South Korea Girl {CC}

South Korea Girl is not coming home for Christmas.

 It is good news though. Really. Many of you have asked about her in e-mails and in comments. She will complete her semester at Sogang University in Seoul this week. She studied Korean and Asian history. She loves South Korea. CC has been studying Korean for over a year here in Georgia but there is no substitute for total immersion in the culture.

She had been fervently applying for South Korean internships. She was interviewed for two in the last two weeks. Time was drawing near for her to fly home and it was making me anxious. Flying to South Korea is expensive and she would have to fly back for an internship.  

Being a mom I was caught up in the myriad of details. What about a visa extension? What about the plane ticket? What about approval from her home university? What about the cold winter?

CC was in perfect contrast to her mother virtually unconcerned about all of the above. She had met with a missionary couple and arranged to live with them if an internship happened. She arranged to help them teach orphans. She felt that God strongly wanted her to stay. She was and is resolute. I am proud of her faith and in awe of her.

She accepted an internship at Seoul University to work at a museum. 

She will be helping a man there with his English as they work and he with her Korean. We continue to talk and text, for free, via Kakao Talk. It is a free app that hardly ever cuts us off. The winter in Seoul will be nothing like CC has ever experienced. It can get in the negative numbers. We live in a state where coats are optional.

The image above is of CC (on the left) and her now roommate. I think they are adorable. Her roommate is from Georgia and also attends CC's home university. They did not know each other before this South Korean semester. They can continue their friendship when CC returns.

I tried to pull some images of Seoul and CC in the snow off of Instagram but could not. She is coffeeaddict0021. She takes a lot of pictures of Korean food, coffee and historic sites.

We will miss her terribly at Christmas but we will be fine. I will be fine. I am happy for her.
Thank you all for asking about her.

Please read my sponsored post from Kaplan and Blogher 
Thirty Minutes In The Day Of A Registered Nurse.  
It is a true story of a sick young man I cared for.

Happy Christmas
Olive

Picture This Moment

Picture a blond, skinny, blue eyed, young child looking about four years old (but actually six) running down a chain link fence and signing to her mother as her mother drives away from school. She's signing "I love you" continuously as she runs along the fence as if her mother is leaving her on the concrete playground forever. This scenario occurs every morning.

Now picture that same child, grown, but still petite at age twenty-two (looking fifteen) in line at Hartsfield-International Airport signing "I love you" in the security line as she prepares to fly off to university in South Korea. Maybe for five months or perhaps for an entire year. The mother or young exchange student have no idea when she will return.

This is when the mother cries. She pictures, the skinny child, the concrete, the fence, and not the TSA in their navy uniforms checking her in at the large shining airport. The mother then signs "I love you" back to her daughter.

That was my CC and me last week.

Can you picture what I have been up to?

Joy and Peace

Olive

Love Multiplied: Our Kitten

Meet Cindy Lou.

 She is less than one pound, is maybe five weeks old, and has captured our hearts. My sister rescued her. One cloche and it's contents have been broken so far. She is a dedicated climber.

Shelley adores her. He has been sleeping outside the laundry room door where she sleeps and practically will not leave her side. Shelley is gentle with her. We were worried about that at first. He likely thinks we brought her home just for him.

Love Multiplied In A Tiny Moving Ball of Fur

Happy Monday

Olive

Unrequited Love

William Butler Yeats was twenty three years old when he met Maud Gonne. She refused repeatedly to marry him. He felt her rejection painfully.
She is the subject of his early love poems. Yeats did marry someone else late in life and had children. His early poems are bittersweet and sometimes sorrowful.
Here is one of my favorites.
Joe should have it read at my funeral.

When You Are Old

When you are old and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book.

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep:

How many loved loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false and true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced and paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crown of stars.

His other poem I read often is "He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven."

 Look it up, you might enjoy it.

tread softly

Olive

Hold Everything Lightly #11 {Love At The Hardware Store}

Joe and I have a mutual friend named Cathy. 

She is full of irrepressible joy and is a big talker.  

She was not always joyous or fortunate in love. 

This is her grown up love story.

After what Cathy thought was twenty three years of a happy marriage, Cathy's husband told her he had found a place to rent and walked out on her. Their two sons were twenty one and fifteen at the time and Cathy was forty. She was devastated and grieved the loss of her marriage for six years. She had the support of friends and lived rent free in the church parsonage for three years but never unpacked. She met two gay men who accepted her and her grief and she slowly decided her divorce was final indeed. One friend is fat and one thin. She calls her little group "Two Fat Friends and A Friend." Cathy has a delightful sense of humor and has no problem making fun of herself. She is prone to exaggerate her size and her age.

A year and a half ago she was invited to a low country boil to celebrate a goat pen being cleaned. Yes, a goat pen cleaning party. It was here she met Randy, a long haul truck driver, for the first time. He was tall just like Cathy. She is five feet ten inches and he is six feet five inches. He is six years younger than Cathy. She sat next to him and they talked all night. No phone numbers were exchanged and Cathy assumed she was too fat and too old for Randy.

A few days later at work two friends called her and asked if it was all right to give Randy her phone number. They have been dating ever since. Cathy was aware he had her a ring made in Florida last July but Christmas, her birthday and other days came and went. Had he changed his mind? Was he not going to ask her to marry him? They were deeply in love. He was The One, her partner and friend. At age forty nine she was ready to make that commitment once again.

They were driving down to Augusta one day this spring and while on the interstate Randy opened the console and pulled out the ruby and diamond ring. He said "Do you want to get hitched?" A little nonplussed by this setting Cathy responded "I guess so." Cathy laughs when telling this and says "We met in a goat pen and got engaged on the interstate."

After that romantic proposal they arrived in Augusta. Randy wanted an air compressor at Harbor Freight, a sort of big hardware and tool store. The problem was it was eight hundred dollars and they did not have that much money. The customary 20% off was excluded from the air compressor. Cathy, excited and a professional business woman herself, was not having it. She asked for the manager. She said to him "Do you see how old I am? I just got engaged. Do you see that big old redneck over there? I am old and fat and he loves me just like I am. I want that air compressor for his engagement present." She says all this as she wiggles that big ole ruby ring in the managers face. The manager replies "What about six hundred and fifty dollars?" Randy says "Let's load it on the truck," smiling widely at his bride to be. Customers and the staff of the store cheered.

That is Love at the Hardware Store.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983

 

 To read other parts of the series please click on series title in Pages at the top of the page

thank you for reading

Olive

Love Hurts

Life lessons are hard.

 Yesterday was one of those days for our daughter. 

Tears were shed.

Tears of anger and frustration at a situation that was not in hers or our control.

 

I felt as if I had aged about ten years and maybe I did.

 I encouraged her that in the big wide scope of the world in a few years all this drama will be very small. 

I am not sure that helped. 

Love hurts.

Olive

Thanks Bunches Ya’ll

I am thankful to have You, my friends. All who comment on and read this blog. I thank you! I have told Joe so many times what a warm and loving community of folks blog land is. That is completely true. I try to comment back as much as I possibly can. If I miss you it is not intentional! Life comes at me some days. Grass to be cut, gardening, CC, well girls you know, and I cook frequently. Not to mention our massive desire to thrift. How is that for a snippet of my sweet life with my true love Joe?

It rained yesterday. My sister, Terrrible T. is a tad upset over these summer storms. Lightening struck her computer last week and a tree fell on her car yesterday! Big hugs baby sister! That is why you pay insurance.

On this wet Sunday I will leave you with some images of the C-Cat.

Enjoy

 

Happy Sunday my darling friends! Thanks bunches for hanging with me as I am still learning how to do so many fun things. You are my inspiration.

grace surrounds us

Olive

He Knows Little Things Matter

It’s Joe’s Birthday!

Happy Birthday My Darling Love!

Here is a list, in no particular order, of just a few of the many qualities Joe has that I appreciate.

 

1. He knows little things matter…he notices tiny mushrooms in the grass and always shows me.

2.   He loves the old house and is partially blind to it’s faults.

3.  He is enjoying the yellow house and understands the magic it has.

4.  He makes the best popcorn…on the stove…not in the microwave for heaven’s sake!

5.  He reads books and we discuss them.

6.  He is a Christ follower.

7.  He appreciates art…sometimes modern art…yuck…but still.

8.  He loves his children and grandchildren.

9.  He loves my child and she loves him…this does not always happen…he made this transition easy.

10.  His brother is his best friend…that’s cool…right Bob?

11.  He took care of his parents when they were ill.

12.  He works hard and his customers like him…older ladies bake for him at Christmas.

13.  He can drive expertly  through any large city(while I cannot).

14.  Man, can he hang a chandelier, with Italian instructions! You can read about this here.

15.  He can cook…priceless.

16.  He will go to yard sales and thrift stores with or without me.

17.  He bought our wedding bands in Italy. We traveled to Florence…oh my.

18.  He found a lovely historic log cabin for our wedding ceremony.

19.  He flirted with me, unashamedly…that’s what started all of this!

20.  He tells me he loves me every day… multiple times.

21.  He kisses me hello and goodbye.

♦To Be Happy Be In Love♦

grace surrounds us

Olive