Thursday miscellany

I couldn't say it any better:

"I would that my children had a mother like Susannah Wesley or Elizabeth Spurgeon, but God has given them me, and my prayers, poor and inconsistent as they are, must be enough. Finally, of course, it is God’s mercy and grace that must suffice."

~Semicolon

Originally named Dolce (Italian for sweet.)
Recently nicknamed Pazzo (Italian for crazy.)
Don't let the "cute little cat sleeping in the tent" look fool you. Pazzo is perfect.

And what have I been doing instead of faithfully listing and linking all your terrific book recommendations? I'm not sure what you suave, "I travel with my husband on airplanes all the time" folks do when you are flying across the continent, but we suddenly realized, seventeen years into the parenting gig, that we should make a will, have our financial records in order, clean out the underwear drawer and do anything else that needs to be done before we meet our Maker. You know, just in case. Let me be clear: I am not afraid of flying. I LOVE FLYING. The cramped bathrooms, the rattling sounds of take off and landing, the excitement of locating one's lost luggage...I really, truly love it all.

I traveled quite a bit as a child/teen/twentyish person, but it hasn't been part of the married with children budget. I have been happily spending my money on (many) other things for the last seventeen years. This isn't a fear of flying thing; it's just a realistic look at life and death thing. Tragedies do happen, and we finally woke up to the fact that we had a few things to take care of before we fasten our seat belts and remember to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first.

It's easy to see why procrastination was the M.O. until now; this stuff takes a lot of time. As a result of our extensive research (aka: listening to Hugh Hewitt) we used LegalZoom.com. For our simple needs, it was a great option. They even give you ten days to review your papers so that you can correctly spell the name of your guardian of choice or change the paper so that you will be in charge of your deceased husband's trust rather than assigning that job to him. Hard to do that job when you are deceased, right? Now, these are just hypothetical possibilities, but let's just say I appreciate the "ten days to review and revise with no additional shipping charges" feature.

I've also been happily diverted from my reading plan by Anna Quindlen novels:

Rise and Shine and Black and Blue

and unhappily undiverted by wasting my valuable time watching Fantastic Four at the request of an anonymous child. I'm a Ioan Gruffudd fan, but ugh. No link provided to save even more time from being swallowed up.

One more thought from the quote book:

“It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.” Wendell Berry

Learning from others, and hoping you are, too. Happy Thursday, friends.