Donna’s Blog

In writing class, we would say that the song has a powerful melodic and lyrical hook.  Self explantory mostly, but it basically refers to the lyrics or melody (or both) that “hooks” you when you hear it.  It grabs your attention and stays with you.  The writer was smart in that the hook repeats several times throughout the song….at least seven times.  That’s a pretty good guarantee that you will be able to remember that line and probably be able to sing it back after the first time you finish hearing the song.

I googled the song to find the complete lyric and found that it is part of the Charlotte’s Web soundtrack and Sarah McLachlan sings it (that alone can make it a hit for me).  When I first googled it, i thought I read that someone else wrote it, but as I hunted for lyrics, most sites credited Sarah as being the writer.

I’ve never purchased a Sarah Mclachlan CD and I’m not sure why.  I love her voice and I love her writing.  In fact, as much as I love music, my CD collection is pretty sparse.  I’ve been thinking that what I want for Christmas is an ipod so that I can start downloading songs.  I’ve already started borrowing Karlee’s at night when I go running.  She has country music, band music, ccm music and even some Christmas cantata music.  Anyway, I digress.

Some of you know the story.  I started working for the firm in 1985.  I worked until 1994.  I quit to be a stay at home mom and loved every minute of it.  After ten years, I started job hunting to support my songwriting habit and found a job in February of 2004.  I survived at that place until this past April when I heard that my old firm was looking for a secretary.

Not much has changed at the firm.  My same desk is there, the same pictures are on the wall, the same “paid bill” files I created are being used, the sugar dish I bought is still in the break room, etc.  The responsibilities are pretty much the same, too….including one big one, decorate the office for Christmas.

So last week I went upstairs to check and sure enough, the same tree and decorations I purchased back in 1993 are still in the box.  Actually, the tree isn’t in the box….we have plenty of empty office space upstairs so we always just took the tree upstairs and left it in a corner.  And although the tree doesn’t look quite this bad……

     it has definitely seen its better day!  I got the “ok” from management to start shopping for a new one.  I know exactly what i’m going to look for….one of those nice, tall, pre-lit trees.  Our foyer is two stories high and there is lots of room for a big tree.  And that will also mean that i will have to look for some new ornaments as well.  It is so fun to spend someone else’s money. 

“When I attended the Aspen Music Festival at the healthy age of 19, a bunch of my buddies and myself decided to climb Aspen Mountain, all the way to the Gondola (The very, very top. Waaay past the designated hikers trail, where plenty-o-oxygen could still be accessed.) Anywho, if you made it to the Gondola summit, you could ride free down. So we geared-up, and with youthful vigor began our quest. It was tough and one of the most physically tasking things in distant and recent memory. But finally, with cramps in our sides, one break for eating, and pulses a’pounding, we made it in 11 hours flat. For extra fun, we were attacked by birds who where no longer afaid of humans that made diving passes at our sandwiches.

When we got to the top, we were so proud. The view was spectacular. We took deep breaths of the cool, thin air and silently surveyed the blissful view. Then we looked at all the other people, who came up riding the Gondola, and took pride in our youth and our ability to do what others could not. We even had a little flag that we had constructed to plant at the summit.

Right about the time we were finishing our high-fives and ready to plant our flag, we all turned towards the incline from where we had just scaled… more like, crawled. A strange scraping sound emerged. Then a bike tire appeared, then the full bike, and sitting on the bike, I shark you not, was a man with a long white beard, white hair, and wrinkled, tanned skin that covered a whole set of tight lean muscles, covered only by a runner’s loin cloth and a little tattered tank top that said “I Live Dammit.” The old geezer rode the whole way up the mountain on a bike in 8 hours. He had to have been close to 80. Everyone at the summit, (about 60 or so jaw-dangly people) turned and clapped, laughed and took pictures. You cold barely see the old man’s smile underneath the bushy full white beard as he stood by his bike and posed for adoring strangers, but his squinting eyes said it all.

After the applause ended, we had to force ourselves to plant our flag but we did it anyways, and rode the gondola down for our reward at the only KFC in Aspen. The old man, as we found out later, rode his bike back down. At the time, I felt a little like the old coot stole some of that sweetness, but really, he did the opposite. His prescence was a gift and a reminder: “You’re living now boy, and that’s good. Just never quit.”

Fear is the greatest foe to living the abundant life that Christ has set us free for. It takes guts and faith to do what you are secretly or openly passionate about.”

I hope you all had a great day of being with family.  We had my folks over, my sister, her husband and her two boys and two grandaughters, my brother, Ben’s mom and Ben’s sister and her family and Aunt Pauline.  She was having one of her “good days”.  Aunt Pauline even remembered my folks and she hasn’t seen them in quite a while. 

It was great to enjoy the day together and I loved the warm weather that allowed the kids to eat at the tables on the screened-in back porch.  As much as I would love a big table where you could sit 19 people down together…..it just wasn’t an option.  I think the kids liked having their own party on the porch with no one to tell them to chew with their mouths closed, or to keep their elbows off the table!

Of course I guess I shouldn’t call them ”kids”…they range from ages 11 to 21.  When did they all get so big?  I can remember when they were all under 10!

We had a great day together and just enjoyed chilling out Thursday evening.  Then it was up and going on Friday because we were chaperoning the marching band to a football game outside of Atlanta.  We had to be at the high school by 11:00 A.M.  And of course a chilly wind started blowing in and the warm temperatures we had just enjoyed the day before were falling fast.  By the time we got to the stadium Friday night, it was already in the 40’s. 

The first thing I did was to find the concession stand and purchase a cup of hot chocolate.  That did fine to keep my face warm as I blew on the hot, steamy cup, but it didn’t quite reach down to my toes.  And when my toes are cold, I can’t hardly stand it.  I had purchased some “toe warmer” thingees to put in my shoes from the hunting section in Wal-mart, but they didn’t work.

I was never so happy to see the end of a game arrive.  I hated it that we lost…..but after a while, I didn’t want to cheer for my team or any team, I just wanted a place to thaw out my frozen toes!

We loaded the buses and to make a long story short…..we finally got in bed at 4:00 A.M.

I didn’t think we were going to do anything Saturday, but after we got up (at around noon), we unloaded the Christmas boxes from the attic and started decorating for Christmas.  We finished it all up at around 4:00 on Sunday afternoon!

It got me thinking about how fast these days are going by and before you know it, Karlee will be off to college and not here to help decorate.  I know, that’s not tomorrow….but sometimes it feels like it.

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.  ~Meister Eckhart

Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.  ~E.P. Powell

So once in every year we throng
Upon a day apart,
To praise the Lord with feast and song
In thankfulness of heart.
~Arthur Guiterman, The First Thanksgiving

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.  ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Remember God’s bounty in the year.  String the pearls of His favor.  Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light!  Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!  ~Henry Ward Beecher

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.  ~Edward Sandford Martin

Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off’rings, and a thankful strain.
~Alexander Pope

What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets.  I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?  ~Erma Bombeck, “No One Diets on Thanksgiving,” 26 November 1981

He who thanks but with the lips
Thanks but in part;
The full, the true Thanksgiving
Comes from the heart.
~J.A. Shedd

Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day.  ~Robert Caspar Lintner

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare.  They are consumed in twelve minutes.  Half-times take twelve minutes.  This is not coincidence.  ~Erma Bombeck

For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.  ~Irv Kupcinet

The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!  ~Henry Ward Beecher

Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths.  At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings.  ~J. Robert Moskin

There is one day that is ours.  There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to.  Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.  ~O. Henry

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.  ~Theodore Roosevelt

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.  ~Thornton Wilder

Thanksgiving is the holiday of peace, the celebration of work and the simple life… a true folk-festival that speaks the poetry of the turn of the seasons, the beauty of seedtime and harvest, the ripe product of the year - and the deep, deep connection of all these things with God.  ~Ray Stannard Baker (David Grayson)

On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence.  ~William Jennings Bryan

It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for.  He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire.  Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient.  But a thankful heart hath a continual feast.  ~W.J. Cameron

Thanksgiving is America’s national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.  ~Michael Dresser

Forever on Thanksgiving Day
The heart will find the pathway home.
~Wilbur D. Nesbit

Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal.  It’s a way to live.  ~Jackie Windspear

We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.  ~Author Unknown

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.  ~Johannes A. Gaertner

A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues.  ~Cicero

Coexistence:  what the farmer does with the turkey - until Thanksgiving.  ~Mike Connolly

Thanksgiving is possible only for those who take time to remember; no one can give thanks who has a short memory.  ~Author Unknown

God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.  ~Izaak Walton

Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now.  ~A.W. Tozer

Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.  ~Seneca

If I have enjoyed the hospitality of the Host of this universe, Who daily spreads a table in my sight, surely I cannot do less than acknowledge my dependence.  ~G.A. Johnston Ross

O Lord that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
~William Shakespeare

None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude.  Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.  ~Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don’t unravel.  ~Author Unknown

And though I ebb in worth, I’ll flow in thanks.  ~John Taylor

The thing I’m most thankful for right now is elastic waistbands.  ~Author Unknown

For, after all, put it as we may to ourselves, we are all of us from birth to death guests at a table which we did not spread.  The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet…. Shall we think of the day as a chance to come nearer to our Host, and to find out something of Him who has fed us so long?  ~Rebecca Harding Davis

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.  ~Aesop

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.  ~William Arthur Ward

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.  ~William Shakespeare

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.  Have you used one to say “thank you?”  ~William A. Ward

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.  ~Melody Beattie

I love Thanksgiving turkey.  It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.  ~Arnold Schwarzenegger

For hearts that are kindly, with virtue and peace, and not seeking blindly a hoard to increase; for those who are grieving o’er life’s sordid plan; for souls still believing in heaven and man; for homes that are lowly with love at the board; for things that are holy, I thank thee, O Lord!  ~Walt Mason

It is delightfully easy to thank God for the grace we ourselves have received, but it requires great grace to thank God always for the grace given to others.  ~James Smith

When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?  ~George Canning

Thanksgiving is nothing if not a glad and reverent lifting of the heart to God in honor and praise for His goodness.  ~Robert Casper Lintner

Got no check books, got no banks.  Still I’d like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.  ~Irving Berlin

If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.  ~Robert Quillen

2. MY SOAP OPERA NAME: Ilene Nashville
    (middle name, city where you were born)

3.  MY STAR WARS NAME: NorDa
     (first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)

4.  SUPERHERO NAME: The Red Rootbeer
     (“The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)

5.  NASCAR NAME:  Jerry Archie (sounds like a winner!)
     (first names of your grandfathers)

6.  WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: Ilene Leon
     (mother’s & father’s middle names)

7.  TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME:  Robinson Richmond
     (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)

8.  CARTOON NAME:  Pineapple Blousey
     (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)

9.  HIPPIE NAME:  Danish Holly
     (what you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)

When do we lose the inhibition to say exactly what we are thinking?  Children are so beautifully unedited.  They tell it like it is.  We gasp at the blatant honesty and then laugh out loud and secretly wish that we could still have the audacity to blurt out the truth.

I don’t know why we are so afraid of the truth? Afraid that it will reveal more of “me” than you should see?  Why would I work so hard to project an “image of me” anyway that isn’t real?  But I do.  I find it so much easier to let the “image” stay in tact while the inside can quietly fall apart.  That’s why I work so hard at keeping the image built up…..it has layers and layers to it and prevents anyone from really seeing what’s going on.

Wow…..don’t know how I got off on that subject!  I was thinking I was going to be lighthearted this morning.  I just got finished listening to David Crowder singing “Glorious”, his new radio release and I love it!  “You make everything glorious, you make everything glorious, you make everything glorious and I am yours!”  So I was really thinking about how God does that……and it’s exciting, but it’s also frustrating when I feel like He has so far to go in my life.

Outside my window at work are a row of eight bradford pear trees.  Their leaves are just now beginning to turn red.  It’s starting with the leaves at the top of the tree and seems to be working it’s way down.  In a week or two, the tree will be on fire with brilliant red splashes of color.  Then you know what happens….the leaves will fall and the tree will be bare….waiting for spring, a time of new growth.  It happens over and over and over.  The necesssary cycle in the life of the tree…..seasons.

I wonder of all the seasons, which the tree prefers more?  Is it the season of new growth?  When the tree is fragrant with blooms and birds find a place to nest?  Is it when the tree is thick with summer leaves and provides wonderful shade and branches for little boys to climb in?  Is it when the leaves begin to take on a burst of color before they wither and fall away?  Or is it when the tree is bare and beautiful and offers nothing more than branches lifted to a cold winter sky?

I had some goof off time today at work (all the guys were gone) so I was checking out Youtube…..because I had the radio on and heard a guy named Jack Johnson sing and he sounded awesome, so I decided to check him out.

After I listened to several of his songs and checked out his website….i saw that he mentioned a musical influence in his life was Ben Harper.

SO….i checked out his website.  I saw a few of his CDs and saw the song title to some songs that intrigued me.  The website showed the lyrics, but didn’t play anything.  SO…off to youtube to see what I could find.  I first found “Waiting on an angel”…..so cool.

Then I found “I Love Her”…..the song I have linked above for you to listen too.  WOW……..

Well, not only do i need one of these, but I need someone to come in and take all of my stuff out, put one of these in, and then refill it with my stuff for me.