Devotional Blog

You should check out my devotional blog. Click on the butterfly in the margin on the right. It is so much better than the fluff I write on this blog.

And now, the 2016 list of 51 things you might not know about me

I can't get motivated to work on the story I started.

I just found this old post and decided to try it again. So here we go again....51 things about me that three people will read. And 2 out of 3 people who read my blog are my sisters...so it will be very boring for them.

1. I feel things so deeply that my heart still aches even years later.
2. I wish that wasn't the case....but I suppose that it makes me much more sensitive to the feelings of others.
3. I remember details of events that happened as far back as my childhood.
4. I'm usually good at and have an innate sense of direction...except for when I don't.
5. Consequently, I don't fear getting lost...even if I am driving somewhere that I have never been to.
6. In college, during my undergrad, I studied mathematics...which was a totally wrong major for me. During this time, I figured out that I really wasn't a mathematician. Rather, I was a person who was fairly good at memorizing formulas and then plugging in numbers to get an answer. (Okay...maybe I was a little better than that, but not much)
7. I was very stressed out about #6, but I was suffering from a mental illness and surviving that took all of my energy. I had nothing left to figure out a better major.
8. I cannot figure out how I passed some of the classes I took during that dark period of time...particularly during the spring of 87. I am positive that I should have failed my linear algebra class.
9. I am melancholic and I hate it! 
10. I'm a pretty good cook. I have even made up recipes that have turned out to be delicious.
11. I've never been much of a baker. I leave that to Martha.
12. I miss being a stay at home mom.
13. But I DO love my job and I feel very blessed to have found something that fits me so well.
14. I hate the television show: Shark Tank. (It's on right now.) My husband loves it. I think I hate it because I know that if I ever was on that show, I would be chewed up and spit out by the millionaires on the panel. Especially by "Mr Wonderful" who I can't stand because he is so mean!
15. I can't eat very creamy food....which makes me sad because I love ice cream.
16. I have given up eating meat that comes from animals that walk on four legs.
17. I take 150 mg of bupropion daily. If I don't take it, I turn into a depressed recluse.
18. I shouldn't write a list of 51 things when I am in a melancholic mood.
19. On the last list I wrote, in 2006...For #32, I wrote "I won't go to a high school reunion." Well...I went to one this past summer and I had fun!
20. I can speak and understand some Spanish, but I am not fluent.
21. I really want another dog. I think it would be therapeutic for me.
22. I married someone who is not a dog person! This is very frustrating to me!
23. In spite of #6 above, I had absolutely no trouble subbing for a geometry class at Pal-Mac HS two years ago and even went over a proof with them on the board.
24. I subbed for a trigonometry class next and couldn't remember a thing! I was useless!
25. I always wanted to be in a musical during HS, but never did it. I was finally in a major production when I was 29. I was in the chorus. My husband had the lead.
26. I can't go anywhere with my husband where he does not run into someone he knows. I sometimes get annoyed by this.
27. I love Nicciolata. It is the best. If you haven't tried it, you're missing out. I suggest that you buy a jar and enjoy a spoonful from time to time.
28. I love Mexican food.
29. My hair is curly. It never was curly until I was in my 30s. I like it.
30. The problem with having curly hair (and being the only one in the family with curly hair) is that if someone finds it in the food, you can't pretend it isn't yours.
31. I suffer from insomnia very often. 
32. Luckily I have learned to function fairly well on little sleep...which is interesting considering that on my list in 2006, I claim to absolutely need 8 hours of sleep. I've adapted out of necessity.
33. I hate chocolate bars with coconut in them. Coconut does not belong in any candy!
34. When presented with a box of chocolates, I usually end up with the one with coconut in it or something just as gross.
35. I think that all of the chocolates in a box of chocolates should have caramel in them. Don't waste my time with all the others.
36. My life verse is Job 23:10. 
37. I sometimes stalk people on the Internet. I'm admitting this because I am fairly sure that most people do this from time to time.
38. I wonder if anyone ever stalks me on me Internet.
39. I sometimes Google myself to see what comes up.
40. I wish I was more adventurous. I'm a bit envious of people who are. You would think that I could just make myself be more adventurous, but I can't seem to successfully do that. I'm very cautious. It is my downfall.
41. I would like to go to Europe. I never expected to reach age 49 without ever getting there yet.
42. I DID make it to South America and I'd like to go again.
43. I can't wear high heeled shoes. It's that trick toe again. (See #20 from 2006) I even have trouble with some flat ones. The cuter and more feminine the shoe, the less likely I am able to wear it without trouble.
44. I am doomed to wear old lady shoes some day.
45. I learned to cook simply by watching my mother in the kitchen. When I got married, there were things that I had never made before, but I made them just as if I had because I had watched my mother do it hundreds of times.
46. My kids never wanted to spend any time with me in the kitchen. This made me sad while they were growing up because I always thought cooking would be an activity I shared with them. I'm worried that they won't know how to cook when they need to some day.
47. When I was graduating from high school, several people suggested that I study library science because I worked at our town's public library. I thought they were crazy! I swore that I would never do it.
48. Becoming a librarian was a very good decision for me. It fits me very well and I am very happy in this profession.
49. I'm still surprised and amused that I have a masters degree and career in my middle age. I never would have dreamed that I would accomplish that. Wow! Who knew?
50. I have tinnitus. In both ears. It usually doesn't bother me until I am in a quiet room. Recently, I've started going to sleep with white noise playing. It helps a lot. I put it on a timer that is timed to turn off two hours after it starts.
51. I typically play ocean waves as my white noise. it in no way makes me think or even imagine that I'm on a beach.

And that, my friends, is my 2016 list of 51 things you didn't know about me! Ten years after the other one! So much has changed in 10 years...but I would say that the old list is still about 84% true. I'm still somewhat of a math geek (but not a true mathematician) in that I actually went through the list, counted the number of things that are no longer true, and figured that percentage out.

Do Angels Ever Sit on Bladders?...A Camping Story

When I was a child, we used to go camping as a family. We camped in a Bethany trailer camper, which was really a tent on wheels. I have lovingly stolen the picture below from my sister Martha's blog. I don't feel guilty, because it is really my father's photo...as he was the one who took it.

I am the little girl in the red. Martha is the little girl on the far left, and the other child is my sister Rachel. That is my mother with us.

I'm not sure what year it was, but it was an unseasonably cold summer night. I was about 7 I think. We were camping and getting ready to snuggle into our sleeping bags for the night. It was so chilly that my father had brought along a small kerosene space heater. He put it on the floor of the camper so it would generate some heat for us and we went to bed.

It was the middle of the night when I woke up with a very full bladder. I didn't want to get up. It was cold, I just wanted to sleep,...and besides that, the camp bath building was a hike down dark, scary trails. I didn't want to wake either of my parents up. I tried to ignore the sensation. It didn't get any better, that's for sure. I finally decided that I would need to get up and make the necessary trip to the camp bathroom. I climbed out of my sleeping bag and then over the top of my sleeping sister Martha. I made it to the floor of the camper. Everyone else was fast asleep. It was then that I noticed that my sister's pillow had fallen down. I picked it up and tossed it back onto the sleeping platform that she and I shared. I started looking for my shoes and thinking about waking up one of my parents so I wouldn't have to walk alone in the dark.

Suddenly I noticed that while I still had to go to the bathroom, the physical discomfort didn't seem nearly as bad as it had when I had first woken up out of a deep sleep. I didn't think I really needed to bother with the trip after all. I was sure I could hold it until morning, so I left my shoes where they were and once again climbed up over my still sleeping sister, and settled into my sleeping bag. I was comfortably dreaming in no time.

The next morning, we were all up and getting ready to start a new day. Mom started rolling up the sleeping bags and setting up the table that folded down into a sleeping platform. Dad was out starting a fire so breakfast could be cooked, and coffee made for him and Mom. Suddenly, I heard Mom gasp in alarm and ask, "What happened to this?! Who did this!?" She was holding up the pillow I had picked up in the middle of the night. It had dark brown scorch marks on it. I still remember that they were in the shape of the mesh covering that formed the top of the space heater. I was a little afraid to answer her. I thought maybe I had done something wrong.

"Who put this up here?" She asked again. Martha acknowledged that it was her pillow, but she didn't know what had happened to it. I finally fessed up. I told her how I had gotten up in the middle of the night because I had to go to the bathroom really really bad. I told her how I had seen the pillow and knew it had fallen.I just put it back up onto the platform, tossing it toward the end of our sleeping bags...where our short little bodies couldn't reach.

I'll never forget what my mother said next. "Priscilla, that was an angel who woke you up! If you hadn't picked this pillow up, it would have soon burst into flames and we would have all died in a fire!" This left such a big impression on me. A guardian angel had woken me up in the middle of the night. God had used me to save my family from an impending disaster.

Years later while I was in college, I tried to relay this story to some friends. They missed the point and focused on the notion that an angel supposedly had made me feel as though I had to go to the bathroom urgently. They poked fun about it. They made my story seem silly. I don't even think I ended up telling them the rest of it. They had made me feel foolish.

Who's to say that the Lord wouldn't ever send an angel to make a little girl feel like she must get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night in order to save her and her family from certain calamity? Why not?

(Post Script: that was the end of using space heaters in the camper)