January 29, 2020 thought for the day: The torment of envy is like a grain of sand in the eye. Chinese Proverb

What a day, full of new adventures as well as old. Sue needed to get some blood work done so we started out on this day’s escapades relatively early in the day so that I would have time to get to church for food pantry around noon.

The photo theme for January 28 was “warm”. For me that was a challenge, how do you visualize “warm”. As I thought about it, tea came to mind. The warmth of a cup of tea is comforting. Using a burner on the stove to show warmth seemed a little over doing it....that was more hot than warm and so the thinking went.

I had a call yesterday letting me know that the Presbyterian of Scioto Valley Women’s newsletter was ready for pick up. They left a message that the facility where I picked them up had moved to a new location so I jotted down the new address. After the stop at the lab for Sue we headed out to pick up the newsletters. I am glad Sue was along. I am direction-finding challenged, she is not. There were two times I would have taken a wrong turn getting to the new address and would have been stressed to a point of giving up and trying again later. She gave me her thoughts on the turns to make and she was right. Once those two agenda items were checked off we stopped at McDonalds to pick up a bit of breakfast. Sue had a list of meds to pick up so on the way home we stopped at the drive up window at Walgreens to complete that part of the agenda.

Today’s photo theme is “rainbow”. The weather today has no hint of a rainbow and I can’t think of any I might have in my archive. The stained glass windows at church are full of color. I took some photos with that in mind today. I even thought of moving the camera as I shot to get a motion that would more resemble a rainbow. When I post processed I realized the motion wasn’t enough to give the hint that I wanted to I used one of the on board filters from Photoshop to make the effect more apparent.

Finally, at home, I completed the bulletin and uploaded it along with the church newsletter to three of my peers for proofreading. After that it was time to take off for my afternoon at food pantry. It was slow today and I had taken some of my crocheting which I worked on between clients. The in-between-time of guests gave several of us the time to bond, that is something I really enjoy.

The word today is distance. There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near, Leonardo da Vinci. I think it indisputable that the distance between the intellectual faculties of different men is greater than that between the same faculties in some men and some other animals, Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. Poetry is like painting: one piece takes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you keep at some distance, Horace. The distance from nothing to a little, is ten thousand times more, than from it to the highest degree in this life, John Donne. As love is union, it knows no extremes of distance, Juana Inés de la Cruz. Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty, William Shenstone. Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so, Lord Chesterfield. At a distance this fine oak seems to be of ordinary size. But if I place myself under its branches, the impression changes completely: I see it as big, and even terrifying in its bigness, Eugene Delacroix. To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed that can make life a garden, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes, Henry David Thoreau. Age, like distance, lends a double charm,  Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

I am always happy to see when domesticated animals are helped in any way shape or form...just who I am. This article today is about one of our animal shelters trying to match dogs with their new forever homes. One of the ways that is being tried is “holiday sleep overs”. Families can request to take shelter dogs home for the time that kids are on holidays from schools. There is also a project to renovate play areas for dogs waiting to be adopted. There is a study of ways to improve the handling of stray dogs. The goal is for every family that wants a dog can have one that is spayed and neutered, micro chipped, licensed and vaccines up to day. At the shelter in the article there are 40 to 70 dogs a day for adoption. They have tried to improve things such as how dogs are dropped off for surrender. They no longer use drop boxes, now an appointment is needed. They are trying to use a “more welcoming” process for applying for adoption. There is also an updated outdoor fenced area for the animals. Now there is a followup program for newly adopted pets. During the last over the holiday “sleep overs” more dogs were immediately adopted at the end of the sleep over period.

 It’s one of those evenings where we are each going to be on our own for dinner. I have had a busy day with little time to plan and cook dinner.

Love you
Grandma