Going Cyberless - Vacation time!

Edited to add (Thursday afternoon): please pray. Due to the NHS sending me a further delayed appointment for Wonderboy to be seen at the hospital on the 27th August instead of the 6th of August, I spent 45 mins on the phone speaking to 5 different hospital secretaries and managed to get Wonder boy an emergency appointment for tomorrow at 9.30am. Please pray for a good meeting with the specialist so that we know what we are dealing with here! We are due to go on our holidays on Saturday morning and i don’t know if that is going to be affected, i suppose it just depends on how things go tomorrow. Please please please pray for a good outcome to the appointment. and that we might have a diagnosis, and yes, too….that we have the strength to deal with whatever it is.

I’m going to go on my holidays/vacation early Saturday morning and won’t have time to put up another blog post between now and then as there is so much to be done in preparation, and only me to do it - I will still blog visit and respond to comments and emails as time allows though!

Whether I make it to Wales on Saturday is anybody’s guess since I know how to get on the A500 and I know the way to my destination once i’m into Wales, but I have a dicky,tricky, unpredicatble, Sat Nav that chooses when to speak and when not to and I can’t look at road signs and the road simultanously….just can’t do it….so since I only know the first 10 minutes of my journey and the last 20 minutes of my journey, I might just end up in Scotland by the time Saturday evening rolls around.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks so much for your support in recent days. I’m thinking particularly of your prayers for Steve, my daughters father - those who haven’t read about him already can read about him HERE and see the Youtube video I made in tribute to him HERE. I would especially appreciate your prayers for Steve on the anniversary of his death, on Monday the 21st of July. Many thanks for your kindness.

I would also like to say a BIG thank you to all who commented and sent messages to congratulate me on my 4 Year Blogging Anniversary…see my 4th Anniversary post HERE. The post kind of turned into the story of my conversion to Catholicism, but that’s okay with me if it’s okay with you :-)

Rightio, all that’s left to say is please keep my son, Wonderboy in your prayers, as when we get back home after the holidays, we go to see the specialist about his blood problems almost straight away. I’m really looking forward to us all having a break, Wonderboy will celebrate his 13th birthday while we are away too so that should be a lot of fun.

I likely won’t have internet access while away and though I did think about putting up some automated posts in my absence, I decided against it…and anyway, I’m sure i’ll have LOTS to share with you on my return home.

I will be thinking of you and remembering you in my prayers.

Be safe, be well, and please pray I find my way to Wales!

P.S. Please pray for Mario who just wrote in one of my comboxes:

“Please pray for me as I too have been saying the Novena to St Martha for about 6 weeks now. I would like to ask you to pray for and with me to get a new job before this month end as the contract has come to an end.

I am real need PLEASE

Mario”

P.P.S I realise that this post is ‘please pray’ this and ‘please pray’ that, but i know you’re a lovely charitable bunch o people, so I know you won’t mind, or at least, I hope you won’t :-)

My 4 Year Bloggaversary & Conversion story.

Today I celebrate 4 years of blogging!

I never thought i’d make it to 4 years since i’ve griped at least every couple of months about my cyber torn attachment to blogging and pondered so much about whether or not to continue with it over the years, and of course i must have carried on with it, because i’m writing this aren’t i?

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is just the way a lot of bloggers are, i’m not unique, at least not in this particular way. I’ve never yet interacted with a blogger who didn’t get the hump with blogging every once in a while.

…and I continue to blog because it’s almost like I just can’t help myself.

So 4 years.

I’ve gained a lot of weight sitting at the computer, and now at my laptop.

Seriously.

I have.

The good (?) thing about having a laptop though is that it allows me the freedom to walk to the fridge with it and not lose a moment of my online time.

I realise that not many of my readers know me in real time and therefore might look at the pic that used to be up top of this page (my Facebook pic) and think that’s what i actually look like everyday. But really, i have gained about 4 stone since I first started blogging, I am a very voluptuous lass and that is why I don’t post anything but head and shoulder shots of myself usually. And even then, they have to be tweaked considerably!

Huh!

Weight gain is one of the side effects of blogging?

Who knew?

All we bloggers, but we still can’t help ourselves.

Somebody pass the peanut M & M’s.

NOW!

So why did I ever start blogging you may ask? (humour me, i wanna talk about this)

Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll…….

….in 2000 or 2001 I first went online.

In those days I thought AOL was great and good and honourable…and reliable….and hey I happen to LOVE ‘You’ve Got Mail‘ and digged the american voice that would tell me that I too had mail, everytime I went online. (and i was gutted when no one sent me mail and i felt deeply unaffirmed ;-)

I had moved to my current home with the children, shortly after the irrepairable break down of my marriage (now annulled) and once I had moved, for the first time in years I started to have a say in what I did, where I went, how I lived my life.

Really. You don’t want to know how bad things were, really you don’t.

(once you get me started I might never stop)

I began to attend the Church of England Church nearby, becoming great friends with the vicar’s wife, and our children got along with one another equally well, and even further links were forged when our children went to school together.

I had always had an interest in Religion, and as I became more and more interested in it, I went online a lot and began to read up on church history….I also digged out an old New Testament I had been given many years before, and I soon realised that far from baptism being an option, it was a necessity.

(my ex husband, a non practicing Catholic… had assured me baptism wasn’t necessary and that a baptism celebration would be an unecessary drain on our finances).

Thinking myself already baptised (that’s a whole other story)….I had my children baptised soon after we moved here.

For a couple of years then we attended the C of E Church nearby, but the children didn’t really connnect with it and neither did I. We would go one week and not the next, our attendance was sporadic and though the intention to practice the Christian Faith was there, I really couldn’t reconcile a lot of what i was learning, with the church I was attending.

The fact is, that once the spark of interest in faith issues had begun, I was spending hours online every day researching more and more about Christianity and particularly, its roots….after a couple of years I felt that I could no longer continue to receive communion in the Church of England (they’d never even prepared me to receive ‘communion’ it was just something people were encouraged to do and I was certainly never discouraged from it).

You could say then, that God used the internet to reach out to me and to bring me to the fullness of faith in the Catholic Church.

So no matter how many wierdos I ever encounter online (and I am convinced there are a plethora of them) I earnestly believe that internet interaction is a hugely valuable resource….because it certainly proved to be such in my own case.

At this point then, via my internet reading I knew a bit about a lot of stuff pertaining to Catholicism, but I had no one to discuss it with. I didn’t know any Catholics and I felt I couldn’t really discuss all this with my friend, the vicar’s wife as her hubbie was a minister in the Church of England after all!

(I did eventually talk about it with her, though perhaps I was a little too enthusiastic in inviting her to attend Mass with me?… and she was genuinely happy for me to be following the path that I felt God was calling me to walk along.)

I was almost prepare to leave the C of E church behind, but I still needed some convincing before I took that step of Faith…I neeeded to know so much more ….I needed to know that this was really God calling me to the Catholic Church…I needed to know that I could fully accept all that the Catholic Church teaches…..because it wasn’t just about me anymore, I would quite possibly be bringing my two children (then aged 7 and 11…is that the name of a store in America?) with me…if they chose to come over to Rome too.

But who could I discuss this with?

I didn’t know any Catholics and I didn’t want to set foot in a Catholic Church until I knew for sure that was what I was being called to do….I’m such a romanticist you see, that I suspected I might just fall in love with the Mass if I attended one and I didn’t want a romantic faith….I didn’t want a faith built on sentiment, but rather Faith and Fact.

It was around that time in 2002 that I discovered online Catholic Forums.

I began enquiring about conversion by tentatively dipping my toe in the water of a ‘thread’ or two and before I knew it I was asking how a person could become Catholic!

I received a huge amount of support and encouragement and it was absolutely fabulous that I could at last discuss Faith issues freely and also that there was such a wealth of knowledge available to me by so many devout and well informed Catholics and I will be forever grateful for their pointing me in the direction of encyclical after encyclical, apologetics website after apologetics website…I also spent a fortune on books from Amazon.

One of my best ever purchases in those early days, being Scott Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home. (I gave it to both my parents to read after my conversion and they both converted too, so it can’t be that bad a read can it!)

I was almost certain at that point that God was calling me to the Catholic Church, but I was concerned particularly with my CULT history (you can read about that in the following posts 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) that this was just another thing I was ‘latching’ on to. I was anxious that I might be jumping on yet another faith trail that may lead to heartache and confusion….that it wasn’t something God was leading me to at all.

I would cry and pray an cry and pray and then one particular Sunday morning when we we were about to go to the C of E service and my children were ‘kicking off’ about not wanting to go….I went upstairs and knelt by my bed and tearfully, and somewhat angrily said,

“God, you have GOT to let me know where you want me… I will follow you wherever you lead….but you have to show me how to take those first steps towards you….I have to know that YOU are guiding me in this.

I am going to the C of E service now and you’re going to have to let me know if you want me to be somewhere else. I’m so confused, the kid’s are confused too…you’re just not being fair…I want to receive the REAL JESUS in communion….why do you have me learning all this stuff about the Catholic Church if you won’t let me know loud and clear that it’s where you want me to be?

Show me where you are, show me where you want me!!!”.

Or something along those lines.

And so we went to the C of E service that day and when we got home I knew that in good conscience, we could never go back there again.

It began to ‘feel right’ that I was making the decision to leave the C of E Church behind. And soon I started to be strongly of the belief that it was the right time to start thinking about going to my first ever Mass.

I went with my daughter to the Catholic Church in the City Centre one Sunday.

It happened to be the very church where my Mum, a non Catholic, had gone to watch her friends being confirmed when they were little girls. When I had talked to her about thinking of becoming Catholic, she spoke of its great beauty with such unreserved sentiment that I felt a pull toward it myself.

But truth be told, I had previously gone to a different Church on the Saturday evening before that, but as we had not known the Mass times we had turned up too late for Mass and the gates were locked!

I like to think it was meant to be that we ended up at Sacred Heart Catholic Church…and although it isn’t necessarily the church in which I will always worship, it will certainly always have a very dear place in my heart and I will forever consider it my ‘home’ parish, because I knew the moment I walked into the Church for the very first time,the moment that I met Canon David Goodwin and his homily spoke to me so greatly… that I had indeed, come ‘home’.

And so it was, that when I finally became Catholic after an all too long (to me!) course of RCIA instruction…. like most enthusiastic, newly converted Catholics, I wanted to share my journey with others.

I did this verbally with friends and family and even with complete strangers…. I couldn’t help myself….but it also seemed a natural progression for me to want to share the Good News of my conversion in a medium that had fascilitated my own journey to discovering the Church that Christ founded.

In cyberspace.

I won’t go on and on about that here, because you can read more about mine and my children’s conversion and reception into the Catholic Church here and here…and how a couple of years later my Mum became Catholic and a year after that my Dad became Catholic.

But basically, my blogging all started out pretty much being just me and a couple of my fellow forumites commenting on one anothers blogs. (those comments didn’t transfer from my original blogging platform to the next one I blogged with, which was blogger).

And then it all changed.

It had all pretty much been just me spouting forth to an almost empty echo chamber until I began to get comments from people I didn’t know.

What a buzz that was!

Real people who didn’t know me, interested in me, interested in what I was saying!

Well, i’ve discovered many things since i’ve been blogging these 4 years….one of which is that there are as many different personalities as their are blog templates in the blogging world, but with a lot of time and more than a little inclination you can ‘read’ a person in cyberspace just as surely a you can ‘read’ a person of your real time acquaintance.

I’ve discovered that very real ‘friendships’ can ensue from not only a commonality of shared belief (though we don’t all share the same faith or indeed, any faith) but an enjoyment of learning about one another, our families and experiences.

And not that I’ve ever really cared much for the opinions of others if they differ to my own, but it’s no longer thought of as ’sad’ to establish friendships via the internet, because most people nowadays realise that it doesn’t infer an ineptitude or inablity to make ‘real life friends’.

Cyberspace just affords us all another means of making friends.

And about ‘real life friends’….what does that mean anyway!

Thanks to a wealth of exposure to ‘real life’ friendships in which bitching and backstabbing have often been the ‘norm’, I have become, ove the years, incredibly selective about who I spend my time with, when I have a choice to do so.

If I felt so inclined I could have scarcely an hour to myself on any given day of the week if I wanted, but i’m more able than ever to see that gossipy fake friendships turns me into someone i’m not very proud of being.

Truth be told then, I have relatively few ‘real time friends’. Lots of mates, lots of acquaintances, but friends I can rely on?

I could count them on less than two fingers.

I’m intensely private despite the blogging (believe it or not) and I suppose that bloggin’ friendships do largely fulfil my desire for friendship and communication but yet also that of my need for privacy. (I don’t have to leave the house and no you can’t share my vanilla slice).

Having said that, I’m not anti-scocial…i’m just selective about who I socialise with.

I used to think there was something wrong with me for not having accumulated a vast wealth of friends over the 40 years I’ve been here on earth (largely because i listened to people who have that opinion themselves) but I think it’s an awfully naive person who believes that the measure of an individual can be ascertained by how many ‘friends’ attend their funeral service….or of how many friends they have on Facebook, come to that.

So I would summarise this little ‘friend & blogging analysis’ by saying that you, my dear readers, are in fact very real friends to me indeed (you might want to pinch yourself just to make sure!).

You’re as much a part of my life as any other of my friends.

And while i’m in sentimental mood I would like to say that it might have been a zealous enthusiam to profess the faith that bought me to the blogging world, but it is the sharing of our lives with one another that keeps me blogging.

We bloggers offer prayers and support to one another in a way that some of our ‘everyday’ friends aren’t even ‘there’ for us. We know and care about one another’s health and wellbeing, faith and families…. and through all the letters, the emails, the facebook thang, the real life meet ups that may take place behind the scenes, we are connected in a way that sometimes leaves those so-called ‘real life’ friendships to be discerned to be only as shallow as a petre dish.

So no, I don’t happen to think it’s sad at all to count you as my very real friends, and I thank you….on this my 4th Year Anniversary of blogging, for sharing this journey of mine, and for allowing me to be a part of your journey through life also.

Home Improvements

Believe it or not, enquiring minds want to know (via email and comments) what’s happening with the improvements that were being made to the kitchen and bathroom.

There have been lots of blunders by the workmen, lots of inconveniences too like them not showing up at all on days when I was expecting them and them turning up on days when I wasn’t expecting them. But an intolerable amount of swearing later (theirs out loud and on occassion mine, under my breath) the whole 3 (nearly 4) week venture is at last almost done.

There’s still stuff that’s unfinished. A new back door is going on on Tuesday, a dryer vent has to be put into the wall sometime too so that i don’t have to keep lugging the dryer to the back door when I need to use it

In the above pic it looks like a dry and sunny day but it’s showering periodically here and I have too much to do to keep running in and out every 5 minutes to take it off the line and put it back on!

So we have gone from the kitchen looking like this:

To the new kitchen being fitted and the (almost) end result looking like this…..

Bit of a difference huh?

The rewire on the house was supposed to be done at the same time as all this work but the department responsible for the rewire have not bothered to get back to me on when that will now happen.

I had to have an asbestos check done on the house before they were prepared to start work on the walls of the rooms with the horrid artex I inherited when I moved in here, the asbo check was done 3 weeks ago now and I’m presuming the house doesn’t have an asbestos problem since no one has got back to me with bad results…having said that, no one has got back to me with a start date either so who knows what’ll happen about that.

At least I have the comfort of knowing the whole kitchen has now had new electrics fitted so I have one place to retreat to while the rest of the work is being done on the house….i know the elctricians will have to come in and out of the kitchen as that is where the fuse box is and they need to rewires the downstairs loo that is next to the kitchen, but the bulk of the work will be done elsewhere in the house. Which is a huge relief!

I also had a new bathroom suite fitted during the last few weeks.

It looks sparkling clean and shiny at the moment….you’d never normally get me publishing pics of my bathroom online and that’s the only reason you’re getting a sneaky peek at ‘em now!

I don’t have any ‘before’ pics of the bathroom but take my word for it it’s a one hundred percent improvement on the old bathroom suite.

This last month of having workmen in my home has not been an experience I would want to repeat…..the hassle, the lack of privacy, the huge inconvenience of having to stay home or to arrange for other people to be here when I’ve had to go out has been a nightmare… but I have to say, I am very pleased with the end result.

We may not own this place but while we live here it’s certainly a benefit to our family to be able to make use of these improvements to our home.

I have to tell you though….these workers….

I once had to go outside in my pj’s early in the morning before he workmen came, so I could raid the near-empty paint cans they’d left in the front garden so I could scrape some paint out to paint over all the bits of wall in the kitchen and bathroom that the painter neglected to paint.

As you can see in the pic below…the old loo is still in the garden too….

I suppose it could be handy for passers by who are desperately in need of relieving themselves?

I haven’t been brave enough to lift the lid up.

It’s been there all week, who knows what’s in there now?

Free Apron Patterns and Tutorials!

The fabulously talented Kitchen Madonna is familiar to many of you I know. Not only is she known for her blogging, but also for her making of aprons with a Christian twist.

I never knew there were so many apron lovers out there until I came across KM’s blog and so I thought I’d share a link with you of a site I recently stumbled upon as i thought it might be of interest to apron lovers.

Whilst not wishing to deter people from placing orders with KM, I can appreciate that not everyone who likes to wear aprons, is in a position to order one and the great thing about the free patterns and tutorials is that even an idiot like me could probably make the very basic one featured on the site…i’m especially thinking of the one that can be made out of a pillowcase!

Love it!

Rest in Peace Steve…

In memory of Steve who died on 21st July 1992 when our daughter was 8 months old, I made a Youtube video which contains photo’s of Steve and me and of Primadonna as a baby, shortly before he died. On the site, if you click on where it says (more info) you can read what I wrote about Steve there.

For some reason WordPress doesn’t take well to Youtube Videos so i’m sorry but you’ll have to follow THIS LINK to play my video. (you can leave any comments over there too).

I don’t go away on holiday till next Saturday but wanted to get this posted in advance to check the video works and everything.

I am having a Mass said for Steve on the 21st of July but will be in Wales at the time. It would be appreciated if you would please join with me in prayer that his soul may be at rest.

Thank you.

Colour me stupid

My ex-husband text to ask me if I had a spare 2008 calendar as he has done something to his (I didn’t ask what) and when I couldn’t find one around the house though i’m sure i have at least 2 unused calendars somewhere, I thought an act of charity was called for and decided to print one off the internet for him.

Am I a complete numpty?

He’s an ex for a reason.

Anyway.

In a way I’m glad I did this (not for him) because it gave me the idea of making Calendars as very inexpensive Christmas presents.

Yes, I am already thinking of Christmas and there’s even a post waiting to be put up here about that exact thing actually.

Anyway, in case you want to use this as a frugal Christmas prezzie idea, here are some links.

free printable calendars

more free printable calendar

even more free printable calendars

okay, this is the last one…MORE printable calendars for free!

As money’s too tight to mention I especially like that I can make an early start on these kinds of gifts because the 2009 calendars are already on some, if not all, of the above websites.

There are times when you have to buy X amount of small goodwill presents aren’t there?

For suprise guests or friends and relatives you don’t have much to do with…..you want to give them something but you don’t maybe have a whole lot of money to splash out on them and you wouldn’t really want to anyway! (Let’s be honest here)

I’m sure not everyone I know would be thrilled to bits with a home made calandar but that’s tough really. Because when i get back from my holidays i’m going to be doing some Christmas crafting in what will be left of Summer.

I’m going to craft mine up of course because I njoy crafting, but some of these calendars come with printable images too.

I so like things that are free.

God’s love.

Salvation.

Printable goodies.

Whoopee….doesn’t take much to excite me does it?

Encouragement E-Card

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower”

I took this last summer when we were on our holiday in Wales. We return to Wales next Saturday for our final family holiday of the year. Can’t wait! Click the image to enlarge it and see if you can spot my daughter in the picture!

To send this E-Card please visit my other site - Credo Christian E-Cards

Enjoy!

Books Glorious Books

I’m not sure which i like most.

Books

…or photographs of books.

Hence a post about and including both.

I’m almost ashamed to say that I had forgotten quite how pleasurable it is to while away an hour or two with a good book. I used to be a voracious reader, but reading has taken a back seat for longer than i care to remember and in recent years it has pretty much been the case that i would only read a book cover to cover if i was away on holiday and could wind down completely with a book and a nice cup of cha and not have to worry about the laundry or the school run or the bills or the….oh well, you know how it is, you have the same kind of obligations and responsibilities i’m sure.

At some undefined point in my existance I began to view (my own) book reading as something of a luxury. The irony being, of course, that I spend many an hour online each day and have long since forgotten that there was a time when I self imposed cyber time rules, fully intending to go online only between BIG chores or in the evening when the kids are in bed.

Ha.Ha. Ha.

So anyway, since the workmen started work on the inside of the house 3 weeks ago, I had absolutely no where to go to have any privacy (they even monopolised the bathroom) and since there wasn’t much else to do with my time while i’ve been sharing the confines of my home with the guys from early morning till teatime, I thought i’d crack open a spine or two (just foolin, I know a lot of readers are quite touchy about that kind of thing).

Blogging has been light, so too has blog reading and commenting largely because of the intermittent electrical supply and the router forever going on and off, so really there was only one thing left for me to do.

Read.

I soon discovered that once i started I just couldn’t stop.

Sometimes i would read a book within 24 hours.

(I think this has something to do with why I gave up reading actually… it’s all encompassing and very time consuming (providing one reads a good book)

During the last few weeks, some of the books i’ve enjoyed reading are…

Northanger Abbey -actually, I thought this whole novel tedious from start to finish.

Persuasion - captivating, enchanting and all those other nice flowery words that evoke beauty and passion.

Enduring Love - my daughter recommended this to me. Considering she is 16 I was a bit embarrassed to find she’d read something that had a fair few explicit sex references, but once i’d got over that, and the uneccessarily ‘wordy’ first chapter, I was pretty much absorbed in it…between, intermittently thinking it as completely bizzarre and toying with leaving it unfinished.

The Warden - actually I read an ancient version of this made for WWII readers. A delightful little book and story, Trollope’s first in the series of Barchester novels he wrote.

And i’m currently reading Jane Austen’s Emma

I’ve really enjoyed all the reading i’ve done in recent weeks and as trawling charity shops and second hand book shops for books, is one of my all time fave pastimes, i’m especially looking forward to getting away in a few weeks and perusing the bookshelves when i’m on my holidays with the kids.

We always bring loads back with us and our car is invariably filled to bursting on our return journey.

I’m especially pleased that reading has allowed me to escape (to some extent) what’s been going on in the house in recent weeks….even when the workmen have been working in the same room.

While I wouldn’t want to go through this house invasion again (though the work isn’t finished yet …and someday soon the rewiring will have to be done - hopefuly not for another month or two though!), I’m delighted that my passion for reading has been ignited once more.

If there’s one thing I hate

Edited to add: I chose to remove the visible stat meters on the blog. I still have the private one that automatically is installed in the wordpress template, but it gives so little info i tend not to look at it very often, so all in all i think this is a fairly healthy decision to make :-)

t’s when bloggers blog about their Stats.

So I feel a right tool mentioning my stats now, but I’ve had a real problem with my statcounter ever since I changed my blog template.

For example, my private WordPress Stats that are not available for public viewing, tell me that so far today I’ve had the following amount of visitors

But the public Statmeters at the bottom of the page with external codes are not properly recording visits and in fact they havent been recorded accurately ever since the template change.

I took the following picture of the days stat recording at the same time as the ‘accurate’ one pictured above….

..but as you can see, there is quite a significant difference between them.

Anyone know how to rectify this problem, or have you maybe experienced similar problems after changing templates on WordPress?

I really don’t want to change back to the old template again so maybe I should bite the bullet and have no visible sign on the blog of how many visits my blog gets each day?

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing anyway.

A bit of blog humility.

I can still read the private WordPress Stats in my dashboard area afterall.

Any thoughts?

Prayer Requests in the combox

From Jadown:

“please pray for my business,which is very defected because of unseen powers or evil spirits,i am a rice exporter and my every deal fails due to no any reason.so please remember me in your special prayers.i realy need your prayers.
Thanks”

From Maria:

Widow problems what facing
Stress
Jobless
lonliness
Finance
My Son Job, Promotion, Health Stress what he is going through
Brother who is missing for so many years
Sandra Problems
Thanks and God Bless and keep us in prayers for my Brother and Sisters and the whole world at all times.

From Janet, who just wrote in the combox :

“My 28-year old cousin died in his sleep after surgery on his legs on Monday. It is not at all clear yet what happened. He had been awake post-surgery and speaking with his family, and ate some dinner. At midnight, the nurse gave him a light snack. At 3 am he was found dead.

Please pray for peace for my aunt and uncle (his parents), for his fiance, and for his two brothers.”

Please pray.

Ayd’s in a box

I was reading Rosemary’s post this morning and thinking to myself how wonderful it would be if some real life Willy Wonka invented a ‘weight loss’ fudge.

Then i remembered.

In the 1970′ and 80’s weight loss fudge really did exist.

With the benefit of hindsight however, the company may have done better to have called it something other than ‘Ayds’ in a box.

At a time when tombestone AIDS and safe sex avertisements were scaring us all out of our wits (especially those of us who were more than a little promiscuous at the time…pre conversion and all that) I’m sure the product could have been more apealingly presented and more profitably sold if only the company had changed the darned name of it!

(my mind is now running rampant with quips about the ‘benefits of having AYD’s’, but I do not want to be seen to be making fun of such a serious illness, so I will sit on my hands instead).

I was a sad, sick, neurotic tenager and I had zero weight to lose back then, but I was secretly bulimic with a dangerous habit of starving myself for days on end so let’s just say I had some food issues!

(I still do. Only now I am double the weight I was then. Really.)

Back then I would buy a box of Ayds or a pack of ‘diet biscuits’ on days when I would eat, thinking at the time that it was better to eat ‘diet products’ than proper food.

I would eat the recommended meal replacement/tummy filler of one or two pieces or one or two biscuits…but not having recognised at that time that I have an addictive personality (it’s not a copout, it’s true)…..I couldn’t stop myself from having another…..and then another…and before the hour was out i’d have eaten the whole box, the whole pack…because i don’t do anything by halves, me.

Oh what delightful memories!

Who wants those kind of ‘good ole days back?’

Not me for sure!

On my forthoming holiday in Wales I will buy me some fudge and sit my lardy butt on a beach somewhere and think of how much nicer my fudge tastes than those teensy cubes of Ayds I used to munch on in an attempt to stay impossibly thin.

I can hardly wait.

a note about comments

When years ago, I received the blessing of having my blog visited regularly by your thoroughly delightful selves, I endeavoured long and hard to respond to each individual comment that was left here.

Being by nature something of a people pleaser and a worrier, i tend to become rather angst ridden and anal about ridiculous things.

And I worry a whole lot too.

Did I say that already?

Failing to respond to every individual comment has at times thrown me into a kind of mini panic attack.

Would failing to respond alienate or annoy readers?

Would they feel slighted?

See how anal I am?

It’s pathetic.

Bet 90% of you don’t even return to the post to see if i respond to what you write, do you?

I know.

It’s pathetic.

So like a pendulum, i’m swinging the other way at the moment.

Because that’s what i do.

I have no idea why i do it, but i do the pendulum thing with everything.

Perhaps it’s rebellion?

Or confusion?

Anyway, now i’m worrying because I’m not responding to any comments. (Because of this quandry of what to do AND an intemittent electricity supply).

But I have some new committments in my life, life is changing for me and it’s a good thing. It means there is less time for me to be online. And i’m wanting to use my time more to my own benefit and my family’s.

Is that selfish?

Or do people really not expect a reply and so they simply ain’t bovverred?

After 4 years of blogin’ you’d have thunk i had that one nailed wouldn’t you?

I want to post regularly, read other peoples blogs regularly, but i just can’t continue to respond to every comment on my own blog, at least, not regularly.

I’m trying to find a balance.

Because if i don’t, i feel i might walk away from the blog for a while. And I don’t really want to do that.

So this balancing act…

It’s something that I find extremely challenging in every single area of my life.

But for now I’m making a deal with myself in this one thing.

I’m trying to permit myself to respond to blog comments selectively.

Not as in ’some comments are more deserving of responses than others’, but as in ‘ there aren’t enough hours in the day, so you just have to get a grip, Deborah’

Y’know, there are a few posts on this blog with over 150 comments on them and it’s damned hard to even keep up with reading them, let alone to respond to them all.

But i have.

Just about.

Though i am aware that I still need to get back to some people who took things to email (I will get to you eventually, promise).

I probably come across as being a right pompous ass mentioning those comments.

But I’m not bragging.

And despite what it may sound like, I’m not complaining either.

I’m just saying, I READ EVERY COMMENT AND EMAIL and often times i will visit your blogs to respond to what you write here or by way of a reply…. of returning the kind gesture.

And I just hope that is okay with you all from now on.

I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts with me here, so please don’t stop. I’m writing this post as much for me as for you…. I just need to find some perspecive in this area and didn’t want you to get the huff if i fail to respond to individual comments in the combox.

I’d just rather visit your blogs and comment there, because i don’t have th time to do both.

I don’t know if any of that made sense to any one but me!

Anglicans to swim the Tiber in droves?

I have read so much about this lately, but I’m going to be a lone reed here and say, I actually am more than a bit concerned about this.

And i’m going to say something else….why isn’t anyone else more than a bit concerned about this too?

Writing as a former Anglican myself I feel very much that this potential en mass swim to Rome has to be about much more than getting the hump that a majority has voted in favour of female bishops being ordained in the Anglican Church.

So let me get this right.

If the vote wasn’t in favour of female bishops, the Anglicans would be staying put?

Yes?

Thought so.

That to me is a problem y’see.

You either agree with what the Catholic Church teaches or you don’t.

Are Anglicans suddenly going to agree with what the Church teaches, wholly?

All those problems with the Papacy are going to be eradicated are they?

Along with a slew of other ‘grey areas’ to which Anglicans so often fence sit (particularly the pro choice issues).

We can boost our numbers, maybe even our parish finances for a time, but sooner or later, unless there’s a real connection, they are going to disappear from view.

Sometimes i think people just get far too worked up about adding to our church.

Without looking after those who are already its members.

It may sound good that thousands of Anglicans may become Catholic….and yes it would undoubtably be good for those who are genuinely open to learning what the Catholic Church teaches and therupon accepting those same teachings, if they then become Catholic…but how many will blindly follow their Anglican pastors?

How many more are going to be merely disgruntled church goers?

Wrong reasons I tell ya.

Wrong reasons.

Without and Within

If God created us, and I believe that he did, he knows our inmost being. He made us. We were no ‘accident’ regardless of the circumstances in which we were conceived. We have purpose. God created us because he loves us and he expresses his love through all of creation. He expresses his love through us.

The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. (Job 33:4)

If we are God-made, and can see God in all creation outside of ourselves, why oh why, is it so hard to see God within ourselves?

If only we could remember that God doesn’t make rubbish, when we feel like rubbish.

If only we could remember that we bear the very fingerprint of God upon our souls….what could mortal man do to us?

If only.

Weird Stuff

I forgot just how entertaining it could be to spend 5 minutes browsing the searches that lead people to my blog. In the last few days some (possibly very disturbed) people have visited Ukok’s Place by typing the following search words and phrases in their search bar:

1. the youngest high heel girl (I’m thinking perv)
2. old ladies adult content (I’m thinking perv)
3. if in grave sin can i pray during commununion (absolutely pray, but do not receive communion until you’ve seen your confessor at the earliest opportunity and confessed your sin)
4. what july 10th means in scripture (unless i missed something when i read my Bible cover to cover, i would say it means absolutely nothing!)
5. catholic marrying in an anglican church (Don’t do it! And certainly not without a dispensation. But DON’T  do it!)
6. blessings for 50 years of marriage (Oh gosh, how wonderful to be married 50 years - although perhaps the married couple might disagree?)
7. www sex photo from st.therese (plain weird)
8. sex adult watch for you (no thanks, the Nadal v Federer match was about as much excitement as I could take for one day, maybe tomorrow though? Just kidding!)
9. rowan williams eyebrows (they amuse me too! Not least because he’s well known for fence sitting and attempting to be inconspicuous in the area of his faith, though not, it so obviously appears, in the area of his face!)
10. black and white christian (i’ve never seen one, sounds cool….send me a photo)
11. can eucharist be taken before confession (yes, but if you have unconfessed serious sin to confess, you must NOT receive communion before making your confession)
12. “boy prefers boy” (oh dear. Let’s just say, it isn’t the inclination that is in and of itself sinful. But hey, just go and visit Terry at his Abbey Roads blog if you want a slew of reasons not to ‘go’ there.)
13. cupboard sex (well it wasn’t me!  Not even in my pre-conversion days as an office secretary…but i read that Borris Becker did…)
14. husband hooked on facebook (well so am I, but the chances are i don’t know him so you have nothing to worry about)
15. can a catholic receive communion four or (well i don’t know how this was going to finish, but if it was going to finish ‘four or more times a day’, the answer is ‘no’)

I’m surprised that people still surprise me, but they sure do!

Drumroll please…..

I allocated a number to each blogger who entered the handcrafted card competition.

1. Mac McLernon
2. Adrienne
3. LPA
4. Rosemary
5. Rosemary daughter, Liz
6. Maggieclitheroe
7. AutumnRose
8. Barb Szyszkiewicz, sfo
9. Rita
10. Timothy Selig
11. teresa_anawim
12. Jean
13. Sarah
14. Melanie
15. mm
16. John
17. Easter A.
18. Karen
19. thankevann
20. Esther
21. mary
22. Gina
23. Karen H. - gemoftheocean

and then used the Random Number Generator to flip me out a number…..and the winner is… (click to enlarge image)

21. Mary from ‘Stopping 2 ask 4 Directions’ Blog.

Congrats Mary, I will be making your cards this week and sending them out the next… now i just need you to email me your address please (email me at dashere4u AT (replace with @ ) yahoo.co.uk) and then we’re all set.

Thank you to everyone who entered. We’ll hold another competition sometimes soon! Because i would love everyone to get a crack at being a winner I think these competitions will just go on and on and on. Which is fun for you and well, fun for me too since i love crafting! Plus y’know, a few years ago i purchased loads of craft stuff when the craft bug bit me big time and i simply can’t justify buying anymore until I make some room for it. So in a way, these competitions are a necessity ;-)

You’re all

…too kind.  That’s why you didn’t remind me about the card competition isn’t it? Either that or you forgot about it the same as i did! LOL!

Okay.  It’s 10 to midnight now, but tomorrow i will post the name of the person who won the cards….which i will be making this coming week ahead :-)

No More News.

I know i have a rather sensitive nature, and I know that there are good people in the world but I am so distraught to read daily news stories like this that I am seriously thinking about not reading them anymore. A part of me feels i have a moral responsibility to be aware of the mindless slaughter taking place on our streets so that I can count my blessings and pray for the souls of the deceased and for their grieving families..but the other part of me is sick of trying to choke back the tears ever time i read about another shortened life, another mother breaking her heart for her deceased child.

If it was my child that was murdered, my country that was suffering famine, would I want people to know what was going on?

Yes!

And so I watch and I read, but very often i have days and days where I feel my view of the world is tainted and perhaps even distorted by the news, and I actually refrain from keeping up to date with it. Perhaps I am weak, perhaps I am overly sensitive, but I wonder, can I pray for the world without knowing whats going on in the world (many religious do), because every day there are more and more senseless acts of violence and I am becoming more and more despairing of the world.

Is it ever okay to say ‘enough is enough’ and not read/watch the news again? Is it turning a blind eye or is it taking a sensible precaution?

The press are often on the frontline, risking life and limb to bring to the attention of the world the most grievious of human tragedy and disaster….the great charitable endeavours that assist in times of trouble do so because they have their finger on the pulse of the press release….can there really be any justification for turning off the TV and unsubscribing from the internet news service?

And let’s not forget, there’s good news too.

Not much, not enough, but it does exist.

I do believe, that as mad as this might sound, there should be a news channel entirely devoted to reporting

GOOD

BLOODY

NEWS!

What the hell. I can guarantee the tears roll everytime i watch the news. Every time.

I often feel thoroughly depressed afterwards.

So wouldn’t it be good to know we could tune in and watch a news programme where the good that man was doing, the self sacrifice, the humanitarian work, the simple acts of goodwill that are oft overlooked,were reported on?

Oh, if they could only make a programme like that, maybe i could watch the regular news without saying, “Oh God what is the world coming to!”.

Maybe it would redress the balance?

Maybe there wouldn’t be so much criminality, so much aggression in the world?

Who knows?

Wonderboy update

Well, wouldn’t you just know that i can never let a thing lie…

Last week, after the very unsatisfactory phone call in which i protested against Wonderboy being given 15 unauthorised absences, i wrote an exceedingly long email to the school. Today it resulted in a 15 minute telephone conversation with i think, the deputy head of the school, but possibly not.  According to my daughter he is the one who gets things done when no one else can, so i was glad to speak to him. And i’m glad to say that the conversation ended with his informing me that he will quash the abscences that were recorded as unauthorised. Hoorah! That’s one less pressure in a sea of pressures that we have to contend with at the moment.

I am still going ahead and getting the letter from the doctor though, so as to avoid any further such nonsense.

In fact, Wonderboy had an appointment with a new doctor at the local surgery this afternoon. He had just got home from school and we were getting ready to go out of the door when he had a massive nosebleed. He has minor ones almost every day, but these large ones do occur a couple of times a week. We cleaned him up a best we could and headed out to the doctors.  Usually we wait for up to 90 mimutes to be seen, but God had it that we were in the doctors room within 10 minutes of having arrived there.

First off i explained that I have an appalling memory (i think its the daily codeine) and showed him my list. He said it was okay for me to read off it, so i did.

I explained about the school and the pressure Wonderboy is under to go to school when he is ill, the abscences being recorded as unauthorsed etc.  He said ‘no problem’ i will write you a letter and you can collect it tomorrow.

I explained that Wonderboy is chucking up loads of green gunk (sorry if you are eating while reading this) and that i think he may be heading for another chest infection.  The Doctor examined Wonderboy and said that he would prescribe antibiotics before an infection took hold.

I explained that Wonderboy has these strange patches of dark skin behind his ears and on his neck. (he looks like he’s turning into a giraffe!) the Doctor explained that this was a fungal infection and prescribed a cortizone cream.

I explained that Wonderboy’s iron levels being  low ait was affecting him physically (i mentioend various symptoms) he prescribed ‘iron’ syrup, so now i have my own little Iron man in the house!

We had never seen this doctor before and he was amazing.

Now the only thing is that he said that as well as Wonderboy’s low iron level, his raised red blood cell count  etc, his haemaglobin levels are very low and that when we go to see the specialist, the specialist may want a bone marrow sample from Wonderboy so as to try to ascertain what is wrong. He said even with the frequent noseleeds it doesn’t seem right to lose so much haemaglobin.

Wonderboy looked at me in fear when he heard about the bone marrow extraction,  and i winked at him as if to say it’ll be okay, but truth is i have read about this online and from what i’ve read it’s where the doctor goes into the hip bone to take a sample of the marrow while the child is still awake.  I’ve read that this is an extremely painful proceedure for children in most cases/

I was wondering if any of you, dear readers, have any experience of this or if you know anyone who has had this done?

ketch-up!

I’m kind of in denial that i have a blog to maintain at the present.

There’s a lot going on, but even when there isn’t, frankly i feel less and less inclined to blog. I think it’s just a general feeling of being overwhelmed combined with a little bit that i am thinking yet again of withdrawing from the blogosphere for a while and throw into the mix that to be honest life just isn’t that interesting for me right now and i hesitate to write anything here as i doubt it would be very interesting for you to read it!

For example,here’s my blog post…..

i’m sure you’ll find this rivetting:

I can tell you that when a woman has a craving for a bacon and egg toasted sandwich, she will have her way even if she has long since packed up the frying pan and can only find a baking tray to use in its place, and even though the electric is literally hanging on by a thread. (ok, cable)

Now wasn’t that worth visiting for?

Wonderboy is at the doc’s tomorrow, Primadonna is preparing to go on holiday with my parents on Thursday, i have the workmen in maybe all week, maybe none of it, just depends if they have something better to do really.

I have decided that i am going to make a complaint about the foul language the workmen use. I’m probably too chicken to say anything while they are here because i fear that they will do the rest of the work badly if i do so, but certainly at the end of the process when i have to fill in  a ‘form of satisfaction’, i will express my disatisfaction with the disgusting language used. I have heard a veritable dictionary of foul language since the work started and if i don’t use that kind of language in my own house, why should strangers be allowed to do so, especially when my children are in the next room?

Hope you all have a great week!

Getting plastered.

I waited. Nobody came until almost 11am. And that was to tell me that they would not be working today.

Then, just to confuse me, at 2pm they came back and said they might work for an hour or two.

Then they went to sit in their white van for 30 minutes.

They stayed for 1.5 hours when they came back in the house.

I’d been told they would work from early moning until 6pm at night to get the job done if necessary.

They say they are coming back tomorrow, i have told them i have missed a lot of appointments etc with them not coming out yesterday and with waiting in for them today and then their calling unexpectedly to work for a while this afternoon.

I’m not holding my breath, but the supervisor is expecting the kitchen to be plastered for tomorrow evening so hopefully he has some influence over them.

Things with the school are problematic, I have spoken with the education department and explained my case. I stated that i would voluntarily request a letter from the doctor confirming Wonderboy’s health probs. Of course, when i later called the doctors they told me that as Wonderboys doctor is now working in Manchester, a letter can not be written unless Wonderboy sees another doctor. The earliest appointment we can get, though they are aware of the pain he is in etc, is Monday teatime.

I wish there was more time to respond to comments and to blog visit, but i feel at present that there is barely enough time to blog. I hope you’ll understand. I’m doing my best to respond to emails and i know i’m neglecting the blog at the moment too.

Do you ever just feel like absolutely everything is conspiring against you?

Fun Day!

Oh what a jolly time i have had today, my friends!

Waiting in the house for the plasterers to arrive…

9am came and went

so did 10am

so did 11am

I called their supervisor, the one with the unbuttoned shirt and the grey chest hair…

I left a message asking him to call me back

12noon came and went

so did 1pm

and 2pm

Did he call?

Did he heck.

3pm came and went.

I got a call from Wonderboys school…i’d asked his school to contact me as i’d seen his school report last week and was requesting clarification as to why there were ‘unauthorised absences’ listed.

Anyway, basically the secretary informed me this afternoon that i had already been ‘previously advised’ that Wonderboy was unable to have any more absences without a doctors letter.

Umm, nope.

I hadn’t been ‘previously advised’ of any such thing.

And we’re talking about 15 absences that have a question mark hanging over them.

All of which i had called the school to report on the day of each absence.

The secretary informed me that the school are taking the stance that they have previously told me to contact a doctor for a letter if Wonderboy needs to be absent.

I strenuously protested that i had received any such advisement from the school and that they are well aware of Wonderboys health problems and of why he may be absent on any given day.

I asked the secretary to check if a letter had been sent to me as this all sounded very serous…..she said she had no record of a letter being sent home and that anyway, this would have probably been a verbal advisement.

I strenuously protested that this was the case.

I have had no such conversation with any staff member.

She said that Educational Welfare Department will now have to be involved and would contact me about it and that it was ‘really all quite serious’… that i could ‘be seen to have ignored the school’ advising me not to keep Wonderboy off. I explained once again that i have heard nothing of this from the school and that I most certainly WILL keep Wonderboy off if I deem it necessary.

I then contacted my doctor and am waiting to hear if it is possible for them to write to the school on Wonderboy’s behalf to explain that he is waiting to see the specialist and that he does at times feel very unwell, what with his nosebleeds, headaches, hair loss, dizzyness…y’know the very low iron levels…..the raised red blood cell count…there just might be a reason for him being off…

Then i heard back from the workmens supervisor and guess what, the plasterers aren’t coming out today. I would never have guessed that.

Since they weren’t coming out, I called at the chemist for tablets for Wonderboy and when i pulled up outside my door the supervisor appeared on my doorstep.

He promised me the plasterers will be out tomorrow.

Better be!

Oh Happy Days!

Little did i know of the gastranomic delights I would be exposed to since the work on the house meant that almost the entirity of our meals would be heated in the microwave that has now become a as much a fixture in our living room a my nice Masons Ironstone oranamentals previously were.

On our menu this week has been the delectible ‘foam burger’ which are these spongey, microwave in a minute, meat (haha) burgers that you heat in the bun for about 60 seconds and then spend the next 60 minutes trying to chew enough to allow swallowing…followed by a further 60 hours of tasting it (can you say reflux?)…there were also a variety of microwave meals to delight the palate….almost all of which looked inedible once the cardboard sleeve was removed….and oddly, all of which required the same instructions to be followed to cook them to ‘microwave perfection’, whether meat or veggie based.

Pierce film lid a few times, bung in microwave for 3.5 minutes, agitate slightly, bung back in microwave for a further 3.5 minutes and then allow 1 minute for the gloopy concoction to ’settle’.

I swear there was a veritable oil slick floating on the creamy chicken tagliatelle i ate a couple of nights ago….and the spinach and ricotta cannelloni?…..the tubes of pasta both looked and tasted of the plastic dish they arrived in. I have to continue to remind myself that I am fortunate to have food to eat at all, but i suspect that even God is mirthful when he hears me say ‘ Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts…’ come feeding time.

Of course, the washer is out of action too…..so today i loaded the car up with washing and took it to my parents…sadly they couldn’t do it for me as they are on holiday …..but i managed to figure out how to operate their washing machine…the only problem was that the door didn’t want to open after the cycle had finished….i tried for the best part of 45 minutes, before eventually resigning myself to phoning my mother to ask how to get the darn thing open.

So what should have been a 2 hour chore (there, back, washing and drying time) turned into a 4 hour chore (there, back, washing, fiddling with the door, getting hungry and having to go the shop for sandwiches, then drying time) which sadly, hasn’t allowed me any time to catch up with comments and emails or to blog visit today.

And oh yeah, you guys were right about the work affecting the asthma…the dust, the dust, the dust…i can taste it.

It’s certainly making my asthma play up…though Wonderboy’s asthma seems okay at moment as he’s been at school for a big chunk of each day and at his Dad’s a bit too… my chest is much tighter and my breathing more difficult…the plasterer should be in on Monday so hopefully the kitchen installation won’t be too far behind that, (though I have been warned it could be 2 weeks from now)….the house is to be rewired during the next week or two as well…we’re just waiting on the results of the asbestos check that was done on Thursday as the electricians won’t start on the rewire until the house is given the all clear.

Oh and the house is horrid. The novelty of living temporarily in wild domestic abandon, is wearing searingly thin already. How will i get through another 3 weeks of this?

Every room is piled up to almost ceiling height with things that have been moved away from all the socket and light switch points. It’s impossible to have a bath as they are working on the bathroom too.

I know this will all come together eventually, i just know it will, but it’s really slow going.

This is what the kitchen ceiling now looks like….

Anyone want to adopt a nice little Catholic family?

Sanctimonious squabbling

Just a few thoughts before i go to bed….(so i hope they have some semblence of clarity about them).

1). I don’t care which way you cut it , slice it and dice it…I will never accept the skewed viewpoint of those Catholics who propose that it is better or somehow superior to attend a TLM Mass than a reverent and liturgically correct N.O Mass.

I happen to love the N.O Mass.

It is the N.O Mass that I fell in love with when I first took my tentative steps towards embracing Catholicism. I was over at Dave Armstrong’s blog a few days ago and read that he too has some pretty clear thoughts on this, you might want to go over and read them.

2). I will also never accept that recieving Communion in the hand is somehow a lesser means of receiving the Eucharist than receiving Communion on the tongue. I don’t care which way you cut it, slice it and dice that either… I do not receive a lesser Jesus if I receive in the hand. I still receive all of Jesus. Those who receive on the tongue don’t receive more of Jesus.

I have witnessed abuses when Communion has been received both in the hand and on the tongue. I echo the thoughts that Karen shared on this in her recent blog post and found her combox made for particularly interesting reading.

Edited to add.

3). Mantillas!  (Thanks Mum6kids for the reminder!)

And if you should ask “where did this come from, Deb?”

Well, I’d have to say that I’m just so tired of the hierarchical delusion and pomposity that some bloggers seem to be enamoured with. I can’t help but wonder if, particularly in blogging circles, these ‘flashpoint topics’ are really about ‘kicking potential abuse’ to the kerb’, or if they are more about some misplaced sense of superiority; of some Catholics thinking that they are in some way more devout than he rest of us?

Let’s talk about sex (Adult Content, kinda)

O my goodness!

You know how I told you that the workmen were coming in today?

Well actually they should have been in on Monday but it was delayed as there has to be an asbestos check on the house…so some other work is being started as of today. Well, at 8.10am the first guy came and then a slew of others came and went as the day went on; to knock out the old kitchen units, strip the wallpaper off the walls, pull up all the floor tiles etc.

And thanks to all their hard work, the room now looks like this.

and this

and this

…and the living room now looks like this….

yep….i can now just sit on the sofa, press a button and get my dinner out of the microwave….or if i’m feeling particularly nergetic…i can send one of the kids to the fridge at the other end of the living room.

BUT.

As fascinating as this is for you all too read about, i have to tell you about the most embarrassing thing (almost) ever (almost because i have a very good story involving an unexpected visit from an Auntie, a dead sheep and being stranded in the middle of the Scottish countryside for 5 hours).

But i’ll save that for another day.

Today i had to go out and my parents came to house sit while i was gone. They also took Primadonna to school to do her last GCSE exam.

Congrats Primadonna! No more school! College starts in September, but she now has 3 months of doing absolutely the barest minumum of everything!

Anyway.

After i got home, Mum and Dad left and i ventured into the kitchen to find the workmen had gone….and on top of the washing machine was the flask along with the coffee, sugar and tea bags etc that I’d left the workmen, so i didn’t have to keep making drinks for them all day.

Nothing unusual there then….except for when my eyes spotted something strangely familiar and suddenly my jaw hit the floor.

I stood in the middle of the room and said aloud…

‘OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!”

(or something very similar.)

Because those workmen had certainly got more than they had bargained for when they ripped out my kitchen cupboards this afternoon.

Well, y’see, i have this habit of flinging things on top of the wall units to keep them out of the kids reach…when i smoked years ago i would throw my lighters up there…when i was quitting smoking i’d chuck my fags (cigarettes) up there….when i bought the (unbeknownst to me) racy Mills and Boon from the Church Summer Fair….I threw it up there when after reading the first few pages while stirring the spaghetti bolognese…i realised that my cheeks were getting as red as the pasta sauce I was making! I also used to throw up there anything Wonderboy used to use to make loud annoying, repetitive noises….and especially his ‘weapons’…plastic swords, plastic zulu type spit- paper- through- tube thingies etc.

of course, i’d never throw anything up there while Wonderboy was around.

He’s just say things like,

‘Mum, have you seen my plastic real life Action Man power sword that lights up and makes 23,000 different noises’

To which I would reply,

“No, Wonderboy, let me help you look for that”

Or okay, if ‘m honest i would say,

“I’m sure I’ve seen it just the other day……hey, I know where…check upstairs….”

Sometimes he would be lookin’ for days.

tee-hee.

But I should have known better.

Because wouldn’t you just know that I forgot all about eveything I threw up there of mine?

Of course.

So, no, in case you’re wondering why i’m getting this worked up over the Mills and Boon book I tossed up there…it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing. Not by a long shot.

The really embarrassing thing was that some years ago I had wanted to explain the ‘birds and the bees’ to my daughter and so i’d bought a book called ‘Let’s talk about Sex’, thinking it might help me to communicate with her on this ’sensitive’ topic.

It didn’t. Don’t buy it.

After reading only a insy winsy bit of it i knew i couldn’t possibly use this book to teach my children about sex….and anyway… my son came home from primary school aged 5 or 6 and told me he knew all about the choo-choo train going into the tunnel and that it meant…. ‘making babies’….snigger.

I therefore knew it was uneccessary for me to do the sex talk thing.

Of course, I might have to worry when Wonderboy’s older, if his future wife complains that he spends more time trainspotting than with her, but for now I think he knows what he needs to know. Actually, he’s 12 years old and I think he knows far more than he needs to know, that’s for sure.

So anyway, where do you think I threw this book about sex?

I threw it on the flippin’ cupboard….. and I forgot all about it, didn’t I!

Well, St. Anthony must have been chuckling his head near-off this afternoon when what was once gone was found again, in the hands of all those burly workmen!

Groan.

BUT there is more…

There was a photo.

No, this is not a picture of yours truly pictured in a compromising encounter…..in fact, I swear that it does NOT feature myself nor anyone else I know.. though i do have it on good authority that a prostitute inhabited the house before me (there were men’ s names written in lipstick on the walls and ceiling of my bedroom when i moved here….with ticks next to their names…like, they were ‘done with’ if you get my drift) so it could well be a picture of her (I never met her, I don’t know) . And do you KNOW how hard it is to paint over red lipstick on the ceiling?

…but OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOLLLYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHHHHHHHHH…these workmen are going to think i’m a right nympho when they come back to work tomorrow. Especially if they think that the ’she’ in the photo was once a slim version of ‘me’.

I had to stifle a giggle when the workmens supervisor visited me to check on the work the guys had done thus far….he had his shirt unbuttoned almost half way down his chest and I’m sure there was a twinkle in his eye.

(perhaps the news has spread already?)!

OHMYGOSH!!!

Any literature giants out there?

Copyright of Debbie Scalise 2008

Paul posted F. W Faber today and it sparked something in my mind. Many years ago, when I was involved in the cult…(23 years ago to be precise)… I made a little encouragement card for myself, using a coloured pencil, a pen, a scrap of card and a poem that I had come across while having temporarly gone AWOL and had found myself in a hostel (before the Cult sucked me back in again) where I had found amongst the small selection of reading material in my room, a book with a wonderful poem in it.

The fact that there were books in my room should tell you that it was one of the nicer hostels. It had books you didn’t wipe your derriere on…oh dear, perhaps i shouldn’t have said that….i’m sure you don’t want to hear about the hostel i stayed in that i shared with about 9 men (i was the only girl) who used to try to kick and punch my door in when I was in my room alone at night. I used to have to wait for them to go out to collect their ‘dole’ money before i would venture to use the filthy communal toilets we were forced to share. And when I did manage to get in there unnoticed, I would find magazines had been used as toilet tissue, blocking the toilet bowl. It comes to something when you have to carry a roll of loo paper with you to the toilet, but i did actually have to do that….though the darned thing wouldn’t ever flush because the landlord couldn’t have cared less that he was renting me a flee pit to live in with impossible sanitary conditions… the security was so bad that i used to drag the wardrobe over the 8 foot of room space to help secure the door so i could sleep (?) on an infested bed without fear of being attacked by anything bigger than the insects sharing the bed with me.

Oh thank God for a wonderful woman named Mary who had befriended me and took me away from there after seeing the squalor I was living in….she even took me in to her home in Leamington Spa for a few months until I got the room at the hostel, a womens refuge, a safe haven to the down and destitute, to the bizarre and insane, to the utterly fascinating individuals who inhabited it.

So, anyway.

I’m pretty sure, that somewhere in my house I still have this little card I made, but I have searched high and low every time I have thought of it and still have been unable to discover its whereabouts. I recall reciting it to myself over and over again many years ago…y’see, I was extremely depressed at the time and it gave me great comfort to read the two or three verses I had written on the card and to know that my feelings were understood and expressed so eloquently by the author….now the thing is, I have a feeling ‘my poem’ was written by F. W Faber, but I can’t find out anything online despite numerous searches (I could just be typing the wrong thing in the box!).

I seem to recall that the poem contained the following line….

“There was nought in my life half so dark or (and) so vile as the sin and the bondage that fettered my soul”

And then I seem to remember the words ‘guile’ and ’satan’s control’…but no more than that :-(

Of course, i could have the author and the words wrong, but my mind won’t rest until I can recite this once more!

Any ideas on my quandry?

I know you’re a jolly- well - read bunch….so can you help me?

Edited to add:

Autumn Rose saved the day! Hoorah and many thanks!

The chains that have bound me are flung to the wind,
By the mercy of God the poor slave is set free;
And the strong grace of heaven breathes fresh o’er the mind,
Like the bright winds of summer that gladden the sea.

There was nought in God’s world half so dark or so vile
As the sin and bondage that fettered my soul;
There was nought half so base as the malice and guile
Of my own sordid passions, or Satan’s control.

For years I have borne about hell in my breast;
When I thought of my God it was nothing but gloom;
Day brought me no pleasure, night gave me no rest,
There was still the grim shadow of horrible doom.

It seemed as if nothing less likely could be
Than that light should break in on a dungeon so deep;
To create a new world were less hard than to free
The slave from his bondage, the soul from its sleep.

But the Word had gone forth, and said, Let there be light,
And it flashed through my soul like a sharp passing smart;
One look to my Savior, and all the dark night,
Like a dream scarce remembered, was gone from my heart.

I cried out for mercy, and fell on my knees,
And confessed, while my heart with keen sorrow was wrung;
‘Twas the labor of minutes, and years of disease
Fell as fast from my soul as the words from my tongue.

And now, blest be God and the sweet Lord who died!
No deer on the mountain, no bird in the sky,
No bright wave that leaps on the dark bounding tide,
Is a creature so free or so happy as I.

All hail, then, all hail, to the dear Precious Blood,
That hath worked these sweet wonders of mercy in me;
May each day countless numbers throng down to its flood,
And God have His glory, and sinners go free.

Faber’s A Good Confession

It’s because she loves me of course, but…

Ah…chocolate hob nobs!….I saw some in the supermarket the other day and was just about to put a pack in the trolley when my daughter discouraged me from buying them. I tell you what, supermarket shopping with my daughter is like shopping with the grocery police! And do i ever feel like a naughty little girl when she says;

‘No MUM!…let’s put them back on the shelf shall we? ‘

It’s because i’m vastly overweight of course, but hells bells a ruddy chocolate hob nob isn’t going to make that much difference to my size, is it?

So thanks to dear daughter I shall have to have the non chocolate variety with my cuppa tea. Bless her.

The Ten Minute Meme

Many thanks to Esther and to Cathy for the tag.

The Rulez…name 10 People you’d like to spend 10 minutes with:

Well my responses are largely predicatable!

1. Jesus
2. Pope Benedict XVI
3. PJPII
4. Henri Nouwen
5. St. John Vianney
6. Myself as a teen….maybe I could talk some sense into me?
7. Steve
8. G. K. Chesterton
9. St. Bernadette
10. My future intended (if there is one!)

I tag anyone who wants to play along!

Bloggy Giveaway Time!

Well, it’s been a while since I ran a giveaway on the blog, so how about it?

Are you up for it?

I especially wanted to do this now because I am so very appreciative of the encouragement, support and prayers of all my dear blog readers. It sounds cheesy to say that it means more to me than you could know, but it actually does! So i suppose these cheesy sayings have their root in truth eh?

This Bloggy giveaway will be for a small selection  (let’s say 6) of handcrafted cards made my yours truly, they would make a great gift for a friend even if you don’t want to use them yourself. I don’t have a picture to include here because i haven’t made them yet, but if you like the look of the cards in the links below, you’ll have a rough idea of what to expect. If you have won one of my past giveaway’s you may enter again, just put the name of the person you are hoping to win them for, in the combox :-)

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is to leave a comment in the combox of this post. Each comment shall be allocated a number and the winning number will be chosen by random number generator on the closing date of Saturday 28th June, 2 weeks from now.

To see past giveaway posts see:

June 07 (Lorna won)

Christmas 07 (I accidentally deleted the comments to this post, but regulars will recall that Antonia won)

New Year 08 (Renee won, I think!)

Okay, what are you waiting for?

Bamboozled

It seems like i’m whining a helluva lot lately.

I’m sorry about that.

So many things are going wrong in my life at the moment. It feels like everything is completely out of control for the most part and to make matters worse, I’m feeling  utterly gutted that something that looked like it had the potential to put me on the path to turning mine and my childrens lives around, has just been whipped right from under me.

Once again i’m left shellshocked, disappointed and at a loss as to how much longer I have to dig this hole I’m in.

I think I know something of how Job f