Fortunately, the temps also dropped, way down into the low '60's. Unheard of for summer here! :) I'm glad they dropped. It's been wonderful.
And what else have I been doing? Well, that's for another post!
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
FO and Complaining
Emotionally, I'm at a breaking point right now. Maybe because I have not been writing? Processing my thoughts in print rather than holding them in and/or verbalizing them? I do a lot better when I write. Whatever. I feel like a basket case right now.
Frustrated with myself. Angry with myself over several things. Sad. Feeling like just giving up on everything. Now.
I wanted to go to Last Bell at the orphanage this year, to say goodbye to the kids who were graduating in my Sunday school class. And I forgot all about it. Until Mel looked out the window and said, "There goes a little girl with a white puffy thing on her head. Must be all dressed up for Last Bell." Or something along those lines (little girl, white puffy thing on head). There was no way, at that point, that I was going to be able to get to the orphanage in less than 5 minutes.
Beat my self up mentally, royally, for the next several days. Anger at myself. Plain and simple. Dispair because I seem to fail so often at simple things - like making it to Last Bell on time, once a year - forgetting it was actually going to happen.
My eye is not doing well. I can barely see out of it at all now. Well, I can see colors and large shapes, and they are perfect in shade and probably size - but how far away is the item/person/animal? And what are the details - like does the person/animal actually have a face - or just a blurry pink blob with brown/black/white blob on top (human) or, well, I can't even see that much of animals, so ... If Cheyenne is laying in my loom, while I'm tying the ends of the scarf on the table in front of her, I can close my left eye, look at her beautiful white blob of fur and tell she has pinkish bumps on top of what I think is her head, so that would make them ears, and if she opens her eyes, I can see that she has yellow and black dots under those pinkish bumps so I figure that's her eyes, and of course there is the pink dot in the center below the yellow and black dots, so that must be her nose - but that's about it.
And it makes me so angry! So angry that I went through the cataract surgery and could see so well, tho definitely not 100% due to the tear/scar in the macula, but I could SEE again and now I can't!!!
So, Mel asks me if I've looked it up on the internet and I say no (because I'm too scared and too angry and too full of self-pity) and he tells me I should because maybe this is "normal" or can be fixed or something.
So I do. I look it up and voila! It may be a simple thing that can be fixed with laser surgery and is common. And I feel better immediately. And I feel angry at myself for being so stupid and putting myself through the pain of fear of the unknown. And I won't have some Ukrainian "doctor" doing laser surgery on my eye, so what to do? What to do? (Throws mental hands up in the air in frustration and self-pity rears it's ugly head and self preservation tries deperately to push it back down, stomp on it, kill it before it takes over my whole life.)
We came back to Ukraine and my fish were all dead, the pond stuck back in the back room. A few weeks after returning I accidently broke the fountain - which caused me a great deal of self-recrimination because I really did like that fountain a lot. The color of the blue glass was beautiful, the sound of the fountain running was soothing - I liked that fountain a LOT. And I broke it doing something stupid.
I kind of expected the fish to be dead because we'd been gone so long and I knew no one was hear for days at a time.
What I did not expect at all - and maybe I should have - is that most of my plants would be dead.
This has caused me no end of anger, grief, self-pity, frustration in a number of areas and just plain "I give up, I'm never going to have plants again, no one ever brings me flowers, no one cares about what I like, no one likes me, I don't like me, I'm going to throw out all of my plants/pots/vases because why bother they are just going to die/break anyway" and on and on until I'm sick of myself.
Now these thoughts don't go through my mind all the time. No, usually only when I'm already feeling down for some other reason. Or when I water what's left of my plants. Or when I finally decided to put away all the pots that just have dead dirt and sticks in them now. But let's face it - I'm angry that my plants died. Angry. I make a home here in Ukraine - and the things I do to make it my home die from neglect. Even my cat is different now.
I rail/rale (how is that spelled??) against God: "You take everything away from me!!! My grandkids, my kids, my parents, my fish, my plants, other things in my life that are important to me, being able to teach kids in a language I can actually speak, mountains, my country, my eyesight, my knees (and on and on ad nauseum). It's YOUR FAULT, God!" I kick against the goad. I shake my fist, stamp my mental foot and feel oh, so sorry for poor me.
I'm disgusted with my self, actually.
I am so glad God is patient. And I'm so glad He forgives. And I'm so glad that I really do, deep in my heart, believe that He loves me. And somehow, I really do believe, somehow, someway, this is all "good" for me. I don't get it. I'm still mad about a lot of it. I still want to throw all my pots off the balcony in a fit of temper (which I guess is better than wanting to throw Cheyenne off the balcony, or throw the pots at Mel for some unknown reason). I just wish it was different. I want my life to be easier. If I'm going to live in Ukraine - why can't I have plants? Other people do. Why can't I have fish and a pond? Other people do. Why can't I see better?
Oh, I am so tired. So very, very tired.
I would want to go home - but I have no home to go home to. Home is here. Home is where Mel is. Home is exactly the place where I'm supposed to be right now and I am there.
I guess I'll go empty the washer and hang out the clothes on the balcony to dry. That's the next thing. And then - maybe I'll try and find another scarf pattern to work on later tonight.
We'll see.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
It is a bright, sunny, blue sky kind of day. Beautiful outside. The wind is blowing, a fairly stiff breeze right now. Mel went to the store and I am here alone at the moment, balcony door wide open, listening to Galena Downstairs talk from her balcony to someone on the street. Dogs are barking, I can hear the heavy traffic from on the other side of our building and the washer in working away in the kitchen. Everything is "normal".
So, tell me - why do I have this overwhelming, at times, feeling of dread?
I am waiting.
Expectant.
Wondering.
What is going to happen next?
This feeling actually started 3 or 4 days ago. I went to bed the other night expecting to see in the morning that there had been another big earthquake somewhere in the world. In fact, over the next day, there were several 6.0 and above quakes in various parts of the world, but mostly, of course, in Japan. I'm still waiting for another big one. I really do think it's going to happen. I even dreamed about it.
Last night, just before we went to bed, FoxNews posted an article on George Soros and what he is doing right now. Why Are the Media Ignoring Plans By George Soros to Remake the Entire Global Economy? Not something you want to read just before you go to sleep. I had nightmares off and on all night, and I usually do not have bad dreams. These dreams actually had to do with the Union Printers' Home in Colorado Springs - a place I grew up near. Unsettling dreams, uncomfortable dreams, scary dreams of a place I have never been inside and have really paid no attention to since I was, what? 15 years old?? Somehow it was all tied to Soros. But back to Soros himself, I told Mel this morning as we were discussing what is going on, that I believe this man is controlled by something outside of this world, and I'm NOT talking about space aliens! God is controlling him, but in that, it is very possible that God has given him over to Satan for Satan to use during these last days.
In writing all of that above, with his power today, I wonder if these words will come to him or to someone high in his organization? It is probable - the internet is wide-open for any one to read. Therefore, George Soros, you need to confess your sin, repent and ask Jesus Christ to forgive you and save you. Now. Before it is too late. That time is coming very soon. Christ is returning very soon to judge the inhabitants of the earth, both the living and those who have already died!
It has been a while since I've read in the main stream media about mass animal deaths. That is part of the reason I read that other website I wrote about a day or two ago. The mass animal deaths have not stopped. Just this morning there are two more reports about fish kills. They are labeled as being "natural" due to fish not getting enough oxygen due to ... fill in the blank. Birds are dying, fish are dying, porposes and dolphins are dying. The sea and the sky creatures are dying in unusual numbers. And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. Genesis 1:20-23
The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Revelation 8:8,9
Sometimes I feel like we are experiencing a mini-tribulation period, like God is giving us a taste of what is to come. But is anyone listening? Is anyone paying attention?
Actually, I have wondered recently if we are actually in the Tribulation period and it only seems to us that things are not all that bad. Maybe things really are that bad and we just are not aware of it yet? With the tsunami destroying boats and ships, as well as houses and other buildings on land, with the reactor in Japan spewing out radiation in the air, on land and sea, with Chernobyl still hot and a very real and present danger to the world ... The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water — the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.Revelation 8:10,11
Last summer huge swathes of the world burned - Alaska, Russia, the US. Actually, over the past few years even more has burned - Australia, Greece, other parts of Europe. Add it all together and a large percent of the earth's surface has burned in the past 10 years or less. The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. Revelation 8:7
I no longer believe in a literal seven year tribulation, but rather in a perfect time period of tribulation.
What is happening in the Middle East? Every day we hear of more unrest, more people killed, more violence. Some of it is unimaginable. And what of the violence and horror that has happened in the past 100 years? Nazi Germany killing people and doing experiements on humans that are unbelievable in their horror. People doing that to other people. And recently I listened to a sermon by a young man who talked about what the Japanese did to his Korean people, as well as Chinese and other nationalities in that part of the world, before and during World War II. The reports are that their experiments on living human beings of ALL ages, including newborn babies - those experiments made Nazi German experiments throw-up when they toured the facilities. I was totally sickened myself, and I have no idea what those experiments were, nor do I want to know. I know enough of what the Nazi's did from all the reading I did when I was in high school (including QB VII, by Leon Uris - I've never forgotten that book).
I know that God is not finished with the country of Israel yet. I do not believe the Dispensational point of view exactly, nor do I believe that there is any way for Israel to be saved other than belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. But God is still working in that country, in those people. I have a feeling that things are literally going to explode there very soon. And it is going to be horrible and amazing at the same time.
So, today I write out some of these things, trying to get a mental handle on it all. I wonder, too, about all of the UFO stuff going on all over the world still. People are still seeing strange lights and crafts in the air, both during the day and at night. Some is faked, much is real. Unexplained. Unknown. But we live not just in this physical world that we can see, touch, taste, hear - but we also live in a spiritual world and there is a spiritual battle raging all around us. As the time draws near for Christ to return, and all that accompanies that time, I believe that unseen spiritual battle is going to become more and more seen. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” the servant asked.
“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
And Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes so he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. II Kings 6:15-17 How thankful I am that God has assured us "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them". We can rest in that.
So, the feeling of dread is still there. The feeling of waiting. Of anticipation. Expectation. Waiting.
And while I wait
and watch
and listen
and think
I must do.
Do what God has called me to do. Read His word, pray, listen for His voice, do the things my hands find to do, and do them with all my might.
Therefore, I really need to go check the washer and give the dial a bump (cold wash) and finish cleaning the flat and getting it ready for company tonight. Valentina and Lyena are coming over simple so Lyena can ask Mel questions. Questions she has from her Bible reading, from what is happening in the world around us, from her thinking deep, deep thoughts. Maybe I'll also have time to go over and see Ira, maybe not - the day is flying by.
So, tell me - why do I have this overwhelming, at times, feeling of dread?
I am waiting.
Expectant.
Wondering.
What is going to happen next?
This feeling actually started 3 or 4 days ago. I went to bed the other night expecting to see in the morning that there had been another big earthquake somewhere in the world. In fact, over the next day, there were several 6.0 and above quakes in various parts of the world, but mostly, of course, in Japan. I'm still waiting for another big one. I really do think it's going to happen. I even dreamed about it.
Last night, just before we went to bed, FoxNews posted an article on George Soros and what he is doing right now. Why Are the Media Ignoring Plans By George Soros to Remake the Entire Global Economy? Not something you want to read just before you go to sleep. I had nightmares off and on all night, and I usually do not have bad dreams. These dreams actually had to do with the Union Printers' Home in Colorado Springs - a place I grew up near. Unsettling dreams, uncomfortable dreams, scary dreams of a place I have never been inside and have really paid no attention to since I was, what? 15 years old?? Somehow it was all tied to Soros. But back to Soros himself, I told Mel this morning as we were discussing what is going on, that I believe this man is controlled by something outside of this world, and I'm NOT talking about space aliens! God is controlling him, but in that, it is very possible that God has given him over to Satan for Satan to use during these last days.
In writing all of that above, with his power today, I wonder if these words will come to him or to someone high in his organization? It is probable - the internet is wide-open for any one to read. Therefore, George Soros, you need to confess your sin, repent and ask Jesus Christ to forgive you and save you. Now. Before it is too late. That time is coming very soon. Christ is returning very soon to judge the inhabitants of the earth, both the living and those who have already died!
It has been a while since I've read in the main stream media about mass animal deaths. That is part of the reason I read that other website I wrote about a day or two ago. The mass animal deaths have not stopped. Just this morning there are two more reports about fish kills. They are labeled as being "natural" due to fish not getting enough oxygen due to ... fill in the blank. Birds are dying, fish are dying, porposes and dolphins are dying. The sea and the sky creatures are dying in unusual numbers. And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. Genesis 1:20-23
The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Revelation 8:8,9
Sometimes I feel like we are experiencing a mini-tribulation period, like God is giving us a taste of what is to come. But is anyone listening? Is anyone paying attention?
Actually, I have wondered recently if we are actually in the Tribulation period and it only seems to us that things are not all that bad. Maybe things really are that bad and we just are not aware of it yet? With the tsunami destroying boats and ships, as well as houses and other buildings on land, with the reactor in Japan spewing out radiation in the air, on land and sea, with Chernobyl still hot and a very real and present danger to the world ... The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water — the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.Revelation 8:10,11
Last summer huge swathes of the world burned - Alaska, Russia, the US. Actually, over the past few years even more has burned - Australia, Greece, other parts of Europe. Add it all together and a large percent of the earth's surface has burned in the past 10 years or less. The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. Revelation 8:7
I no longer believe in a literal seven year tribulation, but rather in a perfect time period of tribulation.
What is happening in the Middle East? Every day we hear of more unrest, more people killed, more violence. Some of it is unimaginable. And what of the violence and horror that has happened in the past 100 years? Nazi Germany killing people and doing experiements on humans that are unbelievable in their horror. People doing that to other people. And recently I listened to a sermon by a young man who talked about what the Japanese did to his Korean people, as well as Chinese and other nationalities in that part of the world, before and during World War II. The reports are that their experiments on living human beings of ALL ages, including newborn babies - those experiments made Nazi German experiments throw-up when they toured the facilities. I was totally sickened myself, and I have no idea what those experiments were, nor do I want to know. I know enough of what the Nazi's did from all the reading I did when I was in high school (including QB VII, by Leon Uris - I've never forgotten that book).
I know that God is not finished with the country of Israel yet. I do not believe the Dispensational point of view exactly, nor do I believe that there is any way for Israel to be saved other than belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. But God is still working in that country, in those people. I have a feeling that things are literally going to explode there very soon. And it is going to be horrible and amazing at the same time.
So, today I write out some of these things, trying to get a mental handle on it all. I wonder, too, about all of the UFO stuff going on all over the world still. People are still seeing strange lights and crafts in the air, both during the day and at night. Some is faked, much is real. Unexplained. Unknown. But we live not just in this physical world that we can see, touch, taste, hear - but we also live in a spiritual world and there is a spiritual battle raging all around us. As the time draws near for Christ to return, and all that accompanies that time, I believe that unseen spiritual battle is going to become more and more seen. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” the servant asked.
“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
And Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes so he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. II Kings 6:15-17 How thankful I am that God has assured us "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them". We can rest in that.
So, the feeling of dread is still there. The feeling of waiting. Of anticipation. Expectation. Waiting.
And while I wait
and watch
and listen
and think
I must do.
Do what God has called me to do. Read His word, pray, listen for His voice, do the things my hands find to do, and do them with all my might.
Therefore, I really need to go check the washer and give the dial a bump (cold wash) and finish cleaning the flat and getting it ready for company tonight. Valentina and Lyena are coming over simple so Lyena can ask Mel questions. Questions she has from her Bible reading, from what is happening in the world around us, from her thinking deep, deep thoughts. Maybe I'll also have time to go over and see Ira, maybe not - the day is flying by.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Mass Animal Deaths, Ravens, and so Forth
I've read with interest a couple articles about birds and fish dying by the thousands and hundreds of thousands. There is an interesting map here: Mass Animal Deaths. I don't know exactly what to think about this and I don't know if it's really related to Hosea 4:3. "Because of this the land dries up,
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
and the fish in the sea are swept away."
I'd have to study that passage out and see if it is really prophetic for End Times or not.
What I have noticed is the birds. Ravens - I mentioned them in an earlier post and I commented on them several times over the summer on facebook. What I also noticed was on the way from Kiev to Kherson this time was a very large number of large raptors. We called them hawks - I assume that's what they were. They were quite large, with white breasts and dark backs. I don't remember ever seeing hawks here before, yet just casually watching the roadside pass by, I saw well over a dozen near the highways. I was struck by it then and wondering why there were so many now.
And on the edge of PerviMaisk, near a dumping area, there were thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of black birds, most likely ravens. Could have been very large black birds, but ravens seem to rule in this country. They filled the trees and the fields and were flying in swarms all over. As we drove through the city, there were other groups of them here and there.
And this summer - one evening at sunset while Stirling and I were out in the fenced yard, the ravens started flying over. After watching them awhile, I started counting. Counted over 50 and gave up. Again, there were at least 100-200 of them. I could hear, but not see, others flying up over the ridge. Several dozen roosted for several nights in the aspen trees around my parents place. During the evening I could hear them rustling around and occasionally dropping small branches down on to the ground. It was weird - I thought so then and I still think so. I've NEVER seen ravens like that at my parents place in the past 40 years. Mom and Dad had never seen them like that either.
So, something is going on. I don't know what it is, for sure, but something is definitely happening in the world around us that is unusual.
English Standard Version (©2001)
"Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, “Come, gather for the great supper of God," Revelation 19:7
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
and the fish in the sea are swept away."
I'd have to study that passage out and see if it is really prophetic for End Times or not.
What I have noticed is the birds. Ravens - I mentioned them in an earlier post and I commented on them several times over the summer on facebook. What I also noticed was on the way from Kiev to Kherson this time was a very large number of large raptors. We called them hawks - I assume that's what they were. They were quite large, with white breasts and dark backs. I don't remember ever seeing hawks here before, yet just casually watching the roadside pass by, I saw well over a dozen near the highways. I was struck by it then and wondering why there were so many now.
And on the edge of PerviMaisk, near a dumping area, there were thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of black birds, most likely ravens. Could have been very large black birds, but ravens seem to rule in this country. They filled the trees and the fields and were flying in swarms all over. As we drove through the city, there were other groups of them here and there.
And this summer - one evening at sunset while Stirling and I were out in the fenced yard, the ravens started flying over. After watching them awhile, I started counting. Counted over 50 and gave up. Again, there were at least 100-200 of them. I could hear, but not see, others flying up over the ridge. Several dozen roosted for several nights in the aspen trees around my parents place. During the evening I could hear them rustling around and occasionally dropping small branches down on to the ground. It was weird - I thought so then and I still think so. I've NEVER seen ravens like that at my parents place in the past 40 years. Mom and Dad had never seen them like that either.
So, something is going on. I don't know what it is, for sure, but something is definitely happening in the world around us that is unusual.
English Standard Version (©2001)
"Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, “Come, gather for the great supper of God," Revelation 19:7
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Simple Pleasures
I bought 2 more guppies today. Now I have 4 in my pond. I put the 2 new ones in and they all 4 just went wild, swimming around like crazy. I stood there and rescued fish as they jumped out of the pond. I rescued 4 times. I have no idea if it was the same fish every time, other than I'm sure the littlest one did jump out once. Then Little Guppy decided he was a bully and started chasing the 3 bigger fish all over the place. Why is it that little creatures often bully their bigger fellow creatures? Little dogs are the worst.
I realized as I was watching them that I feel very pleased about the whole thing. Not the bullying! No - I feel very pleased about my pond, my 5 fish and the fountain and everything. Simple pleasures are sometimes the very best.
I keep going over and making sure that they are all in the pond, carefully searching the carpet in front of me as I get closer. They somehow really blend in to the carpet, even tho the carpet is green and they are not. Maybe it's due to the design in the carpet of gold (they are not gold), black (they are dark) and white (they are not white) on a green background? I don't know, really, it just is. I creep up, speak out loud and move slowly once I get there. After living here for a few days now the 2 older fish are used to me and actually swim up to see if I'm going to feed them. Right now, however, they are all in "panic! someone's going to get me" mode.
Here are some photos, just for your viewing pleasure (hahahahahahaha). I bought the fake water lily at New Line (Нова Линея ) yesterday. I think it goes very well with all the other colors! :) Two views, the flash makes it brighter than it really is. The bucket and top yellow screen on the bucket are not so obvious, really.
There are 4 little fish in this photo, if you know where to look! The water distorts the bottom one a lot.
Cheyenne - Happily keeping my cross stitch project warm. Sargon, the 5th fish, is in view here, too, back in his little tank. Wish I could put them all together, but I don't want to take a chance that they will fight and kill each other. 
I realized as I was watching them that I feel very pleased about the whole thing. Not the bullying! No - I feel very pleased about my pond, my 5 fish and the fountain and everything. Simple pleasures are sometimes the very best.
I keep going over and making sure that they are all in the pond, carefully searching the carpet in front of me as I get closer. They somehow really blend in to the carpet, even tho the carpet is green and they are not. Maybe it's due to the design in the carpet of gold (they are not gold), black (they are dark) and white (they are not white) on a green background? I don't know, really, it just is. I creep up, speak out loud and move slowly once I get there. After living here for a few days now the 2 older fish are used to me and actually swim up to see if I'm going to feed them. Right now, however, they are all in "panic! someone's going to get me" mode.
Here are some photos, just for your viewing pleasure (hahahahahahaha). I bought the fake water lily at New Line (Нова Линея ) yesterday. I think it goes very well with all the other colors! :) Two views, the flash makes it brighter than it really is. The bucket and top yellow screen on the bucket are not so obvious, really.
There are 4 little fish in this photo, if you know where to look! The water distorts the bottom one a lot.
Cheyenne - Happily keeping my cross stitch project warm. Sargon, the 5th fish, is in view here, too, back in his little tank. Wish I could put them all together, but I don't want to take a chance that they will fight and kill each other. 
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Bits n Pieces
Today is a mostly lazy day. I have done some things around the house, to be sure, but mostly we've been relaxing.
Well, I have been relaxing. Mel, on the other hand, is never relaxed the Saturday before he preaches. His mind is constantly going, mulling over this and that. He reads. He studies. He mulls. It's actually a beautiful process to watch and listen to. I like that he talks so much to me while he is in process, verbalizing things, sometimes asking my opinion, sometimes sharing something with me that he's learned that never makes it into his sermon.
~*~*~*~*~
I realize while I'm writing this just how much I like being the age I am right now. The kids are grown and gone. We have the flat to ourselves, the fish and the cat (oh- and of course the ants, too).
I've almost always enjoyed being the age I am at that time. Except being a teenager - I can't say that I really enjoyed being a teenager. But I enjoyed being a young 20's, being a newlywed, then a young mother. I enjoyed watching my kids grow up. I did not enjoy so much watching them leave home, yet at the same time, it was very good to watch them go. Now I enjoy being a grandmother, tho I wish it was not from afar. I'm glad, yes I am really, truly glad, that it is Mel and me alone right now. I enjoy each stage of my life. Besides, I may end up living with one or more of my kids again some day in the future and they can take care of me. {hear an evilish laugh! heh heh heh}
~*~*~*~*~
As I write those words above I am somewhat nervous because I have this nagging suspicion or fear that if I verbalize my pleasure in something, God will change it somehow. Bad way to think, I know, I know. Yet, there is a certain amount of fear that when I enjoy something or someone an awful lot, God will remove it/them so that I concentrate on Him instead. I don't know why I think this way about people. I do know why I think about things and places that way: because God has done just that many times in my life. Removed the thing, moved me, or whatever. It has never been easy for me, but He does it anyway. The good news is that each time, it's just a tiny bit easier to 'let it go.'
~*~*~*~*~
Why am I thinking along these lines this evening? Probably due to the sermon that Mel and I just listened to. It was from Hebrews 11 on Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac to the Lord.
I am so glad I found these sermons by Arturo Azurdia. I think I found them by way of Rebecca Writes. From there I went to Monergism, where Azurdia's sermons/website are listed, along with a whole lot of other things if you go exploring. I have listened to his whole series on Revelation, Mel is most of the way through Hebrews, and we've listened together to a variety of them.
~*~*~*~*~
My last goldfish died. I think I fed it too much. I gave it too much food one day by accident, the next day he/she was laying on the bottom of the pond. Two days Fishie laid there, only moving around when I forced the issue. The 3rd day, he/she was belly up.
Bummer. I MISS him/her!
Fishie was always happy to see me. I'd walk up to the pond and he/she'd swim right over to the edge and beg me for food. Fishie would swim right under Cheyenne's tongue as she drank out of the pond. Sometimes Cheyenne would watch him/her, but never once did she try to catch Fishie.
RIP Fishie.
~*~*~*~*~
I waited 3 or 4 days and then decided that the pond was very nice like it is - but... BUT it needed something more. So while I was in Nikolaev on the "adventure" last week, I bought a pretty pink plant. I repotted it and set it kind of behind the pond. Now the purple pond with the blue glass fountain that sits on a bright pink bucket with bright yellow lid has a dark pink plant sitting there behind and above it, planted in a white pot next to another dark green plant potted in a white pot. How's that for adding color to your life? I notice that there is no bright red. That's probably because I really do not care for bright red, or bright orange either, for that matter.
The plant is very nice, adds something to the area.
BUT it is not alive in the same way an alive creature is.
~*~*~*~*~
When Mel and I went shopping over at our local Oskar Thursday, I stopped in at the tiny little pet store beside it to see if they had any gold fish.
No gold fish, but they do have guppies and a couple other fish. I bought 3 guppies. They are kind of plain little things - no big bright beautiful and colorful tails. Just plain little guppies with so-so black and white tails. I carried them around Oskar in my cart, watching over them like a mother hen. Yes, of course! They were in a plastic bag!! :-)
We finished shopping and we brought them home. I took the rubber band off the top of the plastic bag and put the bag to float in the water to equalize the water temperatures and eventually to add a bit of pond water to the bag water until I could just dump them into the pond willy-nilly.
I came in and sat down at the computer. A couple minutes later we heard a fish jump. Oh ho! thinks I to myself. One of them has made it's way out of the bag, floating there on the water. I finished what I was doing on the computer and went out to check on the fishes.
I looked in the bag and there were only 2 fish. I looked all over the pond - no extra fish. Finally I looked over by the balcony door. They lay poor little guppy fish, all dried out and starting to curl.
I picked him up (it's a him) and saw that one of his gills moved very weakly. Life! I quickly put him into the pond. Within just a few minutes he was weakly swimming around. No, it's more like he was just kind of hanging there in the water, moving his gills a bit, but he was alive.
Oh my.
Yesterday I looked for my 3 guppies and could only find 1. I picked up the fountain to check and see if the one had died and gotten stuck against the filter. Immediately, one of them went shooting out from under the overhang and took a flying jump out of the pond and onto the rug in front of the balcony door. Good grief. These guys are easily spooked! I gently picked him up and dumped him back into the water.
He was very traumatized. Too much in too short of time. Poor little fish. I'm not sure he's going to make it. The first Flying Guppy died. I found him against the filter this morning (good news - second Flying Guppy did not shoot out of the pond this time when I picked up the fountain). I waited to pick it up until I was sure the one healthy guppy was looking at me, watching me. I talked gently to it - they can hear you, you know - and then picked it up and found poor dead guppy under there.
Such is the life of fish. I have one healthy, one not quite healthy and one dead guppy. It's hard to see them in the pond because they are gray and the pond is dark. I have to really search. But the blue fighting fish, Sargon, is still alive and doing well. Knock on wood, cross my eyes, er, whatever I'm supposed to do...
I miss my golden Fishie.
~*~*~*~*~
Thursday evening while I was listening to the sermon with Mel, I realized I was going to run out of the embroidery floss color I was using. I bought this as a kit 4 or 5 years ago so I can't just take it back and say, "Hey! I need more of this color floss! You goofed up on this one." Nope, I'm going to have to go searching to see if I can find this color here in Kherson. I searched all of my floss last night, going through the 3 floss containers and two bags that have floss with other stuff and none of the colors even came close to matching. I really hope I can find some before we go back to the States in November. If not, I will have to wait until we get home and then finish the project there. I'm taking the project home with me, one way or the other, because it is a gift for someone. I'd just hoped I'd have it completely done by then.
~*~*~*~*~
I continue to monitor earthquakes and sunspots. The sun is still spotless
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 42 days
2009 total: 184 days (79%)
Since 2004: 695 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
Updated 21 Aug 2009
There is a very interesting article today on spaceweather.com about disappearing sunspots.
As far as earthquakes, there have been 2 or 3 small ones in various parts of Colorado recently, plus a large one in eastern Colorado. This larger one happened in an area that has no previously recorded earthquakes. It was also quite near to where friends of our live (hi Marsha!). Unfortunately they were gone to Kansas and didn't feel it. I like earthquakes that do no damage - that's why I write 'unfortunately'.
~*~*~*~*~
We have another spider on the balcony. A nice little garden spider has built it's web between the clothesline wire and the grapevine. Two spiders, I guess, because there are two webs fairly close together. I don't know - do spiders build more than one web, or is it one web per spider? I'll have to look that up.
Anyway, I found it while I was hanging clothes out. So, I hung the clothes in such a way as to do the least amount of damage to the spider's web. Trying to make up for murdering that spider so many years ago, I guess. ha ha! But I'm glad they are there as they will catch and eat flies and mosquitoes. I don't think their webs are strong enough for the wasps, tho, that will be here as the grapes continue to ripen (they are mostly purple now!).
~*~*~*~*~
I have a couple of more things I want to write about, but they will be complete posts all by themselves. So for now, this is it.
Well, I have been relaxing. Mel, on the other hand, is never relaxed the Saturday before he preaches. His mind is constantly going, mulling over this and that. He reads. He studies. He mulls. It's actually a beautiful process to watch and listen to. I like that he talks so much to me while he is in process, verbalizing things, sometimes asking my opinion, sometimes sharing something with me that he's learned that never makes it into his sermon.
I realize while I'm writing this just how much I like being the age I am right now. The kids are grown and gone. We have the flat to ourselves, the fish and the cat (oh- and of course the ants, too).
I've almost always enjoyed being the age I am at that time. Except being a teenager - I can't say that I really enjoyed being a teenager. But I enjoyed being a young 20's, being a newlywed, then a young mother. I enjoyed watching my kids grow up. I did not enjoy so much watching them leave home, yet at the same time, it was very good to watch them go. Now I enjoy being a grandmother, tho I wish it was not from afar. I'm glad, yes I am really, truly glad, that it is Mel and me alone right now. I enjoy each stage of my life. Besides, I may end up living with one or more of my kids again some day in the future and they can take care of me. {hear an evilish laugh! heh heh heh}
As I write those words above I am somewhat nervous because I have this nagging suspicion or fear that if I verbalize my pleasure in something, God will change it somehow. Bad way to think, I know, I know. Yet, there is a certain amount of fear that when I enjoy something or someone an awful lot, God will remove it/them so that I concentrate on Him instead. I don't know why I think this way about people. I do know why I think about things and places that way: because God has done just that many times in my life. Removed the thing, moved me, or whatever. It has never been easy for me, but He does it anyway. The good news is that each time, it's just a tiny bit easier to 'let it go.'
Why am I thinking along these lines this evening? Probably due to the sermon that Mel and I just listened to. It was from Hebrews 11 on Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac to the Lord.
I am so glad I found these sermons by Arturo Azurdia. I think I found them by way of Rebecca Writes. From there I went to Monergism, where Azurdia's sermons/website are listed, along with a whole lot of other things if you go exploring. I have listened to his whole series on Revelation, Mel is most of the way through Hebrews, and we've listened together to a variety of them.
My last goldfish died. I think I fed it too much. I gave it too much food one day by accident, the next day he/she was laying on the bottom of the pond. Two days Fishie laid there, only moving around when I forced the issue. The 3rd day, he/she was belly up.
Bummer. I MISS him/her!
Fishie was always happy to see me. I'd walk up to the pond and he/she'd swim right over to the edge and beg me for food. Fishie would swim right under Cheyenne's tongue as she drank out of the pond. Sometimes Cheyenne would watch him/her, but never once did she try to catch Fishie.
RIP Fishie.
I waited 3 or 4 days and then decided that the pond was very nice like it is - but... BUT it needed something more. So while I was in Nikolaev on the "adventure" last week, I bought a pretty pink plant. I repotted it and set it kind of behind the pond. Now the purple pond with the blue glass fountain that sits on a bright pink bucket with bright yellow lid has a dark pink plant sitting there behind and above it, planted in a white pot next to another dark green plant potted in a white pot. How's that for adding color to your life? I notice that there is no bright red. That's probably because I really do not care for bright red, or bright orange either, for that matter.
The plant is very nice, adds something to the area.
BUT it is not alive in the same way an alive creature is.
When Mel and I went shopping over at our local Oskar Thursday, I stopped in at the tiny little pet store beside it to see if they had any gold fish.
No gold fish, but they do have guppies and a couple other fish. I bought 3 guppies. They are kind of plain little things - no big bright beautiful and colorful tails. Just plain little guppies with so-so black and white tails. I carried them around Oskar in my cart, watching over them like a mother hen. Yes, of course! They were in a plastic bag!! :-)
We finished shopping and we brought them home. I took the rubber band off the top of the plastic bag and put the bag to float in the water to equalize the water temperatures and eventually to add a bit of pond water to the bag water until I could just dump them into the pond willy-nilly.
I came in and sat down at the computer. A couple minutes later we heard a fish jump. Oh ho! thinks I to myself. One of them has made it's way out of the bag, floating there on the water. I finished what I was doing on the computer and went out to check on the fishes.
I looked in the bag and there were only 2 fish. I looked all over the pond - no extra fish. Finally I looked over by the balcony door. They lay poor little guppy fish, all dried out and starting to curl.
I picked him up (it's a him) and saw that one of his gills moved very weakly. Life! I quickly put him into the pond. Within just a few minutes he was weakly swimming around. No, it's more like he was just kind of hanging there in the water, moving his gills a bit, but he was alive.
Oh my.
Yesterday I looked for my 3 guppies and could only find 1. I picked up the fountain to check and see if the one had died and gotten stuck against the filter. Immediately, one of them went shooting out from under the overhang and took a flying jump out of the pond and onto the rug in front of the balcony door. Good grief. These guys are easily spooked! I gently picked him up and dumped him back into the water.
He was very traumatized. Too much in too short of time. Poor little fish. I'm not sure he's going to make it. The first Flying Guppy died. I found him against the filter this morning (good news - second Flying Guppy did not shoot out of the pond this time when I picked up the fountain). I waited to pick it up until I was sure the one healthy guppy was looking at me, watching me. I talked gently to it - they can hear you, you know - and then picked it up and found poor dead guppy under there.
Such is the life of fish. I have one healthy, one not quite healthy and one dead guppy. It's hard to see them in the pond because they are gray and the pond is dark. I have to really search. But the blue fighting fish, Sargon, is still alive and doing well. Knock on wood, cross my eyes, er, whatever I'm supposed to do...
I miss my golden Fishie.
Thursday evening while I was listening to the sermon with Mel, I realized I was going to run out of the embroidery floss color I was using. I bought this as a kit 4 or 5 years ago so I can't just take it back and say, "Hey! I need more of this color floss! You goofed up on this one." Nope, I'm going to have to go searching to see if I can find this color here in Kherson. I searched all of my floss last night, going through the 3 floss containers and two bags that have floss with other stuff and none of the colors even came close to matching. I really hope I can find some before we go back to the States in November. If not, I will have to wait until we get home and then finish the project there. I'm taking the project home with me, one way or the other, because it is a gift for someone. I'd just hoped I'd have it completely done by then.
I continue to monitor earthquakes and sunspots. The sun is still spotless
Current Stretch: 42 days
2009 total: 184 days (79%)
Since 2004: 695 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
Updated 21 Aug 2009
There is a very interesting article today on spaceweather.com about disappearing sunspots.
As far as earthquakes, there have been 2 or 3 small ones in various parts of Colorado recently, plus a large one in eastern Colorado. This larger one happened in an area that has no previously recorded earthquakes. It was also quite near to where friends of our live (hi Marsha!). Unfortunately they were gone to Kansas and didn't feel it. I like earthquakes that do no damage - that's why I write 'unfortunately'.
We have another spider on the balcony. A nice little garden spider has built it's web between the clothesline wire and the grapevine. Two spiders, I guess, because there are two webs fairly close together. I don't know - do spiders build more than one web, or is it one web per spider? I'll have to look that up.
Anyway, I found it while I was hanging clothes out. So, I hung the clothes in such a way as to do the least amount of damage to the spider's web. Trying to make up for murdering that spider so many years ago, I guess. ha ha! But I'm glad they are there as they will catch and eat flies and mosquitoes. I don't think their webs are strong enough for the wasps, tho, that will be here as the grapes continue to ripen (they are mostly purple now!).
I have a couple of more things I want to write about, but they will be complete posts all by themselves. So for now, this is it.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Bits n Pieces
We got home yesterday morning around 10:30 am. Not sure exactly. I usually check the time and for some reason I never even thought of it yesterday. Maybe because I was just so glad to get home this time.
The train was like an oven. We have had very few trips where it was that hot, thank God. We think it's because there were a group of kids on the train and the providnitsa kept it hot for them. The kids were a group of musicians who had been in Kiev and were coming home. The tuba we saw was really banged up and not in a case, just carried around by a boy like a piece of luggage.
It was interesting listening to the kids when they got on the train. Mel and I boarded very soon after the train arrived at the station. The kids came on about 10 minutes later. Kids are kids all over the world. "I want the top bunk! Last time Paulina had the top!" Lots of wrestling and playing around, hooting and hollering, laughing, pushing, mild arguing about this or that. I understood most of it - told Mel I must now have the vocabulary of an 8 year old rather than a 2 year old. Well, in understanding - speaking I still am not all that great. :( ha ha It was actually fun listening to them. They were in the 3 coupe's to one side of us. Only one time did the male chaperon raise his voice and then he really YELLED: YURI! I wonder what Yuri was doing?? I know they were going home because one of the female chaperons was doing a commentary as we came into the Kherson station: "There are the babushkas! There is your father! I see your mother." and so on and so forth.
~*~*~*~
It was so hot on the train that I ended up with a heat induced headache in the middle of the night. I was drinking water off and on all night and only had to get up twice in the night. My pillow was actually damp at one point. Usually I sleep with my head toward the door because that is how I am most comfortable but this time I ended up changing back and forth several times. Mel put a blanket over the heat register to try and block some of the hot air and that helped. I stuffed an extra pillow down between my bunk and the wall and that also helped. Enough cold air was coming off the window (not through it but just off the cold glass) that it helped cool our heads a bit. We left the door about 1/3 open all night to help air circulation. Due to the movement of the train, the door actually shut once and when I woke up I could hardly breath due to the heat. It had to be over 100 degrees in that coupe'. Unbelievable.
I got up to go to the toilet room just before we came into a station. The door was still unlocked and I didn't know we were coming into a station. The providnitsa came and rattled the door handled and then said, "Stansia!". I hollered back that I understood, and she continued to rattle the door handle. My head was pounding and it just made me mad. I know that when the train comes into a station that if you happen to be in the toilet room you are not supposed to flush the toilet - it all goes out on the ground and who wants that right there at the station?? I was not moving fast enough for her and she got really upset.
Now when this situation happened before, the providnik (male) told me through the door, "Don't flush until we leave!" So I didn't. Just stood there in the toilet room for 10 minutes, waiting until we were on the way again. sigh. Not the most pleasant place to stand for 10 minutes. But this woman wanted me OUT of there RIGHT NOW. Grrrrrr. It was the middle of the night and my head hurt and it was her fault in the first place because she was keeping the train wagon so ____ hot when it didn't need to be that way!
I finally opened the door just as the train actually stopped and she started hollering at me. I waved my hand at her (my head was pounding) and said, "I understand!" and walked off. She quickly locked the door and then rushed past me, shoving me (on purpose) against the rail. Vengeance is mine, saith the providnitsa! I just walked back to the coupe' and found some ibuprofen in my bag and took it. I could hear her farther up the wagon, rushing to open the outside door and get the steps down in case anyone needed on our wagon.
The sad thing? I really didn't care at all that she had to rush like that. I had had it with Ukrainian trains that are really traveling ovens with toilets from the 1800's. I laid back down on the hot bunk, closed my eyes and eventually went back to sleep for a few minutes.
~*~*~*~
Oh, it was so good to get home! A nice shower at 11:30 when the water came back on! The water pressure has to be quite low due to the low gas pressure - if the water pressure is too high then the shower is cold. But a strong warm dribble shower is great after a hot ride in a train-oven.
I did two loads of laundry yesterday and they both dried quickly. Tells me that the air is really dry, which is unusual for this time of year. I hung them on a drying rack in the living room right beside the fish pond and the sheets were still dry within 3 hours. Very unusual. I hung the towels in the same place after the sheets dried and they are dry this morning.
I had to add almost 6 liters of water to the fish pond when we got home yesterday morning. The fountain was barely working at all. I also added water to both of the other fish tanks because they needed it, too. Usually this time of year I don't need to water the plants so often, nor add water to the fish tanks (this is my first winter with a fish pond). We've had very little snow and very little rain before that, so it is dry. Too dry.
~*~*~*~
All for now. I need to go finish the last bit of my Sunday School lesson, finish my morning coffee and then get ready to leave for church. I complained about our cold flat, but I admit - I would rather have a 60 degree flat than a 100+ degree coupe'! Oh yes! It feels "just right" in here now.
The train was like an oven. We have had very few trips where it was that hot, thank God. We think it's because there were a group of kids on the train and the providnitsa kept it hot for them. The kids were a group of musicians who had been in Kiev and were coming home. The tuba we saw was really banged up and not in a case, just carried around by a boy like a piece of luggage.
It was interesting listening to the kids when they got on the train. Mel and I boarded very soon after the train arrived at the station. The kids came on about 10 minutes later. Kids are kids all over the world. "I want the top bunk! Last time Paulina had the top!" Lots of wrestling and playing around, hooting and hollering, laughing, pushing, mild arguing about this or that. I understood most of it - told Mel I must now have the vocabulary of an 8 year old rather than a 2 year old. Well, in understanding - speaking I still am not all that great. :( ha ha It was actually fun listening to them. They were in the 3 coupe's to one side of us. Only one time did the male chaperon raise his voice and then he really YELLED: YURI! I wonder what Yuri was doing?? I know they were going home because one of the female chaperons was doing a commentary as we came into the Kherson station: "There are the babushkas! There is your father! I see your mother." and so on and so forth.
It was so hot on the train that I ended up with a heat induced headache in the middle of the night. I was drinking water off and on all night and only had to get up twice in the night. My pillow was actually damp at one point. Usually I sleep with my head toward the door because that is how I am most comfortable but this time I ended up changing back and forth several times. Mel put a blanket over the heat register to try and block some of the hot air and that helped. I stuffed an extra pillow down between my bunk and the wall and that also helped. Enough cold air was coming off the window (not through it but just off the cold glass) that it helped cool our heads a bit. We left the door about 1/3 open all night to help air circulation. Due to the movement of the train, the door actually shut once and when I woke up I could hardly breath due to the heat. It had to be over 100 degrees in that coupe'. Unbelievable.
I got up to go to the toilet room just before we came into a station. The door was still unlocked and I didn't know we were coming into a station. The providnitsa came and rattled the door handled and then said, "Stansia!". I hollered back that I understood, and she continued to rattle the door handle. My head was pounding and it just made me mad. I know that when the train comes into a station that if you happen to be in the toilet room you are not supposed to flush the toilet - it all goes out on the ground and who wants that right there at the station?? I was not moving fast enough for her and she got really upset.
Now when this situation happened before, the providnik (male) told me through the door, "Don't flush until we leave!" So I didn't. Just stood there in the toilet room for 10 minutes, waiting until we were on the way again. sigh. Not the most pleasant place to stand for 10 minutes. But this woman wanted me OUT of there RIGHT NOW. Grrrrrr. It was the middle of the night and my head hurt and it was her fault in the first place because she was keeping the train wagon so ____ hot when it didn't need to be that way!
I finally opened the door just as the train actually stopped and she started hollering at me. I waved my hand at her (my head was pounding) and said, "I understand!" and walked off. She quickly locked the door and then rushed past me, shoving me (on purpose) against the rail. Vengeance is mine, saith the providnitsa! I just walked back to the coupe' and found some ibuprofen in my bag and took it. I could hear her farther up the wagon, rushing to open the outside door and get the steps down in case anyone needed on our wagon.
The sad thing? I really didn't care at all that she had to rush like that. I had had it with Ukrainian trains that are really traveling ovens with toilets from the 1800's. I laid back down on the hot bunk, closed my eyes and eventually went back to sleep for a few minutes.
Oh, it was so good to get home! A nice shower at 11:30 when the water came back on! The water pressure has to be quite low due to the low gas pressure - if the water pressure is too high then the shower is cold. But a strong warm dribble shower is great after a hot ride in a train-oven.
I did two loads of laundry yesterday and they both dried quickly. Tells me that the air is really dry, which is unusual for this time of year. I hung them on a drying rack in the living room right beside the fish pond and the sheets were still dry within 3 hours. Very unusual. I hung the towels in the same place after the sheets dried and they are dry this morning.
I had to add almost 6 liters of water to the fish pond when we got home yesterday morning. The fountain was barely working at all. I also added water to both of the other fish tanks because they needed it, too. Usually this time of year I don't need to water the plants so often, nor add water to the fish tanks (this is my first winter with a fish pond). We've had very little snow and very little rain before that, so it is dry. Too dry.
All for now. I need to go finish the last bit of my Sunday School lesson, finish my morning coffee and then get ready to leave for church. I complained about our cold flat, but I admit - I would rather have a 60 degree flat than a 100+ degree coupe'! Oh yes! It feels "just right" in here now.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Our Mean Big Sister, Andromeda
So this morning I'm reading the news while I wait for the water to come back on at which time I will head to the kitchen to mix-up another batch of Christmas cookies to take to church tomorrow for our Eastern Christmas celebration. (How's that for a sentence that needs to be divided into at least two, if not more, sentences?)
Yes, tomorrow is Christmas! I'll take down all the decorations after we get home tomorrow afternoon. The tree has been up for a month and I will miss it's beautiful lights. But that is a post for tomorrow.
As I was reading about the Russia vs. Ukraine 'gas war' I shivered a bit and decided I really need to go put my sweatshirt back on because it truly is chilly in here this morning. The turtleneck alone is fine when I am wandering around from one room to the other, making the bed, folding clean clothes and picking up stuff scattered around the room. But sitting here drinking another cup of coffee and reading - well, 64+ degrees is just a bit too cool for comfort. My back and shoulders are cold. Be right back....
Ok, I'm back. I fed the fish while I was at it. Little Fishy in the fish pond was begging oh-so-cutely when I walked past and I realized I had not fed the poor little guy yet this morning. His water is so cold, being unheated, that he spends most of his days and nights floating around on the water side or belly up, looking for all the world like he's dead. I just leave him be now since he is always so startled and looks really scared when I come up and tap the side of the pond near where he floats to see if he is still alive. I haven't seen the algae eater in several days so I'm not sure if he's still alive or if the cold did him in. I'm hoping he's just staying cozy next to the filter motor. The other two fish, in their little tanks on the table, are fine, more active at night when it's warmer in here after a day of people sometimes turning on the electric heater for a few minutes until the electric meter starts smoking again. I'm glad these 3 fish seem to be cold-weather hardy.
All of that to get to the point of why I decided to write and opened up this page to start with! The morning news!
I was thrilled to learn this morning that the Milky Way (the galaxy in which we all live) has recently gained weight. Now we are better prepared for the big collision with our formerly bigger sister galaxy, Andromeda, yes, for the collision that is definitely coming! We may even come out the winners in the coming collision!
"Previously we thought Andromeda was dominant, and that we were the little sister of Andromeda," Reid said. "But now it's more like we're fraternal twins."
That's not necessarily good news. A bigger Milky Way means that it could be crashing violently into the neighboring Andromeda galaxy sooner than predicted (notice that there is no period at the end of that thought. I took it out because I'm going to insert some thoughts here.)
When I read those two paragraphs I laughed. First of all, my dear husband is a fraternal twin. When he and his brother were growing up they were NEVER the same size. Ralph was always several inches and many pounds heavier than Mel. They were, at times, like the twins in the movie Twins (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as twin brothers). Until people got to know them they just couldn't believe two boys so different in looks, size and personality could really be twins. But they were - they still are, actually. :) ) So some scientist and news reporters comparing two galaxies to 'fraternal twins' instead of 'sisters' made me laugh. Who said twins, fraternal or maternal, have to be alike? Ha!
When I read those two paragraphs, after laughing I just shook my head and thought to myself, "Why in the world does everything have to be scary, reported in such a way that it is meant to make people frightened?" Good grief! Two galaxies colliding in space is really not something anyone can do anything about after all. We can't set up a government commission to study how best to keep Andromeda at bay, or change the route of the Milky Way. We can't throw billions and gazillions of dollars at the problem in hopes that scientists will make some discovery that could possibly change the course of two galaxies traveling through space. I mean after all we are going pretty fast here. "...Reid was able to determine the speed at which the spiral-shaped Milky Way is spinning around its center.
That speed — about 568,000 miles per hour — is faster than the 492,000 mph that scientists had been using for decades. That's about a 15 percent jump in spiral speed." (Gosh! - that's faster than our taxi driver yesterday!!) And that is just the speed we are going around in circles around a big black hole after all, to say nothing of the speed at which we are hurtling through space toward our formerly bigger-than-us sister.
I enjoy reading articles like this one. First of all there is interesting information sandwiched in-between sentences written for the purpose of frightening the populace. And second, they make me laugh and brighten up my day. After all, why should I be concerned that Ukraine and Russia are fighting over the price of natural gas, gas with which I cook our food, gas which heats our flat, gas which in many ways actually keeps us alive here in Ukraine - why should I be concerned about that when, gasp! Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide and we'll all die in the collision when both galaxies are torn apart and a new galaxy is created "billions of years from now."?? (Notice that this ended with a period because is the end of the previously quoted sentence.)
Well, the water is back on - time to go make Christmas cookies. I think I'll make them ALL stars and frost them in a bunch of pastel colors because stars do come in a variety of colors in space, and then I'll sprinkle them with multi-colored sprinkles and think of all the planets and moons which surround all the stars in space. And then I'll put them in a container and call that container "Space - The Final Frontier."
But I promise - I will NOT shake it, drop it or otherwise cause my stars to collide with each other in there!
quotes from FoxNews article: Milky Way Galaxy Suddenly Much Bigger, Heavier (Even the headline makes me laugh! "Suddenly" ha ha ha - Put it on a diet!!!)
(This is NOT the Milky Way, but the people at Hubble Space Telescope say it looks like the Milky Way...)
Spiral Galaxy NGC 3949: A Galaxy Similar to the Milky Way
This IS Andromeda - looks pretty safe to me...
Andromeda Galaxy M31
Yes, tomorrow is Christmas! I'll take down all the decorations after we get home tomorrow afternoon. The tree has been up for a month and I will miss it's beautiful lights. But that is a post for tomorrow.
As I was reading about the Russia vs. Ukraine 'gas war' I shivered a bit and decided I really need to go put my sweatshirt back on because it truly is chilly in here this morning. The turtleneck alone is fine when I am wandering around from one room to the other, making the bed, folding clean clothes and picking up stuff scattered around the room. But sitting here drinking another cup of coffee and reading - well, 64+ degrees is just a bit too cool for comfort. My back and shoulders are cold. Be right back....
Ok, I'm back. I fed the fish while I was at it. Little Fishy in the fish pond was begging oh-so-cutely when I walked past and I realized I had not fed the poor little guy yet this morning. His water is so cold, being unheated, that he spends most of his days and nights floating around on the water side or belly up, looking for all the world like he's dead. I just leave him be now since he is always so startled and looks really scared when I come up and tap the side of the pond near where he floats to see if he is still alive. I haven't seen the algae eater in several days so I'm not sure if he's still alive or if the cold did him in. I'm hoping he's just staying cozy next to the filter motor. The other two fish, in their little tanks on the table, are fine, more active at night when it's warmer in here after a day of people sometimes turning on the electric heater for a few minutes until the electric meter starts smoking again. I'm glad these 3 fish seem to be cold-weather hardy.
All of that to get to the point of why I decided to write and opened up this page to start with! The morning news!
I was thrilled to learn this morning that the Milky Way (the galaxy in which we all live) has recently gained weight. Now we are better prepared for the big collision with our formerly bigger sister galaxy, Andromeda, yes, for the collision that is definitely coming! We may even come out the winners in the coming collision!
"Previously we thought Andromeda was dominant, and that we were the little sister of Andromeda," Reid said. "But now it's more like we're fraternal twins."
That's not necessarily good news. A bigger Milky Way means that it could be crashing violently into the neighboring Andromeda galaxy sooner than predicted (notice that there is no period at the end of that thought. I took it out because I'm going to insert some thoughts here.)
When I read those two paragraphs I laughed. First of all, my dear husband is a fraternal twin. When he and his brother were growing up they were NEVER the same size. Ralph was always several inches and many pounds heavier than Mel. They were, at times, like the twins in the movie Twins (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as twin brothers). Until people got to know them they just couldn't believe two boys so different in looks, size and personality could really be twins. But they were - they still are, actually. :) ) So some scientist and news reporters comparing two galaxies to 'fraternal twins' instead of 'sisters' made me laugh. Who said twins, fraternal or maternal, have to be alike? Ha!
When I read those two paragraphs, after laughing I just shook my head and thought to myself, "Why in the world does everything have to be scary, reported in such a way that it is meant to make people frightened?" Good grief! Two galaxies colliding in space is really not something anyone can do anything about after all. We can't set up a government commission to study how best to keep Andromeda at bay, or change the route of the Milky Way. We can't throw billions and gazillions of dollars at the problem in hopes that scientists will make some discovery that could possibly change the course of two galaxies traveling through space. I mean after all we are going pretty fast here. "...Reid was able to determine the speed at which the spiral-shaped Milky Way is spinning around its center.
That speed — about 568,000 miles per hour — is faster than the 492,000 mph that scientists had been using for decades. That's about a 15 percent jump in spiral speed." (Gosh! - that's faster than our taxi driver yesterday!!) And that is just the speed we are going around in circles around a big black hole after all, to say nothing of the speed at which we are hurtling through space toward our formerly bigger-than-us sister.
I enjoy reading articles like this one. First of all there is interesting information sandwiched in-between sentences written for the purpose of frightening the populace. And second, they make me laugh and brighten up my day. After all, why should I be concerned that Ukraine and Russia are fighting over the price of natural gas, gas with which I cook our food, gas which heats our flat, gas which in many ways actually keeps us alive here in Ukraine - why should I be concerned about that when, gasp! Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide and we'll all die in the collision when both galaxies are torn apart and a new galaxy is created "billions of years from now."?? (Notice that this ended with a period because is the end of the previously quoted sentence.)
Well, the water is back on - time to go make Christmas cookies. I think I'll make them ALL stars and frost them in a bunch of pastel colors because stars do come in a variety of colors in space, and then I'll sprinkle them with multi-colored sprinkles and think of all the planets and moons which surround all the stars in space. And then I'll put them in a container and call that container "Space - The Final Frontier."
But I promise - I will NOT shake it, drop it or otherwise cause my stars to collide with each other in there!
quotes from FoxNews article: Milky Way Galaxy Suddenly Much Bigger, Heavier (Even the headline makes me laugh! "Suddenly" ha ha ha - Put it on a diet!!!)
(This is NOT the Milky Way, but the people at Hubble Space Telescope say it looks like the Milky Way...)
Spiral Galaxy NGC 3949: A Galaxy Similar to the Milky WayThis IS Andromeda - looks pretty safe to me...
Andromeda Galaxy M31
Saturday, July 26, 2008
He's Faking It - For Now!
My fish is faking it. Several times over the past three or four days I have looked in the pond and thought one of my fish died. The first time I moved closer to the pond and he suddenly righted himself and swam off. Now I just go over and gently tap the side of the pond or speak to them all and he wakes up and swims around. When he's swimming, he's all over the place - zip, zip, zip. When he's begging for food, he kind of goes side up a bit, but keeps himself mostly bottom side down. I don't know what's wrong with him - if anything really is wrong! Could be he's constipated (his belly area is kind of dark...), has eaten too much, has a bloating problem, or something else. He could be dying. I don't know. I just keep an eye on the pond and if I see him floating there, looking like a mostly dead fish (visions of The Princess Bride go through my mind!*) I check to see. So far, although he never winks at me -ha ha - he does, however, sometimes move his eye a bit and focus on me. I think he's just teasing.
I hope that's all it is!
*The Princess Bride (film)
[Inigo pounds on a door]
Miracle Max: Go away!
[Inigo pounds again]
Miracle Max: [opening a small window in the door] What? What?
Inigo: Are you the Miracle Max who worked for the King all those years?
Miracle Max: The King's stinking son fired me. And thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're closed! [slams the window closed]
[Inigo pounds again]
Miracle Max: Beat it or I'll call the Brute Squad.
Fezzik: I'm on the Brute Squad.
Miracle Max: You are the Brute Squad!
Inigo: We need a miracle. It's very important.
Miracle Max: Look, I'm retired. And besides, why would you want someone the King's stinking son fired? I might kill whoever you wanted me to miracle.
Inigo: He's already dead.
Miracle Max: He is, eh? I'll take a look. Bring him in.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miracle Max: See, there's a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he's slightly alive. All dead, well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing that you can do.
Inigo: What's that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
My fish has no clothes to go through..... I don't want to look through his scales, even if he is a goldfish!!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
A Fish Tale
A year and a half ago, during the week before Thanksgiving, I invited four young women over for an American Thanksgiving. One of the gals arrived with a jar of fish, live fish, for me as a present from her and her husband.
One of the fish died immediately, which was sad, but not unusual. Stress of being moved, new water, and so forth probably did it in.
While we were in the States this past November through the beginning of March, all of the other fish except one died. I don't know why and I won't speculate, but I will just assume that the caretake did take care of them and not neglect them. Fish usually don't live all that long.
Cheyenne has never been interested in them. That surprises me because she is a cat, after all, and cats are supposed to love to eat fish, love to watch them, love to try to catch them. Once she had inspected the fish bowl and figured out what I was doing when I set it all up, she approved it and then ignored it/them.
Two weeks ago this couple brought me another fish, one of the same species so my lone fish would not be lonely. I don't remember the name of these fish, all I know is that they are very agressive and 'not nice,' like a gold fish 'is nice' in comparrison.
Old fish, a male, did not like New Fish, who was supposed to be a female which was supposed to mean that they would live together in fish harmony. Instead, he tried to kill her, or least damage her, by ramming into her over and over again with his very hard mouth. She huddled in the corner of the tank, if you can call a rounded tank edge a corner, and if you can call floating mouth up, tail down, fins barely moving at all 'huddling.' Old Fish just swam around and every once in awhile let her know he was still there - bam!
So, I had pity on poor New Fish and put her in a seperate container and set it beside the other container. Old and New spent hours looking at each other through the glass and plastic (different kinds of containers). That way they were not lonely, just seperated.
I was fond of Old Fish. He always got really excited when I came into the room. When I sat at the table he would swim around and if he realized I was looking at him, he got really excited and swam around even faster, or would stop and stare at me, all the while sending me telepathic messages of feedmefeedmefeedmefeedme. When I would pick up his food, he knew it - he knew I was going to feed him. His joy was amazing. Before I could get a few little crumbs out of his bag, he'd be waiting at the top of his water, mouth already open in anticipation.
Yesterday the plumbers were here, but I did spend time with my fish. I fed them. I talked to them. I watched them. I talked to Mel a bit about them. I enjoyed them. I was aware of their presence in my home. I cared.
Imagine my utter surprise last night after dinner when I came out of the kitchen, looked down into the New Fish's container and said, "Hi, little fishy!" and she swam around all excitedly. Then I looked a bit farther over to the other container and said, "Where is my fish?!!!?"
Old Fish was gone. Not in his container. Not under the skinny little water grass. Not huddling in a corner. Not floating belly up. Gone, I say, totally gone, non-existant, not there.
"Mel! My fish is GONE!" Mel looked up from his reading and said something to the effect of "huh? where is he? where did he go?"
I looked behind his container. No fish. I rechecked the smaller container - just one New Fish. He hadn't jumped into her container by some amazing feat of fish athletics. I looked down on the floor, no fish in sight. I asked Cheyenne, who was lying on the couch all curled up asleep, "Did you eat my fish??" and she just looked smuggly at me in total innocence and blinked before going back to sleep. Finally I pulled the case that holds my fancy tableware that Mel gave me for our 25th wedding anniversary and I keep under the table because there is no other place for it in our tiny flat, away from the wall and looked there.
I spied a dark gray shape back there in the shadows. My first thought was, "Great. What a huge dust bunny! grrr. I know Mel vacuumed back there just a couple days ago." My second thought was, "Oh no! Old Fish!" I reached back, grabbed hold of it and sure enough. Old Fish was now Dried Out Petrified Dead Old Fish. Almost hard as a rock already. I was very surprised at how quickly he dried out - after all it could only have been a couple of hours.
I flushed him. Just couldn't put him in the trash.
I was sad. I am still sad. I liked Old Fish, meany that he was. He had character. He liked me (ok, he liked his food, but he like me, too, I'm sure).
My guess is that he did try to jump into the New Fish's container. So sad. If he'd just been nicer, he'd still be alive....
I'm just glad that my cat is innocent for reals, and has not become a fish killer.
Now I wonder - do I try and get another fish so New Fish will not be lonely? Hmmmm.
One of the fish died immediately, which was sad, but not unusual. Stress of being moved, new water, and so forth probably did it in.
While we were in the States this past November through the beginning of March, all of the other fish except one died. I don't know why and I won't speculate, but I will just assume that the caretake did take care of them and not neglect them. Fish usually don't live all that long.
Cheyenne has never been interested in them. That surprises me because she is a cat, after all, and cats are supposed to love to eat fish, love to watch them, love to try to catch them. Once she had inspected the fish bowl and figured out what I was doing when I set it all up, she approved it and then ignored it/them.
Two weeks ago this couple brought me another fish, one of the same species so my lone fish would not be lonely. I don't remember the name of these fish, all I know is that they are very agressive and 'not nice,' like a gold fish 'is nice' in comparrison.
Old fish, a male, did not like New Fish, who was supposed to be a female which was supposed to mean that they would live together in fish harmony. Instead, he tried to kill her, or least damage her, by ramming into her over and over again with his very hard mouth. She huddled in the corner of the tank, if you can call a rounded tank edge a corner, and if you can call floating mouth up, tail down, fins barely moving at all 'huddling.' Old Fish just swam around and every once in awhile let her know he was still there - bam!
So, I had pity on poor New Fish and put her in a seperate container and set it beside the other container. Old and New spent hours looking at each other through the glass and plastic (different kinds of containers). That way they were not lonely, just seperated.
I was fond of Old Fish. He always got really excited when I came into the room. When I sat at the table he would swim around and if he realized I was looking at him, he got really excited and swam around even faster, or would stop and stare at me, all the while sending me telepathic messages of feedmefeedmefeedmefeedme. When I would pick up his food, he knew it - he knew I was going to feed him. His joy was amazing. Before I could get a few little crumbs out of his bag, he'd be waiting at the top of his water, mouth already open in anticipation.
Yesterday the plumbers were here, but I did spend time with my fish. I fed them. I talked to them. I watched them. I talked to Mel a bit about them. I enjoyed them. I was aware of their presence in my home. I cared.
Imagine my utter surprise last night after dinner when I came out of the kitchen, looked down into the New Fish's container and said, "Hi, little fishy!" and she swam around all excitedly. Then I looked a bit farther over to the other container and said, "Where is my fish?!!!?"
Old Fish was gone. Not in his container. Not under the skinny little water grass. Not huddling in a corner. Not floating belly up. Gone, I say, totally gone, non-existant, not there.
"Mel! My fish is GONE!" Mel looked up from his reading and said something to the effect of "huh? where is he? where did he go?"
I looked behind his container. No fish. I rechecked the smaller container - just one New Fish. He hadn't jumped into her container by some amazing feat of fish athletics. I looked down on the floor, no fish in sight. I asked Cheyenne, who was lying on the couch all curled up asleep, "Did you eat my fish??" and she just looked smuggly at me in total innocence and blinked before going back to sleep. Finally I pulled the case that holds my fancy tableware that Mel gave me for our 25th wedding anniversary and I keep under the table because there is no other place for it in our tiny flat,
I spied a dark gray shape back there in the shadows. My first thought was, "Great. What a huge dust bunny! grrr. I know Mel vacuumed back there just a couple days ago." My second thought was, "Oh no! Old Fish!" I reached back, grabbed hold of it and sure enough. Old Fish was now Dried Out Petrified Dead Old Fish. Almost hard as a rock already. I was very surprised at how quickly he dried out - after all it could only have been a couple of hours.
I flushed him. Just couldn't put him in the trash.
I was sad. I am still sad. I liked Old Fish, meany that he was. He had character. He liked me (ok, he liked his food, but he like me, too, I'm sure).
My guess is that he did try to jump into the New Fish's container. So sad. If he'd just been nicer, he'd still be alive....
I'm just glad that my cat is innocent for reals, and has not become a fish killer.
Now I wonder - do I try and get another fish so New Fish will not be lonely? Hmmmm.
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