Get- R- Done

Wooohooo! It’s the last day of August.

Tomorrow, we get to usher in the month of September, the first month of my very favorite season. I love fall and can hardly wait to fill this house full of the sights and smells of it.

Unfortunately, I have a bit of a problem.

It seems that in the past months of moping, whining, sewing and crafting, I have developed a bit a mess around here. It’s the little stuff  I've left unattended.  Little stuff, however, has an annoying habit of congregating with other little stuff to become big stuff. Can anyone relate?

It moves from counter...
to shelf
then to a box.
and then to a bigger box.
and then to a decorated box to be camouflaged as part of the décor.
Finally, it takes up residence in what we call a banana box in some Innie Paradise. If it resides there for 6 months, it gets permanent resident status and the right to vote on domestic policy.

It isn’t commendable, people. Though visitors might not know it's there, I do, and it puts a pooper on my fall decorating party.

So my Next Thing is to take a cue from Suzanne at Southern Inspiration. She's hosting a Get It Done Challenge  and has asked us to join her in posting a concrete list of goals for the month of September.

Mine are as follows.

1. A good old fashioned fall cleaning which will include every single nook and crannie from port to stern, pillar to post, and all metaphors in between. I plan to organize my kitchen cabinets, laundry/sewing room, craft area, painting/DIY supplies, seasonal supplies, and the home office. After the leap off Tablescape Mountain, I also need a better place to store dishes, too.

2. With the two days I’ll probably have left after that, I plan to repaint the front door and do some fall front porch decorating.

3. I will also pull three items from The 101 List which sits mocking on my sidebar and give them a facelift.

A few candidates:

 or

or maybe...

or how about...

If I do not complete their facelift, they will be put in a yard sale which I am planning for the first weekend in October.  (Now October, you see, is not September. Therefore, if that part doesn’t come to fruition, it doesn’t affect my September grade.) I’m always thinking ahead…

So there you have it. I have put my September list out there. Is anyone else willing to join the challenge?

What are your plans for September?

A blond walks into a kitchen store...

If I were not blond, I might not have this little tip to pass along this afternoon.

But I am.
So I do.

I say this because today's discovery was a result of my scatter brain putting a pot to boil on the stove before heading upstairs to wash, dry, style, and apparently admire the aforementioned blond head...

When I finally returned to the kitchen, I heard that clicka clicka sound that an empty pot makes when it is about to burst into flames.

Brunette readers will just have to take my word for this.

So I ran to the stove. Sure enough, the entire contents had boiled out of the pot, and the copper clad bottom was now solid black. 

Well, great.

Now, if you are new around here, you may not know that I married Mr. Clean.

Therefore, I had not one but two reasons to drop everything and try to conceal the evidence before the man of the house got home. First, I really wasn't in the mood for the blond arsonist lecture, and second, I knew that he would attack this pot with his Scotch Brite sponge and Mr. Clean arms, and I would probably end up with yet another Revereware amputee for my collection.

So I went to the computer, and I googled Copper Cleaners. 

This is what I found:

Make a paste of equal amounts of salt, flour, and vinegar.

 Cover the copper and allow to set.

 Wipe off and buff.

It couldn’t possibly be that easy, but I had nothing to lose by trying. So I covered the pot and stood there staring at it. After about five minutes, I took a peek.

Woohooo! It really was that easy! The black literally vanished into thin air, and the copper looked at least ten years younger. I seriously considered slathering some on my face as well. Instead, I ran for the shiny red Kodak so I could yak all about it.

Then, I went back to the computer and googled something like cleaning stainless cookware. 

I found this:

Rub stainless cookware with lemon juice and a little salt.

I didn’t have lemon juice, but I had lemons. So I sliced one, salted it, and very gently and easily rubbed the stainless clean. This may be an old and well known method, but it was new to me. I was delighted, and the fact that I meandered on a great cookware cleaning adventure rather than attend to my previous plans for the day should in no way negate this little tip.

I polished all of my stainless cookware. I even washed an old tea kettle that had somehow become burned as well.

It went from this:

To this:

With no elbow grease involved.

Notice how the handle is still firmly attached to the kettle....

True, the original shine is gone, but that is actually the fault of Mr. Clean and his Scotch Brite sponge and not Mrs. Clean and her salted lemon.

Since I was on such a roll, I decided to go for the triple crown.

I googled silver polish and found this:

Line a pan with aluminum foil and fill with water.

Add one teaspoon each of baking soda and salt. 

Bring to a boil. Immerse silver. 

Wipe clean.

Polish.

I felt a little iffy on this one. I have polished a lot of silver in my time, and a solution couldn't possibly be that easy. So I grabbed a cheaper, likely silver plate, creamer that I got at an estate sale rather than the good stuff.

I boiled and immersed.

Then I boiled immersed some more.

And I rubbed.

 And I rubbed some more.

Not pleased.

Perhaps it works better with the good stuff?

 I didn’t feel like trying.

At any rate, I couldn’t leave it looking like a leopard so I dragged out a stool and climbed up to the high shelf in my laundry to see if I could find some actual silver polish.

Yes, I realize that for most people, that would have been done before all that googling.

I'm not most people.

   I found some.

 

That's better...

I did a little more polishing.

Then, I got back on the stool to return the polish to that high cabinet.

And guess what I found hidden up there when I did?

Well, of course…

However, I still believe the little paste and lemon discoveries are keepers. Therefore, I'm yakking them along to you.

The Incredible Traveling Innie

This morning, my next thing was cleaning out that incredible traveling innie that I call my pocket book. This was necessitated by an embarrassing incident over the weekend which I shall leave unyakked.

As I was cleaning out the purse, I decided to start looking for a new one. True, there is nothing aesthetically wrong with the one I’m using. I like it, and it’s still in good condition. But the thing is just not working for me.

When I purse shop, have a few basic rules. First, I have to be drawn to the shape. Then, I have to like the way it feels when I hold it in my hand. I clutch it and bounce it up and down for a few seconds… I’m not sure why. In addition to the way it looks and feels, the purse needs a zippered compartment in the middle and at least one small pocket elsewhere for the cell phone.

And a pretty color helps too.

I have decided, however, to add a new item to my list, and it is this: I will no longer purchase a pocketbook large enough to house my entire head.

This is a new standard is necessitated by the ginormous purses on the market today. These just do not work for me. Any woman who can not maintain a walk- in closet should not be allowed to carry a walk- in purse. It’s just that simple, and I am that woman.

Items not only have a habit of gravitating to my purse, they have a habit of lurking at the bottom when they do so. This makes it impossible to find my cell phone.

Yes, I know I said that a purse must have a handy little pocket for the cell phone. My purse has one…. And I am absolutely positive that I return the phone to that little pocket upon hanging up, but inevitably, that tenacious little leaper ends up down in no man’s land. And it is while he is lounging in no man's land that he decides to burst into song. This usually occurs when I’m driving…. Which requires the one handed whirly bird to fly to the passenger seat and attempt to dredge him up from the bottom… all the while keeping both eyes on the road and the other hand on the wheel.

Aside from the wallet and the eyeglass case and the buried treasure of loose coinage and the 2 highlighters, 4 pencils, and 4 pens, and the shiny red Kodak, the cell phone might be hiding among all kinds of purse discoveries. Like these.

The pharmacy. I carry so many bottles of medicine around that if someone bumps into me, I rattle. In addition to the various pill bottles, I have mystery medicine lurking at the bottom of my purse. This carelessness renders them absolutely impotent since I have no clue about their type, expiration, or dosage.

Peppermint Wrappers: I use these to keep a record of my church attendance.

Lipstick. Not an uncommon sight in a purse, but those three tubes are the exact same shade, Sweet Mocha. They were samples from one of Clinique’s famous gift events. And I don’t even like the shade.

 Crackers… apparently ground into crumbs by the grist mill created in the search for the singing cell phone.

 Two pairs of sunglasses. I misplaced my sunglasses on our last trip to visit The Practical One. I searched her room to no avail. Finally, either in a show of great compassion or an effort to muzzle the sunglass lamentation, she gave me her own extra pair. They made me look like a character from A Bug’s Life but I took them anyway. Then, I found the first pair. In the bottom of my purse.

A Light bulb. There’s actually is a very good reason for this one. I carried the dead bulb to the store for replacement purposes. That was the day before my simple gift of friendship luncheon, which was two weeks ago. Why is the bulb still in the purse?

A clothes pin. I do not know…. Money laundering?

Keys. Lots of keys. And it is a scientific fact that it is impossible to locate car keys in a purse using the grist mill method. The more you grind, the more they retreat into the purse crevices. The only successful method of key retrieval is to dump the entire contents of the purse onto the nearest surface. And this must be done while crying. It’s a rule.

And so I’ve cleaned out the incredible traveling innie, and I’m borrowing one from Miss Whimsy while I browse for a replacement. wait for a sale.

And now, I’m headed outside to clean out my car.

Which I call Ebenezer.

But the husband calls a purse on wheels.

Can anyone out there relate at all?

When a post becomes a novel

OK… this is going to be a long yakkity yak even for me because this is my hot button topic. Plus, I have been up since 4:00 AM., and caffeine is a stimulant.

You might want to go grab a cup of coffee…

Ready?

This week, my next thing was to attack the book storage in this home. No small task I assure you. I love books. Back in the days when parents let their kids roam freely about the stores, my mother could always find me sitting on the floor in the book section. It isn’t just the adventure inside of a book that I love. No, I love the very feel and smell of a book. The older and more worn the book is, the more I love it.

Like this tattered little guy who has been loved for two generations.

I keep my books stashed in various places throughout the house. Hard backed, quality books get to be displayed. The soft backed or tattered books live like second class citizens either in a box, a trunk, or on the shelf behind the door in that den closet.

Yet those books are actually the ones that I love the most. I wouldn’t part with them although their organization has been the bane of my existence for two decades. Oh, I’ve tried to organize them. I even color coded the spines with tape way back when.

See?

But it didn’t work. They always ended up looking like this anyway.  

Sometimes worse. I gave up and just banished them behind a door.

But I love them.

One of my dreams is to own a quaint little book store like The Shop Around the Corner in You’ve Got Mail. Like Meg Ryan’s character I would specialize in children’s books. If you’ve ever clicked my profile, you might have noticed that I neglect to list my favorite books. There’s a reason for that. When asked, I’m always a little embarrassed to list them because if I am to be perfectly truthful, my favorite books are STILL those from my childhood. Nothing apart from the Bible that I have read as an adult has ever made me want to revisit it over and over the way that my favorite books from my childhood do.

And I developed that love long before I was an independent reader because of adults in my life who took the time to read aloud to me.

***************************

It seems that as a culture, we’re losing the art of reading aloud. Our school days are so jam packed and cut so short that teachers lack the time to do what my wonderful teachers did when they quieted the class, usually at the end of the day or just after recess, and read chapter books aloud to us. If I close my eyes, I can hear Mr. O’Hara’s voice as he reads The Boxcar Children even today.

All evidence points to the fact that read aloud time is woefully absent in the home as well. I love it when I hear of young families visiting the library together and relishing the ritual of bedtime reading. I suspect, though, that they are a growing minority.

Reading aloud to children reaps multiple blessings. Not only does it engage the brain and create a better reader and learner, but it also teaches the simple discipline of stillness. I literally want to cry as I observe children today who can not sit for five minutes without self- centered participation, without piping in with their anecdotal tidbits, most of which if you listen, begin with the word “I”. Reading aloud teaches children to passively appreciate a voice other than their own. It teaches them, if nothing more, to sit still.

But there is so much more!

It promotes bonding. In essence, we extend the rocking years by replacing the lullaby with the words of a good story. Mom should read. Dad should read. Grandparents, if they can, should read to them too.

I have a friend whose grandson lives many hours away. She and her daughter have devised some wonderful cyber grandma time. Periodically, Grandma appears on SKYPE and reads aloud to her grandson while Mommy attends to daily chores. Sure, she would rather be holding him in person, but she decided to think outside the box. I would never have thought of that! How many Grandma Points do you suppose she should get?

****************************

I love picture books, and some day I’ll post about my favorite picture books for children. But it wasn’t picture books that I found on my shelves the other day. Those are either secured in Innie Paradise or tagging along with the traveling teacher box. The books that I found on my shelves which took me on this detour off Debbie Drive were favorite chapter books, too prime for the reread to be relegated to the attic.

So today, I want to share a few family read aloud favorites.

I’ll wait while you refill the cup if necessary….

Well, of course...I’ll start with my all time favorite series of books.

In fact, my favorite book of all time is this one.



I have read it silently and aloud so many times that I can quote most of it. Someday, I’ll post entirely on this wonderful book which literally changed my outlook.  And by the way, the television series is a poor excuse for the masterful works of this author.  Grrrrrr. We’re huge Laura Ingalls Wilder fans here and overflowing with Laura books.

We even took the girls to visit her home and museum one summer...

Why, look! Here’s the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home ...behind my girls...

Beyond "Laura" books are many others. The 3rd grade teacher of The Practical One gets the credit for introducing what became HER personal favorite series of books.

 

And then there are these books. I believe the credit goes to her fourth grade teacher for them.

And for this one too

And these books, which are two of my favorites. 

Disclaimer: I never liked White's Stuart Little. I mean, a talking spider and a trumpeting swan I can get into, but a adventurous rodent notsomuch.

This is one in a series which begins with Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. Miss Whimsy’s teacher read it aloud. She was hooked thereafter. 

And this one a classmate's dad volunteered his lunch hour to read to her 5th grade class.

Hooked again.

There are so many other great read alouds, but I promised myself that I would stop before this became a 1000 word essay…

Too late.

Summer of the Monkeys…Homer Price…Where the Red Fern Grows… EVERY BOOK by Beverly Cleary…good old Hank the Cow Dog…

Just a few of our favorites. What are yours?

Obsessive Innieism

I’ve been cleaning this morning. I’m talking deep spring cleaning in serious super purge mode.

And the sad fact is I haven’t left this spot.

As I’ve mentioned, I'm an innie. I like my schtuff secured neatly away behind a door, curtain, or screen. If that’s the case for my large items, it is doubly the case for my paperwork and other such small items. I am a serious fan of the file system. In my mind, I have addressed the mess if it is neatly organized in a folder. And then in a file.

And I like my files color coded. I have a huge pile of old folders in various colors on stand- by, waiting to be called up into active duty.

Brown files are used for the house… green for all things financial…gray for all things auto… red is insurance. (Come to think of it, since we currently use Blue Cross, those files ought to be reassigned to blue…) The girls are filed in purple unless it relates to college. Then, it would be orange. Can anyone relate?

I have a massive four drawer filing cabinet on The List, but I have no decent place to keep it in the house proper. Instead, I have mini files in various places around this house. My favorite file spot is behind a door in the den closet. Not only do I have a two drawer filing cabinet full of files in there, but I also keep a standing file on top of it for those items that I want at my fingertips.

I know that if I have to take the extra millisecond to actually open a filing cabinet drawer, I will probably just leave said item in the horizontal waiting room. And that would be a mess magnet.

 A VERTICAL waiting room, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable to me. That would be the reason that I created this…

It’s my little magnetic “to be filed” nook. Seriously, I’m pretty sure this inniesim is a psychological disorder. Perhaps The Practical One will do her masters thesis on it.

And that leads me to my Wednesday morning purge session.

This morning, as I was trying to locate a recent email, I discovered that my obsessive innieism has now entered the computer age. In my inbox alone, I had PAGES of emails. To deal with my emails, I have set up a variety of e- folders for the messages that I feel the need to save hoard. I have a Sunday school e-folder, a DAR e-folder, a school e-folder… Most oddball of all is the e-folder I set up for emails that I just can’t seem to delete. This would include emails that are funny, informative, or sentimental. Appropriately, I have named that folder The Attic.

So this morning, I sat with my coffee for a few HOURS and tried to do a little purge of my e- hoarding. I purged email folders. Then, I headed over to Favorites Paradise, where I have also utilized the e- folder system. That would be the reason that I had to scroll past 29 folders before I could reach the link to the aforementioned email to begin with.

See?

I have e-folders for Bible study, for blogs, for message boards, for recipes, for decorating, for crafts… I have one folder simply named “orange”. Good grief. Within each folder is a neatly stashed bundle of links.

 In Bible study alone, I counted 55.

Now, for a compulsive meanderer  like me, any purge presents the dangerous risk of wandering. If I’m not careful, clicking a saved link will lead me on a cyber adventure road through google land. Therefore, I had to preset my purge to a specific block of time. Tomorrow morning, I’ll set aside just 15 minutes to do some more. At this rate, I might complete the job by the new year.

If I knew how to delete in bulk, I would do it. In fact, if anyone knows how, please share the e- instructions. HOWEVER, if there is a way to color code e- folders,

please… please…just don’t tell me.

The Case of the Missing Copper Pennies

Today, my next thing was to reorganize the recipes in my recipe box. It was a long overdue reorganization, pretty much brought to the front burner the day that I made those copper pennies for my meal on wheels. Stressful meal on wheels preparation is often accompanied by the recipe box lamentation.


The story unfolded that day much as it usually does: I headed to my little box to find the copper pennies. At that point, I was humming, as usual, with delusions of Betty Crocker in my head. I began flipping through the box in time to my little tune… Within seconds, I noticed that the desired recipe was not at its assigned station. At this point, the fingers began that frantic little running motion back and forth over the files. The humming stopped and was replaced with the titch and sigh. Finally, I pulled out that wad of random paper which resides at the front of my box and proceeded to slap jack each one on the counter, hoping each time to flip over a winner. By now, I was no longer titching and sighing… I was muttering. SOMEBODY had obviously dropped my recipe box on the floor and just shoved the contents together willy nilly - thus causing all this recipe card commotion.

Now, nobody ever goes near that recipe box without my direction, and deep in my heart, I knew perfectly well that I was very likely the cause of the chaos. But at that very moment, I was not rational. I was in recipe card hunt overdrive...

I never did find the recipe for copper pennies that day. I don’t know why. It should have been so easy to spot… scribbled on a 2X3 inch strip of paper ripped from a mini tablet… I can’t imagine how it got misplaced. At last, I remembered that I had posted that recipe on my message board. It would have been so much easier had I remembered that tidbit before the copper penny caper began.

But then, I wouldn’t have been motivated to reorganize my file box. Again.

For whatever reason, I just can’t manage my recipe file. I have tried repeatedly to organize it. I cut and pasted recipes onto cute recipe cards. I color coded the categories…. A green card for vegetables…. Brown for meats… red for soups and stews…. Blue for beverages…

But inevitably, no matter how well I organize it, it ends up looking like this:

Yes, my “recipe file” is an old box from a pair of baby shoes. Size O. I have had this box --and this recurring problem-- since The Practical One was a baby. With all good intentions, I plan to keep my recipes filed neatly in that box. But inevitably, I get in a hurry or distracted, and well…

So today, I tackled the box. I copied, cut, and pasted recipes and reorganized them. I tossed dozens of recipes. Most had been ripped from magazines or printed from the computer but never tried anyway.

At the end of the day, I had my neat recipe box back, ready to try again. I don’t delude myself that it will stay that way, but a girl can hope. Plus, this time, I have a secret weapon.

This time, I decoupaged the box...

One final note: I have discovered that my next thing is easily determined by figuring out what is causing the most confusion in my daily routine or home…. And fixing it.

Yes I know, well, of course!

The Polish Tupperware

This morning, my next thing was to clean the refrigerator in the garage. If there is one task that I hate more than any in housewife land, it’s cleaning that wasteland of forgotten fuzzy leftovers in that garage refrigerator. It’s so much easier to pretend that I don’t notice the suspicious odor when I need to retrieve something. There are only two things that make me clean out that refrigerator: Either the odor becomes so strong that it penetrates the three inch, insulated barrier sealed with a gasket, or the reason that I did it today.


My mother told me to…

Ok… she didn’t exactly order me to do it. It was more an implied assignment. You see, the only two people in the entire world who call me by my given name are the husband and my mother. The difference is in the syllabication. In contrast to the husband, the mother usually sings out my name with three syllables. Therefore, when she snips it off at two, I know that she is annoyed, and I know that I’m most likely driving too fast, abusing a grandprincess, or hoarding her Polish Tupperware. Yesterday, when I got the “Deb-rah” - with a sigh - as she was standing in front of her cupboard, I knew that what was to follow was the Polish Tupperware lamentation.

Polish Tupperware is what we call the peculiar collection of Cool Whip containers that Mom uses to send leftovers after Sunday dinner. ~ No offense intended to those of Polish descent, by the way. In my very ethic household, Dad was German, and Mom, English- Italian. Therefore, anything just too oddball for either one to claim kinship was “Polish”. This has caused the family to speculate a time or two that I was truly the love child of some random Polish milkman. ~

It isn’t the thrifty reuse of the Cool Whip containers which lands them on the oddball list. It is the fact that Mom expects us to wash and return the containers to her after we use them. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of not using actual Tupperware?  Yes, it does.

In my mother’s love language, food is an action verb. When Mom “foods” you, she shows that she loves you. In receiving it, you show that you love her back. She stacks her containers in a neat little Polish tower in her cupboard. When the tower shrinks, she suspects that someone with a two syllable name has disregarded her gift of love.

So that’s why I had to clean that fridge this morning. When I do it, I want to kick myself at the waste of perfectly delicious food that could have and should have been incorporated into my food plan.

This morning I found things like macaroni and cheese, corn chowder, and brown rice. I even found this  peeking out from behind a Polish tower...

 It’s my daughter’s favorite pie. And it’s sugar free. And yes, it was already green when it went in there. However, I did find some black olives which I’m almost positive were green when they went in there too.

So then I had a sink full of containers which I had to scrub by hand before I sanitized them in the dishwasher.

All the while, I thought of the people of Haiti and the African Mission that I support and how very grateful they would be for that food. And I thought about my round Italian mother and her Polish gift of love. And I thanked God for his blessings and committed myself to be much more appreciative of them.

Project Paradise

So here I am with this determination to take one step at a time, to Do The Next Thing  in this upcoming year, and I’m left in a bit of a quandary. What, exactly, is the “next” thing? I mean, how can I do the next thing if I haven’t even determined the first thing yet? I’m pretty sure if I don’t have a plan, this do the next thing mission will morph into just another variation of do that same old thing, which looks a whole lot like plain old ordinary housewifery. Not exactly the mission.

The husband, quite by accident, provided me with the plan. Right before the new year, we replaced the upstairs heat pump. Early in the morning on installation day, I heard the telltale creak of the hinges on the attic stairs as Mr. Prep Work himself prepared the way for the workmen. And I cringed…

I cringed because the man and I are an organizational mismatch. He is an outie, and I’m an innie. He likes his stuff plopped front and center. I like my stuff secured behind a door, curtain, or screen. I’m even happier if said stuff is stuffed in a box behind that door, curtain, or screen…An attic, therefore, is Innie Paradise.

And I have two of them. Plus accessible storage under my eaves… plus a garage… plus a used- to- be playhouse turned hideaway in the backyard…

You would think, with all of that storage, the man would not have had to clear a path to the AC unit in the attic. But he did, and when he said, “Deb- or- ah” with three syllables, I knew what it meant. It meant, “Deb-or-ah, I have pulled some of your schtuff  front and center and I am not going to reload it into Innie Paradise until you sort it out.”

   I now had my “first thing”. Honestly, I would have been very content to leave my stuff sequestered behind that attic door… maybe stuffed in better boxes. It wasn’t affecting my day to day life. But I grudgingly started, with the help of the practical daughter, to evaluate the plunder. And what we discovered got my wheels turning.

And...

I have a plan…

Do the Next Thing

Last week, my Sunday School class studied spiritual resolve. What a blessing to be reminded that our walk  is just that, a walk, taken one single step at a time with our faces resolutely set toward Jerusalem. Why I feel the need to make MY walk a gallop or sprint at times is beyond me. But then, I have always been the kind who wanted to high jump to the finish line and avoid all those pesky in- betweens.

If I'm like that in my spiritual life, I'm like that times 10 in day to day life management.  When I stop and make a serious evaluation of everything that needs to be tweaked, fixed, changed, organized, cleaned, or deleted in my life, it's just too overwhelming. ~Let's face it: I'm just not a long term look kind of gal.~  So, far too often, I fire off a list of the to dos then crumble in a  heap of the I can'ts. How ridiculous. This year, I simply resolve to walk, one single step at a time. And when the walk seems too overwhelming, I simply resolve to crawl. After all, an inch forward is still forward.  In talking to my friend Helen, who always, always  has the word upon the wheel, she mentioned Elisabeth Elliot's  philosophy of "Do the Next Thing".  The corresponding poem which inspired Elliot is beautiful and practical.

At an old English parsonage down by the sea,
there came in the twilight a message to me.

Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven

that, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven.

And all through the hours the quiet words ring,

like a low inspiration, 'Do the next thing.'

Many a questioning, many a fear,

many a doubt hath its quieting here.

Moment by moment, let down from heaven,

time, opportunity, guidance are given.

Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,

trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.

Do it immediately, do it with prayer,

do it reliantly, casting all care.

Do it with reverence, tracing His hand,

who placed it before thee with earnest command.

Stayed on omnipotence, safe 'neath His wing,

leave all resultings, do the next thing.

Looking to Jesus, ever serener,

working or suffering be thy demeanor,

in His dear presence, the rest of His calm,

the light of His countenance, Let this be thy psalm.

Do the next thing."

Yes, I know.... Well, of course!