Substack, Livestock Show, and Fake Eggs

 

1.) Stock Show Art 

Our local junior livestock show isn't just about animals. There's also divisions for art, shop projects (which can be anything from a wood table to a BBQ trailer), clothing, and food. 

Everything in these pictures was created by someone in high school or younger, and documented with photographic evidence (as per the rules) that the kid did the work themselves. 

2.) Substack is back, and it led to a bit of a public conversation with a major women's ministry

I got a reflection from Blessed Is She in my email the other day that really rubbed me the wrong way (because of my experience with all this), so I decided to email them back. Then I figured, "hey, they're a public ministry. I've got a Substack I've been neglecting. I may as well bring this over there and polish it a bit, make it an essay." 

Well, I did that, and a friend of mine asked if she could share it with BIS's Facebook page. "Sure!" I said. 

Long story short, they ended up posting the email they sent in response to my email to them as a public reply on social media. 

I have mixed feelings about how all that turned out. 

On one hand, a discussion about clerical abuse happening in a public forum helps raise awareness and will hopefully help someone else avoid getting hurt. 

On the other hand, the reply felt a bit like, "sucks for you that happened. Let the rest of us have this though." The bit about casting stones felt especially dismissive (and dangerous to someone unsure about reporting abuse. I don't think people understand how hard that actually is, especially if you care for or depend in some way on your abuser which, surprise, many victim/survivors do). 

((Deep sigh)) I dunno. Sometimes I'm genuinely worried about being a Debbie Downer. If someone really does receive a grace I don't, I don't want to be envious or suck all the joy out of the room. I don't want to be bitter in response to God's grace landing on someone else -- that's one of the things you can go to Hell for. 

On the other hand, there ARE real dangers in giving a select group of people a free pass into the most intimate areas of your life. Dangers that I don't see discussed anywhere outside of groups of people who have been burned already doing just that. 

Reading something like the original reflection having the experience I have feels a bit like being a recovering alcoholic hearing a bunch of 21 year olds discussing going to a wine tasting . It'll probably be fine, but BOY...it really might not be. 

And add to that the good priests who are out there getting lumped in with the rest. There's absolutely nothing good about this reality. There just isn't. But I don't feel like the proper response is to only focus on the good. 

3.) Dangerous dog 

So the neighbor got a new dog a couple weeks ago.

This isn't that unusual. What is unusual is how aggressive the darn thing is. 

We've seen it thrash the neighbor's other dogs, and it's fought ours a couple times too. It's gotten to the point that Chris has talked about shooting it on sight if it comes back onto our property. We have small children, we can't afford a risk like that around. 

We ended up calling the neighbor, who wasn't particularly helpful. We then called the Sheriff, who passed us around until we landed at Animal Control. The next day, I saw the dog catcher truck at the neighbor's. 

I haven't seen that dog since. I'm hopeful that the neighbor just told them to take it. 

4.) Adventures in Having All the Kids

The county livestock show was this week. 

As a result, Little Boy didn't have school this week (you know you live in a rural area when...). And that's led to me being out of the house far more than usual, because if we all stay at the house, squabbles start. 

We went grocery shopping at a big box store and a couple mom and pop specialty stores in town (and I ended up blowing the budget for the month, oops) on Tuesday, went with a friend to the livestock show on Wednesday, and then went to the library and had a picnic on Thursday. 

Today, Friday, I'm stuck at home with a cold and am shamelessly letting the children watch TV so I can rest. 

5.) Bible Journaling 

I saw something somewhere online about drawing in a Bible as a devotional practice and thought I'd give it a go. I found time during the morning this week, since we don't have to get Little Boy to school. 

I really enjoy doing it. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to keep it up once I'm doing school dropoffs and pickups again. I'm enjoying it while I've got it. 

6.) Egg Substitutes 

The rising costs of eggs (and the fact that we got rid of our chickens) has led me to the strange world of egg substitutes for baking. 

I purchased a bag of arrowroot flour (only a dollar more than a dozen eggs!) and a jar of applesauce, and baked a batch of egg free muffins with the arrowroot this morning. 

They turned out, but I'm not sure if it was due to the arrowroot or the fact that I used leftover cooked oatmeal and that was enough to bind them together and keep everything moist. 

More experiments upcoming. 

7.)Passenger Train 

This was just unexpected and cool. 

We usually only get freight trains through here; there's no passenger line. This was evidently an "executive train" with some company bigwigs on it. No idea why they were coming through our neck of the woods, but it was cool to see. 

8.) Ukrainian...kiddie beer? 

Of everything that Chris has confiscated from a student, I think it's safe to say this is one of the weirdest. 

How did a grain based drink with Cyrillic writing on the label end up in Texas? 

Why did a teenager think it was a good idea to take it to school? 

In the course of finding out more about it...kiddie beer is still a thing? 

I knew it used to be, but I thought that went out with the middle ages. 

Go figure.