Simple Living This Week No. 48 – Thanksgiving, Prayer Requests, Christmas Planning, Conservative Purge Online

Happy Thanksgiving Week! I hope you have many blessings for which to be thankful this year. Ours will be a quiet week at home. Caroline came down with a sore throat and fatigue thing over the weekend. She was definitely on the up-swing last night when she went to bed and I’m thankful for that. Hopefully David and I do not catch it.

Prayer Requests

Last week I shared two prayer requests. Both of them were “resolved” that same day by being delayed and cancelled. One is rescheduled and the other is in complete limbo. The one in limbo involves me and it’s deeply personal. I may discuss it at some point, but not today. I still need guidance. In fact, I need more guidance now than I did when I asked the prayer request because the entire situation became much more problematic. I definitely need God to lead me to the right people to help me.

Christmas Planning

We decided to decorate for Christmas yesterday. I truly prefer to wait until after Thanksgiving, but since it will only be the three of us we decided to go ahead and do it. (The thought that sickness could start spreading through our home also impacted the choice.) We finished everything except putting our many ornaments on the tree, the simple outside decorations, and a few other small things. I discovered the white lights I use in the mantle greenery had parts that were out so David needs to get a new string of lights at Meijer before I do do the mantle.

Christmas decorating is easier every year because Caroline has become so much more helpful. We’ve gone from her “helping” us to her actually helping us to her being able to do parts of the decorating all on her own (and efficiently). I have enjoyed every age she has been for different reasons. I sometimes miss having a little girl around, but I honestly have loved the past few years. She’s 14 now and I just love her to bits. I feel truly blessed to have her as my daughter.

What I’m Reading

I don’t remember how I happened across these old books, but I’ve been reading the free Kindle version of Prudence of the Parsonage by Ethel Hueston. There is also Prudence Says So which I’ve downloaded and will read next. The books were published in 1915 and 1916, a time period I especially enjoy reading.

They are light, home-centered fiction. I’m still reading the first one, but so far I would recommend them!

What I’m Listening To

For our wedding anniversary a couple of years ago, we purchased a Victrola 8-in-1 Bluetooth Record Player & Multimedia Center (in Mahogany). Last night we listened to some LPs as we were decorating.

We put on Amy Grant’s A Christmas Album. I hadn’t listened to it in a long time. I had forgotten how much I like that album. I also pulled out Osmond Family Christmas. I was always more of a Donny & Marie fan than the Osmond Brothers so there are some songs on the album that I don’t particularly like. But there are several on this double album I really enjoy so it was fun to listen to them again. Lastly, we listened to some Johnny Mathis. I don’t own my favorite Johnny Mathis album (Merry Christmas) for some reason, but do have a copy of Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis and we enjoyed listening to it.

What I’m Thinking About

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately. Things are coming at me more quickly than I can sometimes process them and then make a plan to act on.

I don’t know how aware of it you are, but there is a steady purging of conservatives going on in terms of social media, YouTube, email services like MailChimp, WordPress, etc. I have warned about this multiple times and our need to protect ourselves from being at risk of being cancelled. If the election is stolen from President Trump in the end, the attack on conservatives and Christians will increase significantly.

YouTube announced with one day’s warning that they were going to start showing ads on all videos, even if you weren’t eligible to be monetized and make money on YouTube. In other words, people will see ads on my videos I’ve uploaded and YouTube doesn’t need to pay me anything. I’ve known for some time that it isn’t safe to build a following on YouTube and so could never bring myself to put any real effort into it, but this was the last straw. I’ve been trying to figure out where to park my videos so I don’t have to worry about being cancelled. Because of this constant state of limbo regarding videos, I’ve been dragging my feet a bit at creating more. I’ve finally decided on Rumble since it is a free speech platform. They don’t have nearly as many bells and whistles at this point, but I think they will come. I left three of my videos on YouTube for the moment as placeholders, but may simply pull them all.

Related to this is podcasting. I never intended to stop podcasting. I made five podcasts and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had good feedback about them. It’s now been well over a year since I made a new one. I’d like to begin doing them again.

So many ideas and options. It’s sometimes hard to know what to do.

What is up in your world? What do you have going on in your life this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment and share.