Dominion Family

Update Your Feeds and Links

Cindy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:46:29 +0000

You can now find me at my 2 new blog homes:

http://morningtimemoms.blogspot.com

http://dominionfamily.blogspot.com/

Please update your links and feeds.

I want to pause a moment and thank Valerie for her longtime overwork on this blog. She has given far more time to this than I am happy about and for very little payment. She is a wonderful, wonderful person and friend and I am excited to lighten her load a little and maybe cut down on her prescription medications!!

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Changing Blog Homes

Cindy — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:50:21 +0000

There is a good chance that this blog will permanently disappear within a few days. If you cannot find me here, please try my former blogspot address. I will be experimenting from there.

http://dominionfamily.blogspot.com/

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Magazines and the Family Budget or In Which I Fail to Mention Michael Jackson

Cindy — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:55:31 +0000

We left off discussing the Obama Health Plan. I hope you will read some of the DHM’s posts on the subject. It is especially telling that Obama isn’t willing to put his own family under the same restrictions.

But I did ask a few questions that I am still interested in hearing the answers to:

Has the recession touched your family?
Is your standard of living decreasing?

Everyone knows that our SOL has decreased over the last few years. One area we have cut back on is magazine subscriptions. With increasing Internet usage and the availability of information, we don’t subscribe to many magazines anymore.

We still subscribe to:

Nature Friend:

The little boys LOVE Nature Friend and it is a great way to get them drawing.

Southern Living:

I will just tell you right now, you cannot be a southerner and not subscribe to SL. It is just not done.
As a matter of fact, SL is part of the triad of southern decorating musts that include: decorative plates, a wall of gilded family portraits where everyone wears white and scattered SL magazines.

As a southern woman I have never met a plate or a sandal that I didn’t like but I do fail the wall portrait test.

I get and read the free magazine Imprimis, always relevant and always worth reading.

Finally, I still subscribe to the Mars Hill Audio Journal. It is expensive but absolutely worth every cent.

Back to the recession.

I don’t even subscribe to WORLD Magazine anymore. I may try to sub to their online version. I appreciate WORLD very much but I cannot afford them.

Another worthy endeavor that I do not subscribe to anymore: Touchstone!

And to finish off the week with yet another confession, I will admit that I do not subscribe to ONE homeschooling magazine. I can barely keep up with all the homeschooling information that hits me on a given day over the Internet. I am afraid that magazines are becoming redundant. This is terrible news for the lovely families who have invested in homeschooling magazines but I don’t think it is avoidable. What say you?

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Open Thread: Obama Health Infomercial

Cindy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:02:02 +0000

Well, I am still not sure I can listen online. But feel free to discuss away. Lynne is also having trouble tuning since it is on tape delay in Arizona.

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Open Thread Preview

Cindy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:45:55 +0000

Questions of interest:

Do you have employer provided health care?
Are you self-employed? Insured?
What should hospitals do when asked to treat non-insured patients?
What should a family do if they procure medical bills outside their ability to pay?
Is the church really ready to deal with this issue? Should they?

Has your standard of living decreased this year?
How?
Has your compassion increased? Decreased?

How do we balance capitalism and compassion?

That’s a start. Feel free to answer these this evening before we get started.

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In Which I Recant

Cindy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:31:14 +0000

Right now it appears that I don’t HAVE to be anywhere today except the gym. Did I tell you we get to go to the TVA Live Well Gyms for free as a job benefit? I have been using the treadmill mostly and trying to get up enough nerve to try the strength machines. They are mostly Precor, if that means anything. I am listening to Suite Francais during my hour walk.

What is your exercise routine?
Are you trying to lose weight?

We just rejoined Netflix and I am wondering what to watch. I am really looking for a good series that we can enjoy over the summer. One summer we watched a bunch of the All Things Bright and Beautiful DVDs and one summer Monarch of the Glen. Last summer we watched LOST.

Any suggestions?

Everyday, during the summer, I wake up and think, “I don’t have anywhere to go today,” and I am so happy because I am truly a homebody but then it usually turns out that I have forgotten a bunch of errands. This is upsetting because then my 15 year old begs to drive and I did write an article in a national magazine telling moms to let their sons drive but I have now reached male driver number 6 and my nerves are finally shot. They were good nerves while they lasted and people used to comment that I was such a calm person and I was. These days I am becoming more and more like Inspector Dreyfuss. I do have a strategy though. Whenever I am driving with any of my former driving students, pay attention because I highly recommend my next suggestion, I hug the passenger side of the road and swerve around and jerk the car suddenly. They start squiggling around and telling me to watch it and be careful. I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing this in a very nonchalant manner. I am not making this up.

So who taught you to drive? Mom or Dad?

I am betting it was Mom. No wonder 40 year old women get a bad rap. They have been driven completely insane by teenaged drivers.

See you tonight at 10:00. Hopefully I can stay awake past my bedtime.

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Politics for the Perfectly Piqued

Cindy — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:15:08 +0000

It appears that I may have run out of things to say. At least for now. There are several family members who will assure you it can’t possibly be permanent.
I am sure I will wake up one morning with a ton of things to discuss and I still consider this a book blog and a homeschooling blog and sometimes a political blog.

Since my reading has been deterred by the fact that I have now lost 2 pairs of reading glasses and my husband keeps taking his to read Sir Nigel, a book he highly recommends but I resent, I am hardly reading at all. I have now read 1 chapter of every Paperback Swap book I ever got. Tomorrow, when it arrives, I will read 1 chapter of The Welsh Girl and then put it in the book basket(s) by my bed where it will languish with Psmith, Richard III and Wendell Berry but not Q. I did finish Noughts and Crosses this month and let me tell you it was weird. A man married his female shadow.* That is all I will say about it. But please remember that Q wrote it and therefore I am not to be blamed for reading it.

And yes, we still have 4 days left to finish out our 180 school days and I am still reading Heidi and I am still wondering whether to unschool next year (JK). And I definitely think nature study is more charming in the winter. For some reason once summer officially starts I am all soft rock and pina coladas. I could care less about Mozart and Botticelli in the summer. It is a flaw, I know.

But that still leaves politics. My friend, Lynne, has prodded me to open up a live blog on Wednesday night while listening/watching ABC’s informercial for Obama’s health care plan. So if you want to growl and hiss and throw tomatoes stop by Wednesday night a few minutes before 10:00 pm EDT where hopefully someone smart, like Lynn, or involved in health care, like Dana, will be here to say intelligent things. These live blog events have been a lot of fun and I hope this one will be also. It should be a very negative time for all and that always makes good blog fodder.

* I am not making this up.

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I Survived VBS

Cindy — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 02:34:07 +0000

I have earned my I Survived VBS T-Shirt, and in an act of sheer genius I was able to get out of attending Wednesday and Thursday of VBS by coming down with a case of strep throat so terrible that Wednesday night I did penance and prepared to die. I now believe strep throat is caused by being around OPC. No, not Orthodox Presbyterians, but rather Other People’s Children.

But my plan worked. I met a lot of nice people and even met some of them again at the used curriculum sale today where I sold items I am currently using in order to buy groceries I was able to wave at my new friends during the sale and then stare blankly at them trying to remember what their name tags said all week. And then right after I said wasn’t it nice VBS was over, I was able to panic and wonder if maybe this person wasn’t at VBS at all, maybe they were a checker at Walmart. No one should move after age 45; names do not stick, especially names like Mary, Susan or Donna. I do better with Victoria or Desdemona. People should think about that when naming their children.

But it feels good to pat myself on the back and feel like a normal person for a change. I won’t even think of philosophizing on the nature of modern childhood.
I am glad that Christ is Lord of all, even modern times.

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25 Things I Have Been Doing Lately

Cindy — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:31:59 +0000

Since I can’t seem to blog the normal way I thought I would revert back to a 25 Things post.

1. Reading Katherine by Anna Seton, a book about John of Gaunt’s 3rd wife and sometimes mistress. A great companion book if you are reading Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror.

2. Playing Scrabble on FB.

3. Looking at pictures of my grandbabies.

4. Taking drives around Chattanooga with Tim. Good gracious, it is pretty.

5. Reading The Idiot by Dostoyevsky on my phone.

6. Rewatching Lost.

7. Working hard on school planning for next year.

8. Trying to finish up this year’s school.

9. Finally returning to reading Heidi aloud to the little boys. This is why I am a successful plodder. I am undaunted by 5 months of not reading aloud. I just read the next chapter anyway.

10. Helping James transfer to Covenant College. Major miracles on this front. PTL.

11. Helping Nathaniel transfer to Chattanooga State’s nuclear program.

12. Attending a few $1.00 movies: Anyone see Knowing with Nicholas Cage?

13. Reading I Peter and II Kings and always Psalms. Reading Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening regularly now.

14. Thinking about going on a diet.

15. Thinking about exercising again.

16. Thinking about weeding the flower beds.

17. Thinking about the courtship tenet that makes getting one’s heart broken in a relationship akin to divorce. Doesn’t God work through our broken hearts and messes? Can’t they be tools for sanctification? Should we teach our daughters to avoid pain in relationships at all costs?

18. Thinking about how stupid I was to volunteer to help with VBS next week. I haven’t been to VBS in over 20 years. My children have never been to VBS. I thought it would help me get to know people at church and now I am in charge of something!!

19. Thinking that FB is nice to look at pictures, get links to news articles and keep up with friends, but why in the world would I care to get a notice that little Ava is growing in the lil green patch? I push Ignore a lot.

20. I love it when I have time during the summer to do anacrostic/crostic puzzles. I love it when I can do one without cheating.

21. Looking at my desktop background a lot:

22. Wondering when I will get some new pictures of a certain little baby boy.

23. Getting excited about Circe. You come too.

24. OK, Sometimes I play Baseball Tycoon on FB.

25. Listening to Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
on audio while at the laundromat. Did I mention the washer broke?

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For Your Staycation

Cindy — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:11:50 +0000

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