Musings of a Senior

I’m very comfortable in my comfort zone. It’s familiar. It’s easy. But sometimes God wants me to go outside my comfort zone.

Several years ago when I joined 1st Baptist of Elfers I joined the Praise Team. I’ve always played in bands from Junior and Senior High to College and to the Richey Community Concert Band (RCCB) as an adult. My comfort zone was being one of many flute players, not the only one. So playing on the Praise Team as the only flute player was a bit nerve racking. 

Plus Pastor Charlie, our Music Minister, wanted me to play with a microphone. What? You’ve got to be kidding. That was even further from my comfort zone. I requested that he wait a few weeks before putting a microphone in front of me. Let me take one step at a time.

Most of the pieces we played in the RCCB were in a key with flats for the flute – anywhere from 1 to 5 flats with an occasional 6th flat. Well on the Praise Team it’s more common to play in keys with sharps. Lots of sharps. So another thing outside my comfort zone.

After playing on the Praise Team a few weeks I opened my flute book to see what pieces we were playing that Sunday. Among them was a piece with 6 sharps! Oh No! I had to mark the sharps to make sure that I wouldn’t miss one. It was rough playing that piece during practice. I knew that I needed to practice at home to get all of the sharps.

At practice on Sunday morning Pastor Charlie told me that he wanted to have me on a microphone that morning. What? No way! Not when I have a piece with 6th sharps! So no microphone that week.

At least that’s what I thought. I came into the sanctuary after Sunday School and what was by my chair? A microphone! Oh No! I was nervous, even more so than the first week on the Praise Team.

I survived that Sunday and now play sharps and with a microphone without a second thought. I’m thankful that God asked me to go outside my comfort zone. I enjoy playing worship songs on Sunday morning and have many friends on the Praise Team and in the Choir .

 

 

My son and his family have an Akita named Haku.  She is a sweet and mellow 11 year old.

With “stay at home” I’ve had lots of spare time to do things that need to be done and things that I love to do. 

Sorry to my friends who are English teachers but it was never one of my favorite subjects.  In fact it was probably my least favorite subject. But I’m very grateful to all of my English teachers because they taught me grammar, spelling, composition and exposed me to a wide genre of literature, including poetry.

Poetry has never been my forte so I thought that I would go outside my box and attempt to write some Haiku. 

My feeble attempts
At writing Haku Haiku
Some are good some not

Haku walking slow
While I quickly pass by her
She is not amused

Haku sees a girl
The girl scratches Haku’s neck
Haku wags her tail

Haku dirty brown
A cool rain starts to fall fast
Haku snowy white

Haku an old dog
Trying to learn some new tricks
Without much success

Haku very tired
Lies down to take a long nap
Have sweet dreams Haku

Haku sound asleep
Dogs barking all around her
Silently she lays

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the Covid-19 Stay at Home came about I had a lot of extra time on my hands. The big question was how to fill up all of this time. One of the things I was hoping to do was to spend more time on writing blogs.  I wrote several blogs but then got side tracked with spring cleaning, slides/negatives/pictures organization and puzzles. Over the past month I’ve completed eight puzzles between 200 and 500 pieces (with 2 having one piece missing). So to get back on track with my blogging I thought I would start again by writing about my puzzles.

As fun as it is to do puzzles none of these puzzles were super challenging. So after the first two puzzles I decided to not look at the picture during the time I was working on a puzzle. This made them a little more challenging and took longer to complete.

These eight puzzles were all I had except for a couple of 1,000 piece puzzles which I had previously done. I still wanted to work on puzzles so I borrowed five puzzles from my daughter. Now these will be challenging. All of them except one 500 piece puzzle are 1,000 pieces and are very detailed. These will each take me awhile to do.

Some hints when working on 500 pieces and less puzzles:

   Separate the pieces by colors with the border pieces in its own group.
        If there are a number of colors in one piece sort by dominate color.
        If no dominate color make a miscellaneous group.
        Some color groups may be in different sections so as the puzzle is being
           worked on sub-divide these groups.

   Complete the border first.
        If it’s a puzzle without a border work on the larger colors first.

   Work from the borders inwards picking one of the colors.
        If you get stuck:
            look in the miscellaneous group for a “missing” piece
            look in another color group for a misplaced piece
            switch to another color and come back later to this group

   Most important:  Have fun!!