Don't High Five a Deacon -- Father's Day 1989

Dad only went to church on occasion.  One of those "on occasions" was Father's Day 1989.

The church was one I did Bible quizzing with, a little more on the upscale side than those churches in my hometown.

As is custom in some congregations, all fathers were given a small gift.  Most churches I've attended will give a "soap on a rope" which my dad used to leave in the car for a few months until the summer sun made the "Wild Forest" scent a little much and Mom or I would move the box with the corded soap to a box of things to sell when we would have a garage sale.

Father's Day 1989, however, was a bit different.  The church handed out small wrapped gifts to each dad. Inside each was a tire gauge.  I was sitting with the teenagers and we were passing this picture of Dad down through the pew and each of us were trying to keep from laughing as it came to us.  (Passing pictures was as popular as passing notes, and often just as entertaining.)

I was passing a note to the pastor's son to tell him "That's my grandmother's dog upside down with it's legs in the air" when I noticed a lull in the proceedings.

Pastor K was going on "Someone must have it!  It is just a small piece of paper taped to the package that says 'Happy Father's Day'. "

Unknown to me, Mom was nudging Dad to raise his hand.  More description as to how "Happy Father's Day" was written from the pulpit.

Dad slightly slipped up his left index finger.  This was a standard greeting to people.  Like "We're #1" except he wouldn't raise his hand in the air to do so, only about shoulder height unless he was driving and then he would keep his hand on the wheel and "wave" by raising a digit or two.  How he thought anyone could see this was beyond me.

Pastor K seemed THRILLED to find that someone really had won the big prize for the day, and that his pestering from the pulpit for the recipient to acknowledge the gift had finally been rewarded with a father admitting he had "Happy Father's Day" written on the gift wrap of his tire gauge.

Dad had to go to the pulpit to collect his winnings.  It was a $20 gift certificate to a local steak house.  Instead of "Thank you", my dad bellowed, "ALLLLLL RIGHHHHHTTTT!"

Dad left the pulpit area to resume sitting with Mom.  I was receiving a note from a friend that said, "Maybe he will start coming to church more often."  I glanced up and saw Dad high-five a deacon on his way back to his pew.

My last Father's Day with Dad was in 2006.  His gift that year came from my recent trip to Israel -- a Pittsburgh Steeler's t-shirt in Hebrew.  My husband used that, backwards as his t-shirt under his dress shirt at our wedding as my husband gave his own private shout-out to my dad, whom he never met.  The most memorable Father's Day with my dad was the year he high-fived a deacon visiting a church in which he barely knew anyone.  We laughed about that for years, and I still do.

Help! I Think My Guinea Pig Has Mites!

Do you think your guinea pig has mites?  Well, I have news for you. . . the answer is YES!  All guinea pigs are carriers of mites.  However, most of the time they lay dormant, and don't cause any problems.  

My guinea pig started having seizures and I thought it was due to high blood pressure or something related to old age.  When I took Lucky to the vet, I commented about the seizures.  The vet tickled him on the back, and said, "Seizures like this?"  Sure enough, Lucky had a seizure.  Usually you don't want to let a guinea pig have a seizure, they can hurt themselves, or hurt a human.  (I will likely have a small scar where Lucky's jaw clamped onto my wrist while I was trying to support him and keep him safe during a seizure.).  So, you don't want to do anything to CAUSE a seizure.  (In the vet's case, he did it to see if it was mites.)

Another sign a guinea pig has a mite flare up is if they have scabs on them from biting at themselves or scratching.  Mite flare ups can be caused by being around other guinea pigs with active mites, a guinea pig who hasn't been feeling well, stress, or even old age.  Be sure to not confuse mites with ringworm -- that is another issue entirely and needs different treatment (as well as more care because humans can catch ringworm from a guinea pig)

What I did on my summer vacation in 2017 and since

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One of my readers pointed out that I hadn't done a life update since 2017, so I figured it was time I did that.  I pretty much quit blogging for a while because I lost a contract I had to write monthly, and I just started redoing some old posts and such to keep some traffic coming to the blog.  I have missed writing, and I finally made some money from Google AdSense, so I'm thinking of getting back into it.  I took a blogging course a few years ago, and the only thing that happened was my page views went down, so that was super discouraging.

Trips we have taken since I last wrote:

My husband and I went to the Nazarene General Assembly in Indianapolis.  I went to a Nazarene college over half a lifetime ago, and I wanted to to go the alumni banquet and see friends.  The one friend I was hoping to see and didn't passed away about a year ago -- killed by a drunk driver.  We weren't close, but knew each other and were still friends on Facebook.  From Indianapolis, my husband and I decided to road trip a little further west -- a bucket list item for me has always been to go to all 50 states, so we went out to Iowa and went to Antique Archeology, up into Wisconsin and visited a town that was filled with dozens of troll statues, had cheese curds at a bar, and visited Illinois for the first time and even played mini-golf in the basement of a funeral home!

Christmas Without Debt: Win Your Christmas!

FTC disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links.

It's always close to Christmas in my planner!  I keep a countdown so  the holidays don't catch me off guard and I will be prepared for , both with online selling, and just plain out preparing for Christmas with gifts, goodies, and decorations.

For many years I WON my Christmas -- sometimes down to the turkey in the oven.  How did I do that?  Well, I will tell you.  There are no guarantees that you will win, but it's something fun to do, and normally every year for the past twenty I have won a few items I was able to use as gifts.  Last year I won a nice set of watercolor pencils I was able to give my husband who likes to do art.  I also won him a wood chisel set which he thought was really cool.  His grandfather was into woodworking, and while he hadn't done any before Christmas, he was excited to try his hand at it.