I've always been looking for a song with my name it. Mom said she always sang Jennifer Juniper to me, and I do like the song, but Donovan pronounces my name in French: Zhenifah. And all the other songs about Jennifer say: Jennifah. I guess the 'fur' at the end doesn't lend itself to music very well. So I'd nearly given up hope finding a song with the furry part of my name intact.
And then...
In 1973, John Denver (who happens to be my favorite singer) sang a little song called "Zachary and Jennifer", and I finally found it this morning. Enjoy. :-)
This post promises to have Miss Laura and Miss Katie in stitches. Oh, well... I'm excited.
Grandpa has promised me a present this coming spring. My very own Angus/Semental/Jersey heifer, who will be a milk cow eventually. I am quite excited about this, because I'm going to do something special with this little gal. Miss Laura can tell you I'm excited about the idea, because I actually told her about it. (It takes a lot for me to talk about something)
Grandpa and I are going to find or make an ox cart for her and I'm going to train her to pull it.
If anyone wants to volunteer some name suggestions for her, I'm trying to find the right one. Right now I'm thinking about Yulia (Russian form of Julia).
Having a work cow had always been a dream of mine, and I am very, very happy. Before ya'll ask, no, I am NOT willing to get a horse for this job. Nasty, springy, nervy creatures with legs that are waaaaay too long and spindly. Give me a nice, solid cow any day.
Step 2: Pull out pin.
Step 3: Place grenade in you kitchen junk drawer.
Step 4: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
Step 5: After the smoke clears, return to junk drawer. Try to pry out the junk that has now been loosened slightly by grenade.
Step 6: Give up and find a jack hammer.
Step 7: Since your parents won't let you bring said hammer in the house, try to find a chisel.
Step 8: The chisel is in the junk drawer. Try to pry it out with your bare hands.
Step 9: Find band-aids.
Step 10: Try to lubricate the junk with vegetable oil.
Step 11: Unfortunately, your mother found you.
Step 12: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
Step 13: Return to drawer without oil.
Step 14: Ask your brother to clean it, but he won't without sufficient pay, which is an amount that should keep you in debt until your 67th birthday.
Step 15: Give up and have lunch.
You've completed that? See? It wasn't so hard, was it?
I'm at 6 and 7. You should be laughing by now, realizing that being at "sixes and sevens" is a British term for utter confusion. Which is about accurate, looking around at the kitchen, which I have pretty much covered with junk and/or destroyed. There's ink smeared on my hands and all kinds of fun. Good thing my keyboard is black! (No, Mom! I'm joking, I'm joking!)
Now. Allow me to describe how I clean junk drawers. I mean, what I posted up there is standard procedure for everyone, right? *Everyone nods* Right. This is what I do:
If it doesn't work, I pitch it.
If I don't like it, I pitch it.
If I see no need for it, I pitch it.
If I haven't seen it since the last ice age, I pitch it.
I put it straight in a trash bag, because if I were to put it somewhere to be donated, inevitably, someone will wander by and say, "Hey! That is cool! I think I could use that at some point before the next ice age!" and put it back in the junk drawer. It never fails.
I mean, why do we need 2,597 gel pens that don't work but look pretty? Exactly how many bent paper clips do we need? Why do we have receipts crinkled up in the corner? And do we really need a whole hamster cage in there? What about the world's biggest collection of pennies and ancient keys? 75 decks of cards that are all mixed together? NO! Be gone! All of you!
Everything other than that gets sorted into containers, color-coded, alphabetized, and thoroughly cleaned. Well, in my mother's fondest dreams. I do sort them (markers in one, pens in another, pencils in another) and put them back in a way that it will appear as though I thought for a long time about the placement of them.
And, now, if you will excuse me, I must get back to work. There are some things to take care of.
I have dreams and ambitions. There are things I really want to do with my life. But if my Lord decides that right now is when He's going to come back, I'd be thrilled to drop everything and be with him.
What brought this up: My dear aunt Pat asked me about my conclusion in my last post, saying (and this is a rough summary of what she said) that it wasn't really something she had expected someone as young as me to think of, and if I'd given up hope and ambition.
I'm reminded daily of how imperfect we are. Especially while I'm watching the Olympics. Watching these athletes reminds me of how imperfect I am, because I could never do those things, even though I want to more than anything. There. My greatest wish was always to be a gymnast and fly on the uneven bars, floor exercises, and vault.
In reality, I can't even run without pinching nerves in my ankles and knees, popping joints, and all sorts of nasty. I'm not coordinated, graceful, or flexible. So, no gymnastics for me. Besides, all the Olympic gymnasts are about a foot shorter than me, so I'd have to shrink. Say, Miss Laura and Miss Katie might like that, come to think of it... Anyway, I can do lots of things well, but there are things I can't do well, and that's one of 'em.
It just reminds me that one day, there won't be imperfections in me. I can't wait. The first thing I'm going to do in Heaven is run to my Master. :-D I can't wait!
Well, Russia has sent forces into Georgia, killing at least 2,000 people and just missed blowing up an oil pipeline. Georgia has pulled 1000 troops out of Iraq to fight off the separatists in S. Ossetia. Georgia has approved a state of war for 15 days.
I'll be keeping an eye on what's happening. Doesn't sound good.
Also, ya'll pray for China during the Olympics. Keep our brothers and sisters in Christ in your prayers. There might be a chance for release of some Christian prisoners. President Bush might be visiting some house churches which will bring them out from under the radar.
Speaking of China, Joey Cheek, an Olympic speed skater, was banned from going to China because of his work with creating Team Darfur. The Olympics are open to everyone in the world... who agrees with China. Even the opening ceremonies, what little I saw of them, were laced with propaganda. *shakes head*
I don't know about you guys, but I look out the window and hope to see my Lord returning. When that glorious day comes... Well... *smile* We won't have to worry about the economy, the terrorists, the wars, the oil crisis... We will be gathered in by our sweet Jesus, and I can't wait.
Well, to make a long story short, I managed to whack a good bit out of two knuckles with a knife that was really sharp while opening a box. *headdesk* It doesn't hurt at all (I'm convinced something is wrong with the nerves in my hands), but... Man, that was stupid. Not to mention bloody. *curls lip* One day I'll learn...
Yeah, and on that day, the pigs will fly, the cows will come home, and Elvis will perform live.
Mr. Tucket. It's a book that I haven't read for years and years... Not since the vacation of horrors in... '98? Somethin' like that. And I still remember it like I read it yesterday.
Francis Alphonse Tucket was traveling with his family in covered wagons when he was captured by the Pawnees. Thanks to a one-armed trapper named Jason Grimes, he escaped that and went with Jason to have lots of adventures trapping. Then he manages to 'adopt' two young orphans, Lottie and Billy, whose family died of cholera. The series is their trip to the west and Francis' family.
It's for ages 10 and up (I still love it, so there you go), and it's by Gary Paulsen. Yep, he's the author of Hatchet. *grin* I just got that and Brian's Winter at a garage sale yesterday. Reviews of those to come soon, I think. I've read Hatchet before, and it was so good, man! But ya'll know I'm into rough wilderness survival books and all that (maybe you didn't know, but anyhoo...), so, as usual, Miss Laura would not read either of these books. She might read Mr. Tucket.
So. This review is over. *curtsy* Now go read Mr. Tucket. Or another book that you'd like. Just don't stay on the computer too long! The rest of the world is calling! :-D
And *I* am going to read The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews (Yes, the Mary Poppins and Sound of Music Julie Andrews)
Because this is my 200th post on this blog, almost my blogoversary, and you've all left almost 1000 comments, I thought I'd post a best-of post. Those would be the ones I thought were funny/cool. :-)
I accepted Christ after my parents told me a story when I was about 7. I don't remember whether it was Mom or Dad telling it to me, but at any rate, this is how it went.
Background: Down the road from us was a tiny general store, called (by us) the Little Store. You could buy candies there for a penny each. For my brothers and me, it was a BIG deal when Mom would give us pennies for candy.
Story: "Jen, let's say you went down to the Little Store and you got a piece of candy. You could go up to the counter and tell Mrs. Gloria that you would like to put it on an account and pay for it next time you came in. Then the next time, you ask for another piece of candy to be put on your account. Eventually, you have fifty dollars worth of candies on your account. [Jennifer's note: Fifty dollars was an unthinkable wealth that I would never, ever in my life be able to pay Mrs. Gloria. Just like sin, right?] Then, one day, a man comes and tells you he is willing pay Mrs. Gloria for your candy."
A simple story, but it said a lot to me. Sin was kind of an abstract idea. Pennies and candy? I'd seen those before. So, of course, the man who came and wanted to pay for my candy (sin) was Jesus.
I was baptized soon after that down in the river.
What's your salvation story?
Edited: Mom just told me it was our pastor who told us the story. :-P
Bear with me on this. I just dreamed it up a moment ago. It's a worst-case scenario.
The year is 2018. The US economy has crashed and the country is in chaos. All foreign oil imports have stopped, and the oil reserves in the US have been used. Terrorists from the Middle East are infiltrating the country. With little fuel left, the US military is not able to centralize its power. So... it's militia and guerrilla warfare. Our protag is an unexperienced guerrilla soldier. She has an AK-47 and an XD Sub-compact. And... well, that's all I have for right now. Should be interesting...
So... I just thought I'd post about three of my writing friends (mentioned in the order in which I met them). Two of them just submitted manuscripts! :-D
First, there is Susan Marlow. I call her Andi. (note: there are two links there) She (and the rest of us) are waiting until this fall when her fourth book comes out. I have the first three and I can't wait for this next one. The old west, a tomboy in a boarding school for ladies, the slave trade who owns an adorable little Chinese girl named Lin Mei... Ya'll make sure to pick this one up this fall. ;-) She's busy writing the fifth, which promises to be awesome. Teehee! Good luck, my dear friend/"mom"! ~Lyric
Next is Jessica Tudor. She submitted her novel, The Faery Choir, to agents somethin' like a week ago and has already had a few agents ask for the full deal. I'll tell you right now that when this is out, I will *make* you read it. Or at the very least, I'll make my friends borrow it. Jess is so good at coming up with plots that keep you guessing (and in the execution of said plots, she is amazing). And charming characters. Especially the guy. Miss Laura will probably want to take him home. :-P I hope this project brings you success, Jess! ~Jen P/Cora
Finally... Svenja. Or Syd. Or Squid. Or Her Royal Squidness. (She has almost as many names as I do. Well, maybe not...) She just sent her 52K word manuscript off to Firebrand Literary. I've not read any of her stuff yet, so I'll just say that I can't wait to read her novel. But I'm sure it's "all nice and spiffeh and perfecto" as she would say. :-) May the Lord bless your future, Svenja! ~Lyric the oread
And a *hug* to all three of you. This whole writing deal is hard work, no?
I mentioned before that Great Uncle H passed away on my birthday. We went down to Oregon yesterday help his daughter, C, get the house in order. Ha. Uncle H was a packrat. Yanno those houses where there's junk piled up so much that there's walkways between stacks of junk and... that's all that the house is? We helped her sort through it. We couldn't just throw away the stuff that looked like trash, because you never knew what was in it. C found the family diamonds in a canning jar wrapped up in (used) Kleenexes. So... Did I mention Uncle Hank saved everything? *sigh* It was horrible, guys. I'm not going to tell you what we found within minutes of being there. Unfun.
When I got there, I didn't really know what to expect. I mean, I'd been told about it and saw some pictures, but I didn't really know what we were up against. But it was funny when we walked up to the door, and C (a gal I've seen once before in my life) opens the door and exclaims, "JEN! YOU CAME!" I don't know how people remember me so well. Anyway, so we go in, and I see STUFF! C's husband R, remembered me, too. Although about half an hour after we got there, he said, "Jen is your name, right?" And I replied, "One of them..." R's cool. He's a professional jouster, and really nice.
So we sorted and threw away and donated and packed... I was given everything that was written in German. They also gave me the bread machine. R asked me if I wanted any more knives, and I said sure, so he handed me a pack of five new knives. Then he handed me some Barbie valentines. He's a joker.
Then at 8ish, we drove home. Got back at midnight. Looooong day...
So the moral of this story is:
*Don't collect everything you ever owned. Especially millions of old pictures.
*Don't leave your important papers scattered in piles of trash.
*Let someone know what your important papers *are*! (Like, what bank you belong to, life insurance...) We were looking for a burgundy folder. And... that's all we knew. Never found it (Surprise!... Not!)
Mom went down once already (and it was even worse then), and when she got back, we cleaned our house. Cleaned it like maniacs.
We did find pictures of the lady I was named after. I'd only seen one picture of her before, and it was so nice to see her in a 'real life' photo. I always imagined Grandmother Cora to be taller... Teehee! Small people are way cool, too! :-D
Now I'm going to go find some... coffee or something...
Grandma P. just got out of the hospital after being in for almost a week with intestinal bleeding, but they can't do anything about it because her heart had an irregular beat. Now the doctors have decided to operate on Grandpa P.'s leg. I've been told they're both not doing well, and someone from up here may have to fly down to Arizona to help.
I know this is all in His timing, but I've had so many of my elderly relatives go to be with the Lord this year, and I don't know if Grandma and Grandpa believe. So... I'm praying...
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Wow, 10. And, no, I have no inclination at all to read the others. How many have you read/intend to read?
Miss Jocelyn sent me an email with ponderisms. I feel it is my duty to answer them as best I can. And, given the recently depressing topic (which has gone even further downhill since that post...), I am quite glad to distract myself. Thank you for your encouragement. Now I'm just really irked.
***
Can you cry under water?
Only if you're in the ocean. If you're in fresh water, the tears could upset the water system and you could be sued.
How important does a person have to be before they are considered
assassinated instead of just murdered?
How important does the media think they are?
Why do you have to 'put your two cents in' . . But it's only a 'penny for
your thoughts'? Where's that extra penny going to?
Taxes on thinking!
Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were
buried in for eternity?
I don't reckon you'd get 'stuck' anywhere in Heaven.
Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
So you still get a square meal.
Why is it that people say they 'slept like a baby' when babies wake up
like every two hours?
They were the ones who had nannies and nurses for their kidlets and slept on the other side of the mansion. :-P
Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?
DUH! Because movies are DVDs and VHSs, and so you are inside the plastic/metal tapes and discs. When the regular TV displays your image, you aren't in a little black box or DVD. You're standing there on a radio wave, so, therefore on TV.
Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars
to look at things on the ground?
Because they forgot to bring binocs and climbing gear.
Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible
crisp, which no decent human being would eat?
Because no decent human being should eat toast! (I am against anything crunchy in the morning.)
If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a stupid song about him?
I dunno, but Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, and no one understands how he could pick something that was already pickled. And not only that, but Moses supposes his toeses are roses, and we all know he supposes erroneously. Why doesn't someone tell him so? Heavens to Betsey! That poor ragged rascal running round and round the rugged rocks! Someone should stop him until we can find out why!
Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?
I sure wouldn't want to be the policeman who pulls them over...
If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of a coconut,
why can't he fix a hole in a boat?
Because it would have ended the TV show.
Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both
dogs!
Some dogs just gotta be a little different.
If Wile E Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME stuff, why didn't he
just buy dinner?
Getting there is half the fun. (Although Cayellis would say it's all the fun.)
If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables,
what is baby oil made from?
I don't want to know. I don't want to know. I don't want to know...
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?
*sigh* Think of every movie with a moron in it. With the exception of Get Smart, isn't the moron always on the *bad* side?
Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
Yes.
Why did you just try singing the two songs above?
I didn't. :-P
Do you ever wonder why you gave me your e-mail address in the first place?
No, because Miss Jocelyn is sweet and amazing, and Miss Laura and Miss Katie should go meet her. She is a kindred spirit, not to mention my strange friend (inside joke having to do with the birthday card she sent me). :-D
Warning: The Punmaster is about to become very excited.
YAY!
FINALLY!
*screams* *hollers* *dances around*
Bet ya can't guess! Go ahead and try! Okay, okay, since my birthday is next week, Mom is taking my book to Staples to get printed. All 299 pages on paper. I cannot stress to you enough how exciting this is! Four years of working hard (okay, three were hardly working...) might just be coming to an end soon. *grin* I will lock myself away somewhere with a red pen and some chocolate and go through LM again. Whew! Then I'll write a pitch for it and pester all of my author friends to help me find a publisher. :-P I don't have an agent, so it won't be easy, I think.
Miss Laura was discussing pictures with me a long time ago... probably three or four years... And the fact that we are happy, nay, overjoyed to find pictures of our great-great-grandparents and treasure the picture, even though everyone's frowning, and invariably one of the children appears to have just swallowed a lemon. But if we were to see a picture like that of ourselves, its next home would be the trash. Why did we keep the old one that's warped and half-faded?
It's because something's value always goes up the less you have of it. That's true of anything, including the one pink Tupperware bowl that I'm told my brothers and I fought over when we were little. Allow me to apply this rule to something else.
I can tell you for a fact that we have at least six Bibles. I could not tell you where all of them are. On a shelf somewhere, I suppose... Now, some missionaries I know went to (I think) Fiji. They were telling us about an elderly lady that they had given a Bible to. It was the first one she had ever had. She was so happy she put the Bible into her shirt and held it as tightly as she could. It was the Word of God, and she knew its value. She probably still has that Bible with her.
Now I'm going to go find the Bibles around the house. I don't know where I will put them all, but I can assure you they won't be under a pile of junk when I'm done. Where are your Bibles at?
You have entered the blog of a farm girl, unpublished novelist, avid knitter, life-long homeschooler, and Punmaster. Feel free to leave a comment, even if you're not an HsB blogger! *wink*
