Psalm 37

¹Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

²For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

³Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

⁴Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

⁵Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

⁶And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

⁷Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

⁸Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

⁹For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.

¹⁰For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

¹¹But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

¹²The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.

¹³The LORD shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.

¹⁴The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.

¹⁵Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.

¹⁶A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.

¹⁷For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.

¹⁸The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.

¹⁹They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied.

²⁰But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.

²¹The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth.

²²For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.

²³The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.

²⁴Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.

²⁵I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

²⁶He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed.

²⁷Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore.

²⁸For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.

²⁹The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.

³⁰The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment.

³¹The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.

³²The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.

³³The LORD will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.

³⁴Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.

³⁵I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.

³⁶Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.

³⁷Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

³⁸But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.

³⁹But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble.

⁴⁰And the LORD shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.

It is finished!

Well, another one bites the dust! I passed the College Mathematics CLEP this afternoon. Barely. Definitely NO bragging rights with this score, but hey, a pass is a pass. I’m happy. I’d be a bit happier with a better score, but I am glad it’s over.

It was a LOT harder than I was expecting, especially from all the reviews it had received on IC. After 4 or so years of NO math (other than the simple stuff used in scoring games, cooking, and sewing), I guess I shouldn’t have expected it to be easy.

By the way, the chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory is really good. Just FYI.

Another CLEP

College math tomorrow morning at 11:00. I am extremely nervous, so your prayers are even more coveted on this CLEP that they were on the last ones! I was confident that I could pass this one, but I’m not so sure now. Confidence is not, I think, part of my nature.

Also, I am having a little trouble with the folks at Trevecca. Nothing much, but I think I want CLEP to hold my scores until I get more, and the kind people in charge of CLEPs at Trevecca think I should go on and send my scores to TESC. Last time I let them talk me into sending the scores on; I think I’m not going to let them do that to me tomorrow… I hope.

A rather amusing aside to all this: I had my very first testing nightmare last night. I dreamed that I failed College Math with a 41, 11% of that on factorials. All I could think during the dream was “why factorials??? Why couldn’t I fail because of something more respectable like logarithms?!” Well, needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well last night; I’m praying for a better night’s rest tonight.

A few things of interest

1. We stopped by Krispy Kreme again on the way home last night. The lady “went on and made it a complete dozen.” Which means that she gave us 4 free doughnuts.

2. Claire’s Jersey heifer calf, Macushla, is small enough to get inside the hay ring we have in the Jerseys’ pasture. Unfortunately, she is also large enough now to get stuck in there… Ah, farm life.

3. I applied a new theme, and added a poll on my side bar. Lemme know whatcha think!

4. We watched “Night at the Museum 2″ Saturday evening. I really liked it! I think it was possibly better than the first one, but, because it’s been so long since I’ve seen the first one, I can’t really say that with any certainty.

5. I feel like I’m pretty much as ready as I’m going to get for the College Mathematics CLEP. Hopefully, I’ll schedule it tomorrow for Wednesday morning. Again, your prayers would be appreciated. Along those lines, I haven’t received my transcript, or whatever it’s called, from my English Composition with Essay yet. I know it’s early still, but I am very eager to know how I did!

6. I really only did this post to push that mouth-watering post I did the other day further down. I was constantly craving doughnuts!!! … Well, even more than usual anyway.

7. Here are a few pictures from our snow! Thankfully it’s melting now; I was getting tired of waking up to “a blanket of white.” Blanket? Yeah, sure. Bleh. You people who reside in the North, I feel genuinely sorry for you; I wouldn’t change places with you for… well, not anything, but it would take a LOT.

Luke obviously thinks that snowball fights are really the only thing that makes going out into the freezing cold worth it.

Apparently, I’m not against a good snowball fight every now and then either. I liked how Luke and I are not even paying attention as yet another snowball flies by me.

THAT was fun!

Told ya.

Then there was the added amusement of trying to solidly hit the person riding with a large snowball.

With that, I’m done. Hopefully, that’ll be the last of the snow we see. Other than watching it come down and the few hours of play what is there in it that is at all enjoyable? I, for one, am looking forward to spring, allergies and all!

Our latest and greatest coupon success story

Krispy Kreme. Get used to those words; if you make it through this post, you’ll be seeing them a lot!

Well, you see, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, they’re awesome, and many of the folks the franchise employs are magnificent! Yes, we had another unusually remarkable and wonderful experience with them today. In short, we got paid to eat doughnuts; I can go for that.

I don’t remember if I told y’all about our last awesome experience with them or not, but that’s for another time… Maybe.

^Oh! Isn’t that one of the loveliest sights?!^

This experience came, no doubt, at the expense of some poorly-trained soul who didn’t know that she really wasn’t supposed to give out packs of coupons to customers who were only redeeming a few coupons! Yep. With a stack of nearly-expired coupons, we drove through a Krispy Kreme store… before heading to the dentist. Uh, yeah. Anyway, the lady who handed us our free doughnuts asked if we wanted more coupons. After a slight pause, we got over our momentary astonishment and heartily replied in the affirmative. She handed us FOUR PACKS of Valentine’s Day coupons! Get that: 48 coupons!!! So, what began as an effort to use up our Christmas Krispy Kreme gift tags (exp. 1-31-10), ended up being a quest for more free doughnuts. When Mama finished up at the dentist, we drove through a different Krispy Kreme and got 5 more free doughnuts, but no more coupons. That’s okay though, we still had… ummm 45, I think. Notice I said “had,” as we were on the way home we stopped by two Krispy Kreme stores and got, in total, 10 more free doughnuts (Mama was looking ahead to breakfast tomorrow. FRIED DOUGHNUTS!!!). No more coupons, but we’ve still got 35 to use up before March 15!

So, today we got 19 heavenly doughnuts and didn’t pay at cent for any of them, and we were, essentially, even paid for some of them! Now that’s what I call smart shopping!

Now for all of you who are just dying to tell me what all a single Krispy Kreme doughnut has in it and all the harm that it will do me, I’ll listen, but I’m warning you, you won’t get anywhere. Sure I know they’re “little golden rings of death,” but I really don’t care. Besides, I’m convinced that hot Krispy Kreme, original glaze doughnuts will be growing on trees in Heaven, year round, if time exists there. (Please no theological debate about Heaven here! Thank you!) The doughnut trees will be right along side the bacon trees and the chocolate trees.

Another link

I was, once again, feeling slightly discouraged and restless last night. I couldn’t exactly figure out why, but I decided to take a look at some YLCF posts. I’ll be honest here and say that I was really hoping the articles I read would help me fall asleep. I came across an article that helped me define part of my discouragement and ease a bit of my restlessness. So, I thought I’d share it here with y’all: Afraid of the Dark.

I had a big, long thing typed out here that was sort of my version of that article, but I decided it was a bit more that I really wanted to put out there right now. Suffice it to say, I very much relate to that article, and I am learning (granted, I am learning it very slowly, but learning it nonetheless.) to pray, wait for the Lord’s perfect timing, and be content. That contentment thing ain’t easy.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
~~~ 1 Timothy 6:6-8 ~~~

Portfolios, anyone?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get out of some of the science CLEPs. Science is SO not my forte. So I’ve been looking into creating a portfolio out of all the forestry material I have. I believe I may have mentioned a couple times that I was on my 4-H’s forestry team for a couple years. Overall, I really enjoyed my time there, and I have a TON of material from it. Therefore, I am looking for ways to earn some credit from it. A portfolio seems to be the best way to go, but, unfortunately, I have no experience in putting a portfolio together. That’s not going to keep me from giving it a try though. Hopefully I’ll start working on that after I finish the College Math CLEP… still struggling with polynomials…

Anyone have any experience in putting portfolios together? Got any advice?

As sort of an aside to that, I’ve been thinking of putting all my forestry stuff together into a type of curriculum, probably catered to middle school aged kids, though not necessarily. What do y’all think of that? Would you spend money for a set of leaf flashcards with descriptions and i.d. tips on the back (or whatever)? Or would an ad-supported website be better? Just curious. I think I’d focus on the leaf i.d. aspect of it, not so much the insect i.d. and site evaluation stuff, just because it would be easier, I think. Anyway, let me know what y’all think!

Studying

For the College Math CLEP. Ick.

I finally grasped the concepts of Venn diagrams, some functions, absolutes, and the lovely little bits of basic math like my little 7yo brother is doing, but I’m struggling with polynomials right now. Ugh. I SOOOOOO do not like diagrams! Math ones anyway; I actually found some of the sentence diagrams helpful occasionally.

I’m hoping to take this CLEP fairly soon, but I’m not sure how long it will take me to understand all this stuff. I’ve read on the InstantCert forum that IC really over-prepares you for this math test, and I sincerely hope that’s true. I have my doubts though, but I suppose it’s not a bad thing to learn about anyway.

Okay. Done complaining! Since I’m going to be using the computer extensively during this period in my life, I now have my very own laptop! I asked Daddy to find a good one for me since I know next to nothing about that world. It arrived yesterday, and, so far, I am very pleased with it!

Life aside from CLEP prep? Uh, my chores need to be done; I’m hoping to catch up on those next week. Well, you see, it was like this… I… never mind. Right, well, I’m trying to immerse myself in math this week, remembering a lot of what I’ve forgotten over the past four or five… or six years, so that next week I won’t have to work so hard at the studying. That’s the plan anyway; don’t know if it’ll work. Theoretically, I should have plenty of time for all my chores next week. Go on. You have my permission to laugh.

I also have a dress cut out that I’d like to have made before the end of the season, but I’m not seeing that happen. I’m sure everything will eventually level out, and life will go on as mundane and normal as it usually does. Every new thing takes some getting used to. Which leads rather nicely into the  only other bit of news I have: Clarabelle’s dried off, and before too long we’re going to take her to a nearby farm where she will, hopefully, get bred. That means that we have the next several months to travel, overnight, whenever we want to, and without having to tote the cow with us! We can even do spur-of-the-moment trips without someone having to stay home, or spend a long day in Nashville without having to rush home! It’s pretty cool. I’m hoping we’ll do at least a little travelling before the end of this sabbatical; that’s one thing about our suburban life I miss. We used to go on some sort of vacation, large or small, every single summer, and it was totally awesome! That’s actually kind of how we met the Lingos, but that’s a long story which I shan’t go into just now.

Passed!… I think.

I passed the Analyzing and Interpreting Literature CLEP with flying colors (if I do say so myself), and I took the English Composition with Essay CLEP. I won’t get my scores for that one for a couple weeks or more unfortunately. I don’t think I did too bad on it, but we’ll see.

A&I Lit was, like Chris said in the comments of my last post, quite subjective, and a good bit harder than I had anticipated. I thought there would be more Shakespeare, but there was, instead, a lot of poetry. I don’t like poetry; it’s much harder to understand that reg’lar ol’ English. And, personally, I think it’s harder to get the overall feel for than Shakespeare. Still, I passed, and I’m happy!

As for the English Comp, I didn’t have too hard a time with it. Some of the answers we a bit obscure, and I had to choose what I thought seemed the best of, for example, two possible answers. Being proudly born and raised in the South, I started to wonder whether the creator of the test was from down here or… up there. It might would have been helpful to know on a couple questions. I don’t think I did terrible though.

The essay portion of that test was… interesting. It’s been years since I’ve had to write an essay, better than the first draft anyway, in under an hour. I really like to take my time when I write, and make what I’m saying as clear as possible. Y’all might not be able to tell if you’ve only read my blog, but when I’m writing something that I consider important or that I have been assigned to write, I generally go through, oh, four or five drafts… AT LEAST! Again, I don’t think I did absolutely terrible on the essay, but it wasn’t great. I didn’t necessarily believe in the subject I had to write about either. For me, that makes writing a convincing argument much more difficult.

Well, I wanted to give y’all an update, and send out a big, huge THANK YOU to all of you who prayed for me! Also, thanks to all of y’all who believe in me; it really means a lot to me.

And so begins the long wait… :/

Taking the Plunge

“Okay, I can keep breathing! I’m gonna do fine!”

I keep telling myself these things, but I am unsure of myself. I have not done much formal education for the past 2.5 years or so, and even then it was just little things that I needed to finish before graduating high school. So, now that we’ve decided to actually go on and do CLEPs, I am scared to death! I just scheduled my first CLEP test(s). Lord willing, Monday morning will find me at Trevecca University taking the Analyzing and Interpreting Literature CLEP as well as the English Composition with Essay CLEP.

Prayers for confidence would be much appreciated.

I can do this… I can DO this… I CAN do this… *whimper*