Of Hobbits and Fence Parts

Have you ever known someone who was almost consistently reminding you of a Hobbit? I know one such person... my little brother. For some time he has reminded me of scene in the Fellowship of the Ring movie:

Strider: "Gentlemen, we do not stop 'till nightfall."

Pippin: "What about breakfast?"

Strider: "We've already had it."

Pippin: "We've had one, yes. What about second breakfast?" [Strider walks away.]

Merry: "Don't think he knows about second breakfast Pip."

Pippin: "What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them doesn't he?"

Merry: "I wouldn't count on it."

[From over the bushes, Strider tosses an apple and Merry catches it. He hands it to Pippin and pats him on the shoulder. Another apple flies through the air, hitting Pippin in the head. He looks up bewildered.]

That is my brother for you... or his more recent incident. He bought this large mug, which looks like a pint. Which reminds me of this scene from the Fellowship of the Ring:

[Merry sits down at the table. He is holding a huge stein of beer.]

Pippin: "What's that?"

Merry: "This my friend, is a pint."

Pippin: "It comes in pints? I'm getting one."

[Pippin rushes to the bar.]

Sam: "You had a whole half already!"

My brother's attempt at this... filling the mug with Dr Pepper, which he had already had some Dr P already. Besides his Hobbit eating tendencies, he also has feet the size of a Hobbits, size 9 men's to be exact, and he's only 11.

Anyway, enough about my little bro. On to "Fence Parts". Did you know that old fence parts make excellent pallets? My mom and I went out to our garage on Tuesday morning to straiten it up so we can put things from the house that we don't need. Well, we discovered the most curious phenomenon... the floor of our garage was wet, yet when we moved the boxes the floor was dry, yet the bottom of the boxes was either very wet or damp. So, my mom and I removed nearly all of the boxes and put the old fence parts down on the floor of the garage and then a tarp over that, which made for some interesting foot work, but it was fun.

Hopefully, this will keep our stuff from getting super wet.

That's life right now... speaking of which... I just found out that I'm going to be an Aunt. :-)

Ramble

Have you ever found yourself simply staring out a window, yet not really seeing anything? The movement is outside and some part of your mind acknowledges it, yet doesn't at the same time. You simply become lost in thought, yet you aren't really thinking about anything in particular.
I find myself doing that lately. I find that there are times when I simply can not keep my mind on a task. I know that there is change coming and my mind does not want to stay on the tasks that I used to do with great ease. Perhaps this is because I won't be doing these tasks once I move. Or perhaps I simply have to many things fighting for dominance in my mind.
Hopefully once I get out of here my mind will return to it's normal clarity. Who knows. I certainly hope it does.

Pallet Jigs and Charlie Brown

"Some days I wake up early to watch the sunrise, and I think how beautiful it is, and how my life lies before me, and I get a very positive feeling about things. Like this morning for instance; the sky's so clear and the sun's so bright. How can anything go wrong on a day like this?" ~ Charlie Brown

That was today for me. The sky was clear the sun was unusually warm at a California temperature of 60 something and I was unusually happy. I found myself in a very Charlie Brown mood and put my little brother's You're a Good Man Charlie Brown CD on in my boom-box and put it in the sun-room and pointed it out the window. I have sung Charlie Brown most of the day as I've worked outside on our pallet jigsaw puzzles. Since we are sending the majority of our books via freight we have to pack them on pallets and then wrap them in layers of plastic wrap.

Anyway, good ol'Charlie Brown is keeping my spirits up and my parents home-group is starting to arrive to help out so I'll sign out for now.

Of Monkeys and Boxing

When I was much, much younger (say 4 or 5) ;) I earned the name "Monkey toes" from my mom. I received this title because I would climb the kitchen cabinets to get things that I wanted, such as cups (I suppose I wanted to be somewhat independent). When I became a little older and climbing the kitchen cabinets posed no challenge, I moved on to climbing my family's numerous boxes. By the time I was of age to do this (say 8 or 9) we had the majority of our possessions packed up in storage units, but you see, if we need anything out of there (when I was old enough) I was sent up the boxes to find what we needed.
It was honestly quite fun. You see I have kept the name "Monkey toes" through out the years. Now we try to get Drew to do it (Monkey toes Jr) but he doesn't like to do that much. I still find myself climbing up high on towers of boxes. Such as last night I found myself climbing through our garage in my full snow gear in search of the empty boxes that had inadvertently been buried behind boxes of packed boxes (such as Christmas decorations). One such tower was quite wobbly. I was reminded of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland where a drunk pirate sat drinking a bottle (presumably rum) on a very wobbly stack of barrels.
After having my fun on the unstable boxes, I jumped into the depths and rescued the empty boxes. Then of course I had to get out, but that was just as fun as getting there.

Then of course there is the boxing. No we are not fighting (well maybe a few verbal punches now and then but nothing drastic). If anything we have fists full of books and papers. My father, who happens to be: a priest, a teacher and last but not least a scholar has more books and papers than I can shake a stick at. Of course my whole family tends to be rather "booky", we like nothing better than to curl up with a good book and just read the hours away. Sadly we don't have a lot of time for that at the moment. But anyway, packing up our numerous libraries is a major job.
Of the course of our many moves we have come to use what we call "the tape gun" what it does is dispense the packing tape and cut it off. A very handy devise. Over the years I have become quite good at putting together boxes (I'm also good at collapsing them but that's another post).
Over the course of many years we have moved so many times that many of our boxes look more like tape than cardboard, but what can I say? We use them until they are of utterly no more use. For example I saw a box in the garage the other day that was very, very squashed and the sides were split open from the pressure on the top. That I say is no box. It is simply cardboard, and is destined for the recycle bin by the river.

So that my friends, is what I am up, too. Monkeys and Boxing...

Catch-Pharses

There are times that when I think of someone I can hear them saying something they always seem to say. For example: "Sweet", "Cool beans", etc. When I hear those phases I think of the person who says it.

Now, I think, that when people think of me they hear in their mind: "I don't know." At one point I knew that a number of people thought of computers when they thought of me. While they may still do that, they probably now have added, "Don't know".

While I now know that I'll be moving to Hollywood, I don't know when it will happen. Or where I will live. For all I know I may end up living in the church... which wouldn't be all that odd. When I was born my parents where living above a church that my dad was serving. So living in churches isn't that odd to me. I'm not sure that Vesper (the church cat) wouldn't like Braveheart and Fiesty being on her turf... or the bird for that matter.

Life has much uncertainty. The last few months have been full of uncertainty, and I still don't know what will happen in the more immediate future. When so much is unknown, it would be very easy to lose one's sanity, but through it all, you have lean on God, and just wait for Him to get all of the pieces in place.