October 1 - Random Thoughts to Keep the Blog Alive

Limping the blog along to see another day, I just realized I haven’t posted anything since September 6. I didn’t even celebrate the beginning of Autumn here at the ol’ Sweet Tea place. I did celebrate the beginning of Autumn, but I somehow neglected to write about it here. Life has been busy. Busy, I say.

So, it being the first of October and all, I think I’ll do a little ‘here I am, I still intend to blog in this space’ post in bullet points. Kind of like a status report, but without the creativity.

• Fall/Autumn has begun. I am happy about 
• this. The leaves have started turning, something pumpkinish was baking in the grocery store bakery when I visited there this morning, and oh....it smelled GOOD, temperature is beginning to cool outside, Christmas music is playing at Walmart (grr! ack! stop it already!!!), the scarecrow family is out by my front porch. I like. 
• As I type I’m sipping a cup of afternoon coffee with homemade pumpkin spice creamer and contemplating whether tonight would be a good night to bake a pumpkin pie or whether my waist line would be more appreciative if I were to wait until I had a less caloric dinner planned. 
• Dinner, did I mention dinner? Drizzly, gray, chilly day today, so I have a pot of ham and bean soup simmering on the stove. I’m quite excited about it. The children will be less so, but they just don’t know a good thing when it’s sitting there in a bowl in front of them. I also have yeast rolls rising. They will be pleased about that. My mother will probably think I’m cheating, but the little yeast rolls are from the freezer section of our local Kroger. I may not have mixed and rolled them, but they are rising on my counter and these little lovelies taste better than any I’d make from scratch. And Drew thinks they’re homemade and even posts about them on Facebook when I bake them, so, shhhhhh. Oh, and fried okra is on the menu for tonight, too. Just because fried okra is probably one of the best things ever. But that’s why I think pumpkin pie will have to wait.
• Speaking of the grocery store, I am all kinds of excited to have finally discovered Aldi. I was complaining recently about how much we’ve been spending on groceries now that my boys have inexplicably grown taller than me and are no longer eating like little boys but can clean out the pantry like nobody’s business. Several friends mentioned trying Aldi. I thought, “I shop pretty smart at my usual store, I don’t know how it could really be any cheaper, but so many people have suggested it, it’s worth a try.” Wowza. Was it ever. Of course, I still have to go to Kroger for certain things (yeast rolls anyone?), but it sure has helped to split up my shopping. If you have an Aldi near you, try it. I’m a fan.
• On to reading. I haven’t updated my reading list in a while because I have been reading this super long book that is taking me FOREVER to finish. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Good night, but this is a long book. Drew had to read it as “recommended reading” for that Army class he took last spring which had him away from home for 4 months, and he said I should read it so we can also watch the movie (second half of which is being released this month) and discuss. So I am. Slowly. Did I mention it is LONG? Interesting and I’m aware that it is Ayn Rand’s definitive work which spells out her worldview, which I do not endorse. She does a nice job of showing how dangerous a socialistic view of government/economy is, though, but I don’t agree with all of her premises. The eery thing is that as I’m reading along I find that her more socialistic characters (who are NOT the heroes of the book, but are the VILLAINS) sound eerily like our current president. I’m talking like word-for-word quotes almost. Creepy when I was reading one character’s rant about how an innovative industrialist who sweated and struggled for years to invent a new, stronger, cheaper to develop kind of metal didn’t invent that on his own. Sounded just like our president’s now infamous “you didn’t build that” speech. Anywho. I will be glad when this election is over. It’s going to be a nasty few more weeks, I’m thinking, and I have no confidence I’ll like the outcome. I’ve been doing lots of thinking, and I know who I’m voting for, and I think I can do it with confidence, seeing as I don’t trust our current president AT ALL. I can say I’m super glad my hope isn’t in government, and I wish we evangelicals hadn’t gotten ourselves into the position where most people think that we believe that it is. But that is probably another whole blog post.
• Speaking of worldviews and politics, I had an interesting demonstration the other day that there are fundamentally different and opposing worldviews working in our culture today. Someone on Facebook posted a picture of Paul Ryan with scare quotes of all the things we'll 'lose' if he and Mitt Romney are elected. The thing is, I'm sure this person is confident that all those things she listed there would make us 'dummies' sit up, take notice and say, "Hey! I didn't know that! What was I thinking, thinking I might vote for him?" But the thing is, all those things on the list that were supposed to scare me to the other side were things I believe in and are things that make me more inclined to vote for the guy rather than less. It just hit me solidly in the face with how vastly different my worldview is from someone who would post that. We do not see things at all in the same way, and it's not really a matter of information or lack of it, but a difference in how we view the world and what we believe is important and right altogether. And that is why I'm not at all convinced that Facebook is a useful tool for political discourse. Too hard to have a real discussion of the real issues in that forum, I'm finding. But that, too, is probably better left to a whole other post.
• Back to speaking of reading, I’m wanting to hurry up and finish reading that long thing so I can get started on the book I just purchased for my NOOK, The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler. Really looking forward to reading it.
• Busy. Did I mention how busy we’ve been? My oldest son has entered the crazy world of high school marching band. He’s an 8th grader, but had the opportunity to march with the high school band this Fall. He likes it a lot, even though it means LONG practices and LOTS of contest Saturdays. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching him bloom this year and find his niche. My middle boy is playing football. He likes it. I think. He’s also started playing trombone in the middle school band. Is it wrong for me to hope band wins out? I am trying to like football, really I am. I do enjoy seeing my boy enjoy it. So between football and band, family dinner has become a rarity this fall, but we’re making it happen as often as we can. And little sister gets to go along to all these practices for the ride. The other day when we got to see the band compete, as they marched onto the field and began playing, she moaned, loudly, “Aw, they ALWAYS play this song!” Yep. Every. Single. Day. Over. And. Over. Once October is done, life will settle back down to some semblance of normal again, we think.
• Alrighty, then. That’s probably enough for this post.