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Sunday Gratitude – 5.IV.2026
To those celebrating today – Christ is Risen! – Happy Easter!
And then there are the “weird” ones here who are still waiting another week, among which I count myself. There have been a lot of services already – yesterday, I think I was in church for nearly four hours. I’ve really struggled this Lent; from the beginning, I felt less ready for it than most years and this year… wow. For the greater part of Lent, I believed that the Orthodox were also going to be celebrating Pascha today, and it was only looking at the calendar more carefully a couple of weeks ago when I realized that no, there’s a one-week difference. I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting to spend so much time in church this weekend, but I was at vigil last night, and I certainly had the feeling of moving from the darkness into the light, and by the time the service was over, there was an air of hopefulness and joy there. For that I am grateful. (My brain did fight against this on the way home, though. *sigh*)
I am grateful for the more spring-like weather, and the opportunity to be outside. I’m also grateful for my neighbor who invites me to come walking with her.
I am grateful for friends who take the time to talk even in the rain.
I am grateful for making it home in a storm the other day; I wasn’t expecting it, then all of a sudden, I was driving down this country highway with lightning flashes all around. I don’t think that they were very close, as there was only a tiny bit of thunder, but what a show! The next day, driving down those same roads, I could actually see how high the water is, and I’m grateful that there were no issues with low-lying stretches of road or the bridges.
Time to take the Christmas wreath down! I am thankful to have had a little bit of time to be outside with my kids, and I’m thankful that they have places around that they can enjoy riding their bikes through, and that they’ve been fine with this “exploring”.
I am thankful for the joy of singing.
I am thankful for the things that are showing signs of life (and even blooming) even after a very cold winter and long periods of neglect.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have been in contact with a number of people on this day, in the joy of Easter.
I am grateful for yet another sign that I’m not alone through the hard stuff.
Thank you so much for being here! Christ is Risen!
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Sunday Gratitude – 29.III.2026
I really hate it when it seems like I blink and yet another week has passed. Somehow so much of this time ends up feeling like a blur, and it seems like all that is left is a growing list of things that should have been done long ago, but haven’t been done yet.
In the meantime, though, I’ve been trying not to lose a sense of gratitude, and to also try to make the most of the days at hand. We’ve had a couple of days that have hit 70F, which has been amazing, and especially as the days are getting longer, it would be terrible if we didn’t do something to take advantage of the warmer weather. My younger son had a day off of school a couple of weeks back, and the two of us went out on our bikes and rode ten miles together, and it was amazing. He also started taking pictures with my camera that afternoon, so I’ll be sharing a few of those in this post.
A couple of weeks after the real birthday, my youngest, in kindergarten, had her first real birthday party. It was a bowling alley affair, and, per the terms of the contract, was less than two hours long, but for a group of 5 and 6 year olds, it was fine. I was completely stressed out over this for at least a week for a number of reasons, but it turned out really, really good. Even the weather held out, kind of… It started raining about the time that the party started, and it was still raining as people left. Had we started a couple of hours later, everybody would have been going home in sleet, because we had a blizzard come through the next day. The kids were thrilled to get the day off of school, and despite the crazy wind, we never lost power. The next day, our dear neighbor made a path for our car using a snowblower.
I’m grateful that even though I managed to break a spoke on the one bike (a different one than before), this happened in a place where I could ride to a place where I could leave the bike for a couple of days, and which was very close to the bike shop. On the night that this happened, I was also able to get a ride back home with one of the ladies from church. I’d never talked to her before, and she’s incredibly sweet, and lives just a couple of streets over from where I live.
I’m grateful for the amazing time I had at St. Haralambos in Niles a couple of weeks back. Not only were some very dear “real life” friends there, I finally got to meet Fr. Andrew Damick in person. We have been online acquaintances (friends) for over 20 years, and it seemed like high time to meet him in person. He actually recognized me by sight as well, which is crazy because it’s been a looong time since I posted any photos of myself that he might come across. 🙂 That was a lot of fun, though.
Breezy days and kites! I am grateful, as well, for the opportunity to visit an old friend and just enjoy sitting on the front step, having a conversation in the sunshine.
In many ways, I feel pulled very, very, very thin. There have been a lot of good things, to be sure, but there have been a number of very, very frustrating things as well. I don’t know; at this point, I’m not sure that I’ll ever have things “figured out”, but there’s a path to go forward on, and that’s the way through this all. Forgive me again for the blog silence – I truly am grateful for you.
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Wordle #585
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Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Down for the “count” here – this word is no help at all! 😉
Line 2: Ahh, the problem children – do we even have the number of 5-letter words with “E” and “A”? I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000.
Line 3: Scooting the “E” and “A” over, but they’re still in the wrong place, and I have no new consonants.
Line 4: Splitting them up here, I do find that the “A” is in spot #2. This could mean that the “E” is at the end, and it would also give me space to sneak the “I” in
Line 5: Here we go – and… well, I’m disappointed, to a degree. Still no consonants, but the “I” does go there. What other combination from the letters left would fit?
Line 6: “Maize”. Interesting. 🙂
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
(Sorry for being late with this – some personal business needed taken care of this week, and it ate up loads of time.)
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #584
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Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: This is odd – No “E” at all, but the “U” is already in the correct place. I’m going to guess that either “U” is by itself, part of “OU” or “AU”.
Line 2: First, let’s get some more consonants! Wow! The guess to make it a “UNT” word was spot on!
Line 3: More consonants, with little luck… Hmm.
Line 4: Let’s go for the “OU” now… and it works! But do I have enough guesses to not run out?
Line 5: I go for “I don’t think there are many options left” and play “count” and it pays off! 🙂 Yay!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
(Sorry for being late with this – some personal business needed taken care of this week, and it ate up loads of time.)
Happy Gaming!
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Wordless Wednesday #17 – Accidental Camera Magic
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Wordle #583
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Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Only one of the problem children today! Woot!
Line 2: Moving the “E” to the end, I find the correct place and as a bonus, today’s random word ending in “E” gives me a correctly-placed “L” as well.
Line 3: Working on going through vowels here, the “I” is a miss, but I end up with a correctly-placed “D”.
Line 4: Assuming the vowel in the middle is now “U”, it’s just a matter of figuring out which letter I haven’t tried to make a five-letter-word ending “LUDE”. “Elude” seemed the only choice.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #582
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Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Oh, it is not surprising that “blurb” didn’t give me anything.
Line 2: The problem children! Yay!
Line 3: The problem children were quickly put to their places! Now – for the rest of the letters!
Line 4: Finally – a “T”… What can we do with a “T” here?
Line 5: Ahoy, “matey”! As the “T” doesn’t go to the end, it’s got to go in spot 1 or 3, and as improbable as it was, it was the only word that I could think of with the letters left that fit.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #581
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: An “L” in the right place! Nifty! And an “R” somewhere else… Hmm ..
Line 2: Moving the “R” one over was good, but what else would fit here with no “Y” and only “U” and “I” left as vowels?
Line 3: “Blurb”, of course! 😁
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
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Sunday Gratitude – 22.I.2023
I’m not here to complain, but things continue to be difficult.
I am grateful that the very late birthday party that I had stress over went off without a hitch. We booked the “meeting room” at a McDonalds with a climbing set, and the RSVP response was more than I ever would have expected. Me being me, I then became concerned about having too many people there, especially during a time period where McDonald’s usually has a lot of people. Well, we ended up in the meeting room and the (many) tables in the room with the play place. For nearly the entire time we were there, the restaurant was absolutely dead apart from us. We had both spaces pretty much to ourselves until about 20 minutes before we left, when people were starting to get ready to go anyway. In the meantime, there were 16 kindergarten-aged kids having a blast bouncing around and climbing with their friends. A couple of the moms seemed to be quite impressed with the idea, and a couple of them didn’t even know that this McDonald’s had a play place at all.
On top of everything else, there ended up being some weirdness between me and one of my closest friends. It’s not like things like that don’t happen, but the timing is awful. I was doing dishes and just about in tears, and I started saying the Jesus Prayer (Lord, Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) and I could feel the burden lift a little, which convinces me more than ever that there’s spiritual warfare going on here. This is a friendship that has lasted decades, and I truly believe that God has had a hand in it, and once the first wave of emotion had washed over, I had to logically just step back and reason that I need to trust God again on this, because things happen in His time, not mine.
I am grateful that when that was all going on, every signal I seemed to bump into was “Don’t give up, stay strong” (Lisa over here: Do You Hear It, to Abbot Tryphon’s videos -a couple which I shared earlier in the week- to Barbara at Blisswood’s post about Patient Endurance to things that came up in my Vimatarissa app.)
I am grateful for the people who keep smiling everyday and make the day that much better because of it.
I am grateful that we made it to church this morning (well, me and four of the kids). I am thankful that a couple of people said that they were happy to see me, and I am thankful for friends there, in particular those who are actually interested in hearing the real answer to “How are you?” (And I am incredibly grateful to be able to talk to friends from a long distance as well.)
I am also very grateful that we seem to be doing much better health-wise. There have been sniffles and coughs (and my ear still doesn’t feel “right”) but we’re doing much better.
I am grateful for all your prayers.
Interminable January grey
Featured posts this week:
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Wordle #580
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Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Not really a surprise that “mucky” didn’t give me anything to work with
Line 2: On to a “base word” – “beast” – and it does quite well!
Line 3: The problem with having misplaced letters like “E”, “A”, and “T” is that there are so many possibilities as to how they can be arranged. Some shuffling here, and they’re still in the wrong places, but I got the “R” to add to it.
Line 4: I decided to guess that the word ended in “TER” and I did well with that. Now I have all five letters, but the “L” and the “A” are reversed meaning…
Line 5: … the word has to be “alter”.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #579
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Hmm… a “C” that doesn’t begin the word
Line 2: Moving it over one doesn’t do much
Line 3: “Juice” is kind of a weird word to play, but it does play the remaining three vowels, and of them, only “U” is in this puzzle, but it’s in the right place.
Line 4: As for vowels, there’s still the possibility of using a “Y”, which is probably more common than a word with two “U”s here. If I want to put a “Y” at the end, that forces the “C” to the middle, which makes me think it’s a word that ends “UCKY”. “Lucky” is ruled out, and “mucky” was the thing that came to mind and which I played, even though “yucky” is probably trickier and more common.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Weird News and a Quick Lilla Rose Sale
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The author of this blog is a “Flexi Rep/Affiliate” with Lilla Rose, and is not employed by Lilla Rose. Purchases made through this link <https://www.lillarose.com/katja> will earn the author a commission.
Via Not the Bee: Veterinarians removed 38 hair ties from this cat’s stomach. Oh, man. I can’t even imagine. I guess it’s proof that the hair elastics are dangerous to more than just the wearer’s hair! As an aside, it’s been about ten months now since I stopped using them, and I do think it’s made a difference. My ends seem to taper off less, and for the first time in years, it seems like my hair is getting longer. I suppose I’ll be able to tell if it gets to a point where I can actually sit on it, but that’s going to take awhile.
I don’t know if it’s technically a “flash sale” but Lilla Rose is running a sale now through tomorrow with a 35% discount on all hair sticks. Also, the monthly special of the Wintry Bobby with purchase of $40 or more is still in effect.
https://www.lillarose.com/katja
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Breath of Hallelujah 