All posts by dscales24

I am a wife, mother, and grandmother who enjoys sharing life experiences through writing short, lighthearted articles. These are intended to entertain, inspire, motivate, and inform my readers. I hope to receive responses in which readers tell me if they relate to the articles and share with me ideas that my writings generated in them.
That's Life

HOW DO THESE THINGS WORK?

14 Comments

Have you noticed, as I have, that once you encounter an item or a word, that same thing crops up again and again?

Sometimes a Bible verse enters my mind, and the next thing I know the preacher mentions it in the sermon, or I see it displayed on a church marquee.

Why does that happen?

Lately, I have pondered terms common in today’s world that my grandparents never heard: email; bandwidth; bytes; unlimited talk, text, and data, etc.

If Grandma had ever heard me say dot com, she would have feared I had developed a speech impediment.

I wondered about new terms added to my grandparents’ vocabularies when electricity and telephones entered their lives.

For certain, they were quickly introduced to the terms electric bill and telephone bill.

Electricity brought to light (notice the pun) words like socket, light switch, meter reading, shock, outage, and plug and unplug.

Telephones made common such phrases as busy signal, party line, person-to-person, hang up, and please hold.

Such thoughts spiraled through my brain for several days as I vacuumed, pulled weeds, folded laundry, and waited for traffic lights to turn green.

Then, wouldn’t you know it? While reading a novel set in the 1920s, I found the following paragraph.

Life has all at once grown exponentially larger than I could have ever dreamed. Electricity, the automobile and now the telephone have made it clear that possibility is endless for an enterprising mind. I can only imagine what it  must have felt like to navigate a flat earth only to discover its roundness. (Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera)

How is it that I happened to read a book that dealt with the exact thoughts I had been having?

My thinking about electricity and telephone terminology could not have inspired me to head to the library and check out a book that featured the introduction of electricity and telephones into American life.

Could it?

I mean, the title, Call Your Daughter Home, does not scream, “Electricity and telephones!”

I borrowed that library book because my sister Pam recommended it to me.

Pam and I are linked, genetically, of course, but also by a preference for the same kinds of books. And our minds do tend to run along the same paths.

For example, I can be thinking about Aunt Betty, and Pam will call me and say, “I talked to Aunt Betty this morning.”

Maybe Pam had been thinking about electricity and telephones, then read Call Your Daughter Home, figured I too had been thinking about electricity and telephones, and gave me a call to recommend that book.

I don’t know.

How do these things work?

That's Life

LIFE, AS WE KNOW IT

10 Comments

Like everyone else, Dan and I bide our time as we wait for the Covid-19 pandemic to end. We look forward to our lives returning to normal, whatever that means.

We have appointments to get our first Covid-19 vaccinations later this month.

On October 27, Dan had an aortic valve replacement.

Then, on February 1, he had spinal surgery, a laminectomy. This procedure is intended to relieve the nerve pressure that caused pain in his back, hips, and legs.

Therefore, Dan has spent much of the winter convalescing.

His back surgery restricted him from heavy lifting, and, until yesterday, I did all the driving.

During our 47-year marriage, Dan has done 99% of the driving when both of us are in the car. I don’t like to drive, and I appreciate Dan’s willingness to take the wheel.

Dan and I have differing approaches to driving. Dan’s goal is to arrive at his destination as quickly as possible. He takes the most direct route, gets angry at traffic lights that slow his progress, and critiques other drivers.

My goal, when I drive, is to arrive at my destination with as little stress as possible. This means I often take non-direct routes to avoid confusing roundabouts and the necessity of making left-hand turns in heavy traffic. I pay little attention to other drivers and don’t mind stopping at red lights. Those pauses give me a chance to put in the next CD in the audiobook I’m enjoying.

When I must act as Dan’s chauffeur, the patience of both of us is tested, but we persevere.

During our long marriage, we have learned to work out differences, work through conflicts, and work with each other, in general.

The operative word in that paragraph is work.

We enjoy watching birds eat from two feeders that hang off our back porch. Cardinals, sparrows, doves, and woodpeckers have entertained us during our forced semi-hibernation.

The birds ate together peacefully until yesterday when a flock of starlings descended upon our backyard. These big birds are aggressive and greedy. All other birds were driven away while these rude pigs of the bird world emptied both feeders before noon.

Today we bought a new feeder designed to discourage starlings. We also bought safflower seed, which starlings supposedly don’t like to eat.

We’ll see.

We haven’t returned to church on the weekends but are happy we can stream services.

I read a daily devotional from Mornings With Jesus. (I regularly get this book as a Christmas gift from my friend, Jan, and give it as a gift too.)

Dan has returned to his old hobby of creating string designs, and I am embroidering.

We read and watch a little television.

I do a bit of writing. (I will have an article published in the Boomers section of The Daily Journal on Saturday, March 6.)

Dan naps and waits for his back to heal.

The highlights of each week are visits from the kids and grandkids.

This is life, as we know it, during the winter of 2020/2021.

Inspirational

I THINK HE WAS RIGHT

8 Comments

My mother possessed a great sense of humor.

In other posts, I have written funny things about her:

  • Her use of the mixed metaphor, “grabbing the mule by the horns.”
  • Her goofy antics (pushing through Wal-Mart a cart full of reduced-price tennis shoes, thinking she was navigating her own cart).
  • Her tumble down the little hill in her back yard when shooing a squirrel away from her flower bed.
  • Her kitchen snafus (forgetting to serve the dressing she made for Thanksgiving dinner, and failing to prebake a pie crust before pouring in the cream filling).

In all these situations, I didn’t laugh at my mother. I laughed with her. She could see the humor in her own mistakes.

One day she and I were discussing some random topic, and Mom said, “Well, Jesus taught (such and such) . . . and I think he was right.”

After a few seconds, we both started laughing.

Of course whatever Jesus taught was right. He doesn’t need our affirmation of His words.

At least, in my mother’s and my opinion, He doesn’t.

Not everyone, however, agrees.

Many people today are eager to explain away or completely disregard Jesus’ teachings.

They also claim God’s moral laws outlined in the Bible no longer apply.

The writings of the Gospels, according to them, are partly fiction.

The admonitions about righteous living found in the Epistles were only for people who lived in the Apostle Paul’s day, they say.

All people choose someone or something to be the authority for their lives.

My mother and I chose the Bible.

What have you chosen?

That's Life

STUNG

8 Comments

Many years ago I had a friend I’ll call Dottie.

Dottie and I shared several similarities.

I loved her sense of humor.

One day, Dottie said to me, “Well, I’m ready to die now.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“I pulled out my kitchen stove and cleaned behind it,” she said. “And I finally dealt with some underwear I had been soaking in a bucket in my garage for weeks. I hated the thought that anyone who came to clean my house after my death would think I was a slob.”

I laughed.

Dottie and I discussed recipes and our kids, and we talked a lot about the number one topic of women: losing weight.

I shared with Dottie that I had held onto a black skirt I had worn in the past but had “outgrown.” I was trying to eat reasonably and exercise so I could again wear that skirt.

Happily, I reached that goal and wore the skirt to work one day. I stopped by Dottie’s desk to share my success with her.

“Congratulations!” Dottie said. “Now that you’ve lost weight, you just need to do something with that hair of yours and you’ll be looking good!”

Dottie had a way of doing that. She would utter what sounded like a compliment and then turn around and slap you with her next comment.

I’m sure my hand flew to my hair when she said what she said.

“I think you should get a perm,” Dottie said.

“No!” I said. “I hate perms! My hair soaks up perm solution like a dry sponge absorbs water. I always wind up looking like Richard Simmons.”

“You need to see my hairdresser,” said Dottie. “She is fantastic. Let me make you an appointment for a perm. You’ll love it.”

The appointment was made, and Dottie and I planned to meet for lunch afterward.

I visited Dottie’s hairdresser.

My hair soaked up that perm solution like a dry sponge absorbs water. I looked like a curvy Richard Simmons.

I met Dottie at the restaurant right after my hair appointment. Her mouth dropped open when she saw me.

“Oh, Debbie!” she said. “That’s awful.”

She laughed her loudest laugh. I tried to laugh but couldn’t.

Encounters with Dottie often ended that way. She would be laughing, and I would be failing to see the humor in the situation.

I haven’t seen Dottie for years, and I don’t want to see her.

Before you judge me too harshly, allow me to say if I did see her, I would be kind. I’d ask about her kids and grandkids. I might even ask if she had pulled her kitchen stove out for a good cleaning lately.

But I would NOT suggest we get together and renew our friendship.

The middle knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand has a knot on it. The knot resulted from a wasp sting I suffered back in the summer while I was working in the yard.

It was a particularly painful sting, and it left me with that knotted knuckle.

I plan to be more careful as I do yard work this summer.

I hate being stung.

    Inspirational

    WAITING

    24 Comments

    When I was growing up in rural Arkansas, my dad owned a general store. It wasn’t an impressive place, but it offered most of the things people needed.

    It sat just up the road from our house. Every day at noon Dad walked home for dinner. (In the south, daily meals are labeled breakfast, dinner, and supper.)

    No “hours of operation” were ever posted at the store, but everyone knew when it was open.

    One old man always wanted to buy his groceries between noon and one o’clock.

    He did not drive to the store and park his car there. He knew the store was closed.

    He drove to our house, where Dad was eating dinner.

    Mr. Grump didn’t park on the side of the road by our house. (We had no driveway.)

    He drove his old-timey, heavy, black car up to the verge of our yard.

    There he sat, scowling, waiting for Dad to open the store especially for him.

    From behind our living room curtains, my siblings and I watched him: an angry old man, hunched inside a gangster car, its shiny grill aimed right at our front porch.

    We pivoted our heads to glance at Dad and then at the man in our front yard.

    Everyone waited.

    Nervously, we kids waited for what might be an explosion.

    The old man waited for Dad to leave his hot dinner on the table and open the store for him.

    Dad simply waited to finish his meal and do whatever he usually did during his dinner break. Probably he visited the bathroom and checked on his hunting dogs in the pen at the back of the house.

    Then, with a nod to the waiting shopper, he walked back to the store, the black car trailing him.

    It strikes me today, reflecting on this memory, that we are all waiting.

    Like memories, some of our waiting is short-term. We wait for the toast to pop up, and for the commercial to end so we can resume watching our show.

    Some of our waiting is long-term. Right now, we are all waiting for this virus to run its course and leave us in peace.

    Some of us wait nervously, fearing the worst.

    Others wait angrily, personally affronted and wishing someone would make the world spin to their liking.

    But some push past fear and anger to keep moving forward. They keep, as nearly as possible, to their usual productive routines.

    Patience cannot be overrated.

      My dad, Bob James

      1930-1995

      He learned patience through the things he endured.

      Inspirational

      NO LIST

      16 Comments

      Writers like me are always looking for inspiration.

      Many of my article ideas come from watching and listening to my grandchildren, as well as from observing nature and reading Scriptures.

      This morning I was inspired by a bottle of laundry detergent.

      I poured detergent into my washer, loaded the dirty clothes, closed the lid, and started the machine.

      Then, as I began replacing the lid on the detergent bottle, I discovered I had started twisting it on in a crooked way. I had to take off the lid, align the grooves on the lid with the grooves on the bottle’s top, and begin again.

      Then, as I twisted on the lid, I heard a satisfying “click,” which told me I had secured it properly.

      I wish all misalignments in my life were so easily fixed.

      Forever I am striving to secure that satisfying, all-is-as-it-should-be click in the following efforts:

      1. Get organized.
      2. Declutter.
      3. Finish what I start.
      4. Take better care of myself.
      5. Write more.

      If I were to compose a list of new year’s resolutions, these items would be on it.

      But I’m resisting the urge to do that this New Year’s Day.

      I don’t need a list to remind me to work toward achieving those goals.

      There is no chance I will forget to try to get organized, declutter, finish what I start, take better care of myself, and write more.

      Those are the very efforts that occupy my mind, my time, and my life every day. Why write on a piece of paper the goals I couldn’t not work toward if I tried?

      The truth is this.

      No matter how hard I work at it, I will never hear that elusive click informing me I’ve achieved success. I’ve reached my goals. I’ve arrived.

      No click, so no list.

      This year, I resolve to love better. To love the way 1 Corinthians 13 instructs me to love. To love more nearly the way God loves.

      Consider joining me.

      Inspirational

      STORIES

      13 Comments

      Our lives are made up of stories.

      No matter how mundane the story seems, each one impacts us and the people with whom we share it.

      When all my stories are put together, that compilation will be the narrative of my life.

      My parents were married in 1951.

      Dad was stationed with the Air Force in Kansas City, Missouri. These newlyweds rented, as their first home, a curtained-off portion of a basement in a house owned by a woman on Virginia Street.

      A humble abode it was.

      When I came along, surprisingly to me, Mom had a diaper service. How she and Dad afforded that luxury, I do not know. Maybe it was a gift.

      Anyway, clean diapers were brought in and soiled diapers were taken away. I believe they also had milk delivered.

      A deliveryman, be it of diapers or milk or some other item I don’t know about, was in Mom’s kitchen one day as she was washing dishes.

      One item she placed into the draining tray was a sharp knife, and Mom stood it with the sharp point facing up.

      The deliveryman reached for the knife.

      He said to Mom, “You’re going to cut yourself, Sweetheart. Always stand your sharp knives in the drainer with the blades pointing down.”

      Maybe you expected a different kind of story when I mentioned a deliveryman reached for a knife in my young mother’s kitchen.

      But that is the totality of the story my mother told me when I was older.

      Times were different. People may have been more trustworthy then. Calling a young woman “sweetheart” in the way this man did was not considered sexist or offensive.

      How many times do you suppose I have thought of that man’s advice to my mother?

      I have thought of it as many times as I have placed a knife in a dish drainer or into my dishwasher.

      I always position the knife with the sharp end pointing down.

      Possibly that man’s words prevented my mom or me from cutting ourselves badly.

      Little life stories may turn out to be significant or irrelevant. We don’t know, as they happen, what effect they may have.

      But this much is certain. A steady stream of good life stories makes for a happy narrative.

      My mother and me at our first home in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1952.
      Inspirational

      WHAT’S IN A NAME?

      12 Comments

      When I was born in 1952, my parents named me Debra Gay.

      I asked my mother why I was named as I was. Her explanation included the mention of Deborah Kerr, the actress. Mom had a friend named Gay, who, as her name suggests, was a joyful woman.

      Thus, I became Debra Gay.

      I meet Debras, Deborahs, Debbies, and Debs all the time.

      A delivery woman last week visited with me on my driveway. Her nametag read Deb, so we discussed the popularity of that name among women of our age.

      She said, “I never met a Deb I didn’t like.”

      A clerk I encountered in a department store wore a Deborah nametag. When she saw my name on my credit card, she said, “Hmmm. My mother said when she decided to give me my name, she was ‘at least going to spell it right.'”

      How was I supposed to respond to a comment like that?

      My sister-in-law is named Lavana. She likes her name because it is unique. No one, upon hearing her name, ever asks, “Lavana who?”

      I grew up in Northern Arkansas. There, women whose names ended in the letter a, often had their names pronounced as if they ended in the letters ie.

      My paternal grandmother was Eva, so she was Evie. I knew an Elda (Eldie), an Ida (Idie), a Laura (Laurie), a Letta (Lettie), and an Alta (Altie).

      Some people had common names, but because those people were significant to my family and me, we did not need then, nor do we need now, to use last names when speaking of them.

      This is true of Duane.

      Duane was a second or third cousin, or a second cousin once removed, or some such.

      My siblings and I have known several Duanes, but, to us, that name always denotes the One and Only Duane.

      Duane and his sister, Judy Ann, sometimes stayed with their grandparents, who lived across the road from us. (Their grandmother was Altie.)

      When they weren’t living with their grandparents, they lived in Kansas with one or the other of their separated parents.

      Duane was a hero to me.

      I won’t say he could walk on water, but he could run barefoot on our rocky dirt road faster and more effortlessly than anyone else I knew.

      Duane was also brave.

      One day he swallowed a pokeberry, when all of us knew those purple berries were deadly. Their only purpose, as far as we knew, was to decorate the tops of mudpies or to force-feed to enemies. As if we had enemies.

      But Duane survived the ingestion of that deadly pokeberry. Much to our surprise and relief, he did not drop dead.

      Duane also used more colorful language than my parents allowed their children to use.

      He introduced me to words like gnarly, squirrelly, and raunchy.

      After an ice storm, I heard him say, “This road is slicker than snot on a glass doorknob.”

      Wow!

      Duane was also born in 1952. I am writing this on October 16, the 68th anniversary of his birth.

      But no one is celebrating.

      Duane died in a car accident before he reached even his 30th birthday.

      I miss Duane and love him still.

      What’s in a name?

      A lot.

      This picture was taken in our front yard around 1960. I am standing on the left, next to Duane. My sister Pam is next in line, standing beside Judy Ann.

      Inspirational

      NATIVE LANGUAGE

      7 Comments

      John 8:44 records this about the devil: When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

      English is both my native and my only language.

      But any language can be used for good or evil. People can bless or curse in English. They can encourage or discourage; build up or tear down; heal or wound.

      Language can be used to brighten or darken a listener’s day.

      James 3:10 reads: Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.

      Earlier in his book, James wrote it is easier to control powerful horses or to command great ships than to tame one’s own tongue. This small organ is capable, he writes, of igniting great fires.

      Paul instructed in Col 4:6: Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

      Satan’s native language is not a language at all in the way you and I think of the term. He delivers his messages in German, French, and Portuguese, as well as in English.

      Because his aims, according to John 10:10, are to steal, kill, and destroy, his native language is deceit.

      God’s aims are to bless, heal, and deliver. His native language is love.

      I communicate in English, but my language is defined by what is in my heart.

      Inspirational

      CRUSH THE HEAD

      4 Comments

      This week I read a story about a couple who were doing cleanup around some property they had bought. In the cleaning process, the wife encountered a rattlesnake.

      The woman screamed and backed herself against the house. The husband ran to her and decapitated the snake with a hoe. Both people then went inside the house to calm down.

      Later, the husband went outside to remove the two pieces of the snake from the yard. The hoe was lying where he left it, near the head of the snake.

      I was shocked at what happened next.

      As the man bent to pick up the hoe, the snake’s head leapt forward and bit him severely. (Research has informed me snakes retain reflexes after death.)

      The wife rushed her husband to the hospital, and he survived, though his hand suffered permanent damage. He almost died.

      Reflecting upon that story, I thought of the prophecy concerning Jesus and Satan in Genesis 3:15. God is speaking to the serpent when He says: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

      Satan, the serpent, did strike the heel of Jesus, but Jesus crushed his head by dying and rising again to save you and me.

      Satan threatens and torments us now, but his poisonous head has been crushed by the only One powerful enough to do so.

      Those of us who are in Christ are delivered from the serpent’s death-inducing bite.

      IN MY BOOK

      Being a grammarian, I evaluate newscasters, billboard advertisers, menu writers, and others who are paid to speak or write for a public audience.

      This is because professionals should perform their crafts with precision.

      Just as I would not pay for work done by a sloppy housepainter or eat food prepared by a bad restaurant cook, I refuse to read material produced by bad writers.

      That is, I would like to refuse to read it, but I find that impossible. It appears everywhere.

      In my book, people who write badly should not be paid to write.

      THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK

      Many of us have mistakenly said to a parent or grandparent, “What a beautiful little girl you have!” Then, to our embarrassment, we are informed the child is a boy.

      This is an easy enough mistake to avoid. Say simply, “What a beautiful little one (baby, child, kiddo, etc.) you have!”

      Think also before addressing senior citizens with child-appropriate titles like “sweetheart, dearie, or honey.” Among my friends, the consensus is we dislike these titles.

      One woman said when someone calls her a “cutesy” name, she feels labeled as helpless or stupid. She hears expressed something like this: “Here you go, honey. Now, go play with your doll.”

      The young person who does this may be trying to show kindness or respect. Instead, the older person feels patronized.

      Treat all adults, whatever their ages, as adults. Period.

      BOOK RECOMMENDATION

      I recently listened to (via Audible.com) a book I highly recommend: A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, by W. Phillip Keller. This is an old book, first published by Zondervan in 1970.

      The author was born in Kenya to missionary parents and spent many years tending sheep. In this book, he astutely compares Christians, Christ’s beloved flock, to real sheep.

      Passages in Psalm took on new and clear meaning for me as I read through the chapters.

      In Chapter Four, He Leads Me Beside Quiet Waters, the author writes:

      When sheep are thirsty, they become restless and set out in search of water. If not led to the good water supplies of clean, pure water, they will often end up drinking from the polluted potholes where they pick up such internal parasites as nematodes, liver flukes, or other disease germs.

      And in precisely the same manner, Christ, our Good Shepherd, made it clear that thirsty souls of men and women can only be fully satisfied when their capacity and thirst for spiritual life is fully quenched by drawing on himself.

      Over and over I saw myself in the behavior of rebellious ewes who failed to recognize their need for their shepherd’s guidance, deliverance, and provision.

      Do yourself a favor and read it. The book is not boring or tedious. Instead, it will richly feed (and water) you with a clear explanation of David’s words in Psalm 23.