Eina, it hurts

When i started this blog, i started with some changes in my life, you see all that glitters is not gold. I have a good life, i have two great girls who i love more than life itself, i have a great job, i have loads of absolutely amazing friends who i love dearly, and a sister who is the absolute best ever. Yet here i am on a Saturday all alone, i could have gone out tonight everyone is together and they watched the rugby and had a braai, but some times you just don't want to be the 5th wheel, sometimes, being together with people who are couples is just too much when you know that you just don't have that in your life, and it doesn't matter how much you say you don't mind or how much you convince yourself that it is okay, you can do it on your own, or how many jokes you make to hide your hurt, every now and again, you get those days when you just want someone to hold you, someone to take control, someone who is just there for you, someone to love. On Fridays every week a dear friend and i pray, and this week i prayed that God would take my husband out of my life or change him. Tall order i know, but the clock is tick ticking away and i know that i deserve the best, i know that i am worthy of someone loving me with all their heart i know that i have a lot to offer, i also know that you can never go back, you can never change what has happened, you can never take back what you said, once it is out there, it is out there, and, sorry will never change it, and you can forgive and move on, but deep inside no matter how hard you try, the bricks begin to build up until, you have a ten foot wall around you, that even you cannot see where the sun is.
And i suppose it would be easy to curl up on my bed, and feel sorry for myself, my mother was on anti- depressions pills for years, which i don't think work when you take them with alcohol and i don't think that she knew that, but i WILL NOT because i have my Father in heaven who loves me more than any human can, even with my faults, even with my sins, even with my lack of patience, even with my weaknesses, and he pushes me to carry on, because i know he wants the best for me, and that he will give me what i ask for in his time, and so that is as much feeling sorry for myself i am going to allow for a while.

traffic, traffic, traffic

Today i had the misfortune of having to go into the big bad city, now the trip is 53 km, so in a perfect world, it should take me ............what.......... about 35 minutes..........HA.........HAHA
137 minutes later, i arrived at my destination.
In effect you take one road and then off, the off ramp, turn right and there you are easy peasy as the say on the advert...........Ha. They decided today to make a 4 lane highway 1 lane, yes, 1 lane " obviously some one forgot to take their Rittelin Pill this morning" so i stayed off the highway and went the "scenic" route.
My first adventure was through Germiston town, papers, paper and more papers, rats as big as cats fighting in the streets for some waste matter which i am sure was thrown out of one of the flats above, the people are so poor in Germiston that not a single car has indicators, everytime you are behind someone, they decide that they in fact want to go right, and you have to "patiently" wait for the oncoming traffic to stop, well, that is the idea, but I discovered today that more people in Germiston go through a red robot than green one's..................
Then it was through Primrose up through Fishers Hill, where i had my next revelation, people cannot go around corners on their own side of the road, they constantly go over into the oncoming traffic, and there is lots of horns going, lots of strange finger gestures, and i am sure from the blue smoke coming out of most of the cars a whole lot of swearing going on in there, i however had Josh Groben, so was quite relaxed, I had given myself 2 hours to get to my appointment so the world was good.
Then it was throught the 160 traffic lights in Edenvale, and i was almost back on the highway, I did not realise than when the sign said choose your lane NOW it meant right NOW, so ended up in the wrong lane, and on my way to............. not sure think it was Kempton Park, so no problem i did an illegal U turn, did i say illegal, i meant................ well if the taxis can do it why can't i....... at the next intersection.
Back on the highway and i was there 137 minutes later, the meeting took 1 hour and 15 minutes and i was back on the road.
Everything in reverse........................ and 115 minutes later i was back in the safety of my own office having blessed 256 people on my travels...............

Friends, friends, friends

It is not through wealth and possessions that we are rich, it is through true friends, friends who just know by your hello, that you are down, friends, who just at the right time send an sms to lift your spirits, friends who just help when there is a problem , friends who will meet you for coffee when you need to vent, the love of friends will carry you long after, your worldly possessions are rusted and thrown on the rubbish dumb. Some friends are there for a life time, some friends, to help you through a certain situation, some friends to chat to when you have children doing the same activity, but then there are those special friends, who stand by you no matter what, who could blackmail you if they shared your secrets, but for who you would lay down your life as they would in return, thank you to those people who are already in my life and to those who are still to come into my life. Never desert your friends, for anyone because one day, some time, some place, some where when everyone else has left you behind, you are going to need that friend. THANK YOU TO ALL THOSE SPECIAL PEOPLE IN MY LIFE

The week that was

Wow, i cannot believe that it is a whole week, since i last had time to chat, it was just one of those weeks. Monday was my husbands birthday which was enlightening, last year he would not come to my party because I had invited all my friends, now he invites all my friends to his party, since we weren't exactly talking, i think it was a ploy to get me there..... because he had invited his own two friends, who really work for him, so i am not sure if that even counts as a freind, that being the case, it was a lovely evening, went to a brand new restaurant really nice food, nice people nice ambience. Tuesday to thank us for Monday was back to friends house another late night, nice food, nice people and nice ambience and so the triedness begins to set in............ Wednesday was cell and we are going through the book The Shack, wow, it is amazing what we are learning about ourselves, it is amazing what people are sharing.......... Thursday was Ascension day, and although it is really a serious matter, the service was "horrific" and this word is not used lightly. Our normal minister is way, so we had a Lay Preacher, well he choose three songs that no one knew, he then had a pianist playing that really needed some refresher lessons............. need i say more, but it was the third song that broke the congregations back, forget about the came, while the pianist was on a mission of her own playing something.......... the only one who could sing was the minister, no one else could follow the tune, you would have thought after the first verse, he would have given up, but he soldiered on alone through the second and third and fourth and...................... by this time the congregation, was really breaking up, and short of rolling on the floors were not taking the evening seriously.................... And then we went into the sermon..................... i had promised myself that i would listen really listen, well 10 minutes into the service i was doing my shopping, spending my salary, buying birthday gifts for all the birthdays coming up in the next week, i think i am just to stupid to understand, he did get me back for a few minutes about 5 minutes before the end, when he had an interesting concept of the stage call and the call of God being the same that part i really connected with, and then thank goodness he decided to miss the last song, i learnt later that we had not sung those songs in over 5 years.................
need i say more.................
Friday passed in a blurr and the tiredness of late nights in a row, caught up with me, and then there was Saturday, some time ago a friend and i had, had a brainwave to host a Mother and Daughter tea, the next time i have such an idea i am going to insist on being shot............... any way Saturday was the day, 5 tables between 8 and 10 people on a table, it was great, great message, great food, great company, the table were absolutely amazing, the theme was Shades of pink, so 5 people were host of the tables, you could do anything you wanted to provided it was in a shade of pink, the table were completely different, reflecting the 5 different personalities, but great fun was had by all my feet are still not talking to me, in fact it could be some time before they are friends with me again, i made the cardinal fashion mistake of wearing high heel shoes, not good when you spend 6 hours on your feet..................
Today was a beautiful morning, cool and crisp just like i like it, Church was great, great sermon, by another Lay Preachere, with our minister away, i did the evening service, and i normally have no problem, i knew my message was great, but i just did not connect, more i think because of my frame of mind, you see no matter how much we try to change ourselves, it is really hard, especially when those around you are stuck in a loop, and just repeating past mistakes, repeating past mistakes, repeating past mistakes................. roll on Monday my favourite day of the week, back to work, where i am boss, and people do thinks when i ask once.............. and when they see me stressing, they bring forth pots of tea................. i just love Mondays...............................

Afternoon tea

Today my friend and i took her mother out for the day, the weather was cold and windy, so we needed to go somewhere where we could be inside, so we decided on the coffee shop at the nursery. In our wisdom we decided to use my car, which is a double cab, and so we hit our first snag. Getting her in the car was an engineering master piece, for some reason her body does not work like a normal person, who would put the one side in and the the turn around and bring the other side in the car. She climbed on the foot rest, held on to the roof rack, then put her one side in, followed by the other side, my fear was that when she let go off that roof rack, she would lose her balance and being of somewhat bigger stature would turn me into a pancake, her daughter, my friend............... was already in the car leaving me to do all the work.
Ma then informed us that she was not going to wear her seat belt as it was uncomfortable, no problem i told her the fine was R 1000 and as long as she paid it, she did not have to wear a seat belt, needless to say the seatbelt was put on with some haste.
The drive was nice and chatty Ma likes riding around, when we arrived at the nursery Ma informed us again that she would stay in the car and wait for us, now you need to understand that we were doing this FOR Ma............... well we told her that was not an option, so out of the car she got. And although she would never admit she enjoyed her walk amoungst the flowers, i became her personnel assistance, telling her the names of all the flowers, and the prices of the various flowers, listening to where she has seen them grow, and how one of her friends would not part with some of her bulbs, her daughter, my friend............................... was already in the coffee shop.
The coffee shop had deteriorated some what from the last time i was there, we had to return Ma's tea 3 times before she got a hot cup, but the food was good, and the company was great, so we had a great lunch.
Ma needed the toilet, and it was about 50 paces off the path we needed to take, it took some convincing that it would be a while before we were home, so eventually she conceded and off to the toilet she went, the cubicles being quite small and Ma being of a bigger stature, proved to be the next problem, Ma and her stick and her handbag could not all fit into the loo at the same time....................... after about 10 minutes, we began to think that she had got stuck in there, and were just about to call the marines, when we heard the flush and we were on our way. It was a really good afternoon................. and again i come back to how important relationships are, they can turn, cold windy days into a memory........................

Blood is thicker than water

Today was an amazing day, the saying you can choose your friends but not your family comes to mind, but i realised today that the saying does not give the whole truth, what the saying does not say, is that no matter what blood is blood.........

No matter what the problem, no matter what the disagreement, when you forgive family it is like getting a part of yourself part, a part that you never knew was missing, until you got it back.

Over the years i have had disagreements with both my sisters, my youngest sister and i did not talk to each other for three years, but the day my Dad died, the past was forgotten, and we were there for each other, we were there for each other through the next 2 years, while we had to look after our Mom, when we had to move her, when we had to put up with her bad tempers and her never ending demands on our time, and eventually her death. But the death of my father gave us something, which we will never take for granted again, it gave us each other.

My sister is not just my sister, she is my friend, by conscience, she is my therapist, she is my pillar of strength, she is my Judge Judy, and my Dr Phil.............................

Thank you Dad....................

Life is about friendship

Hi there, wow what a hectic few days, yesterday was a friend's birthday so we went there for supper, and what really was laid on my heart was what a joyous affair, people coming in and out, it was an almost rotation supper as soon as you had finished your supper you took your plate and made room for the next person who arrived, there was lots of laughter and it really was one of those times that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, that....... it what life is all about it is all about relationships it not about how much you have, what car you drive or how many bedrooms your house has, it is about how many people phone you on your birthday, or how many people just pop in to say hello, life is about how many true friends you have.
Everyone ate far to much they were feeling somewhat bloated and i had read an article about how a teaspoon of honey, with some cinnaman, in some boiling water was good for flatulance (wind), well what a topic that turned out to be.
I regaled a time, when i had flatulated, and it was so bad that my youngest daughter had her head out of the window, gasping for breath, A friend was rolling about holding her stomach obviously because she did not want to lose control of the release valve, she has the same problem, we laughed about how the car becomes a vent vehicle , the minute you are inside and no one else can hear you, and you just have to let "IT" go because youhave been holding it in all day so when you get in the car, it is like an opera with a smell......................
There is a little old lady in our church who not only falls asleep every Sunday, to the extent that she has even been known to fall off the pew, but she also had a problem with her "O" ring but being a wooden pew whenever she lets one slip there is a vibration that runs along the entire length of the pew, have you ever tried looking the minister in the face when he at the most critical part of her service, when you are shaking with laughter.....................
Life is Good

Now i understand

I now understand why i am sometimes exausted when i get home in the evenings, today in training we did personality studies, and i can officially confirm that i am the only normal person in my office.
Everyone of my staff members are highly emotional which means that i have to me the mother figure and sort out all there problems or they cannot cope, 90 percent of my staff fall in the amicable group which means they cannot decide things for themselves so i have to mother them, and 100 % of my staff are to scared to make a decision because they are afraid of the consequences if my boss finds out, so guess what i have to mother them and protect them from this big bad wolf, which in efffect means that i have to think for 13 people no wonder my head hurts. I
In fact my head hurts so much today that i am not sure if my head grew because of all the additional information that it now has, or whether there is so much stuff flying aroung in there at the moment there is just no where to file it..........
That got me thinking i also have to think for my "better" half, as unless it has something to do with cars or himself, he is just not interested........
I also have to think for my house keeper as unless i tell her on a weekly basis to clean underneath chairs, cupboards and beds it just never gets done............
Does that make me a genius i am now officially thinking for 15 people or does it make me a fool................... i think that this is my next area of change, maybe it is time to let everyone start thinking for themselves and to accept the consequences of their decisions, maybe it is time to throw all my chicks out of the nest to see if they can fly on their own.................................

Training and i have to change again

For the next two days i have training, after over twenty years in credit control my company now decides that we need to learn how to speak to our customers. I am not sure what their perception is of how we do our jobs, but they obvious have not looked at out debtor days and over 90 days in the past 20 years , which incidently are one of the best in the group.
So here i am again the universe is putting me in a place where i have to change.
I can no longer say "may i help you" i must say "can i help you" ?? I can no longer put the phone down on someone who has no manners and is using abusive language, i have to give him three warnings, "Sir i am going to put the phone down if you are rude" then " Sir i cannot continue to listen to such bad language" and finally " Sir i am now putting down the phone"................ Why are people always trying to make something that is simple into something that is so complicated, i am convinced it is because there friends have training companies and they want to give them business.
After two full days of training i am going to receive a certificate and 3 points, 3 whole points towards a qualification, the minimum points required for any qualification is 120, at this rate i will be 100 before i qualify.....................
This change is really becoming all encompassing, first my marraige now, my job at ALMOST
50 is there anything that i am doing right................

Mothers day 2009

In line with my new found need to change myself, the sermon at church this morning was all about change, so i know that i am on the right path, and am trying to do things differently, although i really wish that the service had been the required 1 hour and not 2 hours it played havoc with a lot of Mothers breakfasts.
Well today was Mothers day.......... for once i did not give my my youngest daughter any money to buy me a present, so she forgot that it was Mothers day this was after i was up at the crack of dawn and had made her tea in bed, she had to be reminded by a friend of mine who phoned early this morning to see if we wanted to join them for lunch.
My oldest daughter who is getting married in December had some "financial constraits" so she phoned to say she would pop in later. Which she did, i invited her for lunch, she continued with what has become a tradition she always buys me two new mugs for Mothers day, years ago i decided i did not want six mugs the same, i have two the same and have a collection of about 40 mugs i never get tired of using the same mug, and choose one each time depending on my mood, the cat cup when i want to snuggle up with a book, the flower cup when i am feeling happy and light, the spotty cup when i am in a hurry and the plain white one when i cannot decide, the square one when i want to annoy people they are just so hard to drink from, i could go on and on and again i transgress, having two of each cup i am able to throw them away as soon as one chips or gets old, because i only have two of a mug........ I am not sure why but it makes sense to me.
My husband is still not talking to me since the "doggy do" of yesterday. So it has been a day filled with peace and quiet no requests at all to fetch and carry for him. No making me phone to book a place at a restaurant, no moaning about the cost of eating out, no moaning about the service, the noise of the people...... what heaven.
This was the best Mothers day ever, I sat and read, watched some TV and then for lunch i tried out a recipe that i had been dying to try out for ages because i wanted to................ I did just want I wanted to and that must have been a first for Mothers day, it certainly was a different mothers day .............
Thank you girls for the best Mothers day ever i love you lots and lots.............

Men are clams, Woman are crowbars

A friend of mine was at the book shop the other day, and bought a book called, Men are clams, Woman are crowbars written by David Clarke, a few days into the book she decided that i also needed to read the book, in line with the knowledge that i had shared with her, that i was on a mission to change myself and in so doing MAYBE is some small way after 30 years of marraige i might in some SMALL miniscular way change my husband, so on Wednesday evening I started the book.
Well today i can confess that i wish i had a crowbar and i wish my husband was a clam.
It started yesterday evening for some reason only know to himself, he got a bee in his bonnet and then his mood got progressively worse as the weekend progressed.
I think the fact that he had stood a few times in the waste product of our labrador Levy had quite a lot to do with it, but icannot be 100 % sure just yet.
It is the task of my youngest daughter to remove this waste product from the yard, but at 16 she is far too busy looking at herself in the mirror, changing her clothes, and conversing in some foreign language that i still hope to be able to understand one day, she assures me that it is English, but with words like sharp, lets bounce and sshweet in the conversation it is completely unintelligible, when she is not on the phone she a spends the rest of her days thinking of new ways to drive me, her father and her sister into the mental assylum, I am sure that she is after the inheritance, so that she can continue to sleep late, and keep herself busy doing nothing for the rest of her life, anyway that is another story back to the waste product............
On my way to a meeting this afternoon, my husbands parting words, were far from words of endearment or words of longing for me in my absence his words were, that if he get any more dog "doing" on his shoe he is going to clean it off on my daughters bed.
I have to admit it was with some trepedation that i returned home this evening, in fact i put it off for as long as i could, having still not secured myself a crowbar.......
My husband had left the gate open hoping i am sure that Levy our dog would run away, but Levy was to smart for that, he just waited around the corner for me to come home, and my daughters room ......... looked like hurricane Katrina had gone through it, but had no foreign smearings anyway, and I kept my cool, and said nothing, this changing myself is really going to be much more difficult than i thought................

Mothers day scrapbooking

I am not someone who likes their photo taken, it is not that i am REALLY ugly and would break the camera, but i am just not photogenic, both my daughters are so don't understand my dislike, they love having their photo's taken. Last Sunday my eldest daughter asked be to do a "photo shoot" as she needed photographs for a scrap booking page she needed to do, my gut reaction was to say no........ but in line of my promise to change myself I agreed.
Well she decided to drag me off into a field just down the road from home, she wanted a natural setting, the fact that we had to illegally tresspass on a farmers private lands did nothing for my confidence on to my being able to relax, as the whole time I was waiting to be attacked by vicious dogs, or shot at by an irate farmer. After about 50 photo's my "beloved" daughter wanted me to climb up a big grass bail, her fiance tried to give me a leg up, that left me suspended on the grass bail hanging on for dear life. When that did not work i went to a smaller bail at the end of the row, and proceeded to balance myself like a tight rope walker over a few bails until i was on the bail where the sun and the shadows were just right and the view was of the hills behind, after I had degrassed my arms, hair and knees, the photoshoot began again. As luck would have it my husband had followed us on his old Royal Enfield motor bike, as is usual with my husbands second hand "bargains" it started to give trouble, so he arrived with his hitler helmet on, "putting" along at 5 km per hour, he then proceeds to "fix " his bike by beating it to death with a piece of wood, compliments of the farmer.
Well we took about 150 photo's of which about 10 were usable. I am either looking irrated full of grass, laughing at my husband, or guiltily glancing around waiting for the consequences of our "illegal" actions. But i had fun even though it took hours to get the grass shards out of my "but", from slipping down the grass bail, change might not be so bad after all.

Change Yourself First

Recently a very dear friend of mine put a comment at the end of her email, it read " Imagine how hard it is to change things in yourself, how do you expect to change things in others". This really spoke to me, so i printed the email and stuck it onto the bottom of my computer. A few weeks later when i had read the verse a million times, i knew it off by heart. Someone who i am not really close to, but who was going through a very difficult stage i her life ended up in my office, to ask my advise about her husband, and after lots of tears, i gave her the verse and it made such a big impact in her life, she and her husband are happier than they have ever been.............

Then a very special lady asked me to be her prayer partner, as she wanted to pray through the book, The Power of the Praying Wife, and the first words in the book that really hit me in the book where, "look at changing yourself first and then ask God to change your partner", I knew that God was sending me a message, and so in the 50th year of my life i have decided to look deep inside myself and start to change myself want to join me for the ride...................