It’s 8am Sunday. I’m heading to the beach with Hubby and my dog Kiya. Joining us is Rex, Hubby’s brand new German Shepherd, who joined us at 9pm last night after Hubby drove a 14 hour round trip to collect him.
He was advertised as a 22-month old male. He’s as large as Aksel was when he passed away last year… but judging by his paw size and the fact he doesn’t lift his leg yet, I’d hazard a guess that he’s significantly younger than that! But he seems to be bonding with Kiya, and he’s also placid and past that typical puppy chew-everything-in-sight age, which is also brilliant.
And speaking of late nights, once the dogs had been successfully introduced to each other, I headed to the airport, to collect my younger brother Rhys whose flight arrived at 11.08pm. The last time he was in Australia was August 2014!
I write today with a profound sense of gratitude and guilt. Gratitude as my region – the Sunshine Coast, in South East Queensland – has been spared the winds and deluge of Cyclone Alfred over the past few days. But equal amounts of guilt, as we here have suffered so little in comparison to so many of our neighbouring regions, who’ve had trees shatter their cars, their powerlines, their homes, who’ve had floodwaters pour down their streets, past their front doors and inundate their cars and anything low enough and not sand-bagged.
Why should we suffer so little and they so much? Where’s the fairness in that?
Plain and simple: there *is* none. None of this is fair. But guilt can imprison just as much as ingratitude and inaction. It can hold me back from giving what I’m freely able to give. And that is just plain wrong.
So I write of my faith.
Faith without action is dead though, yes?
So: go ACT. Sure, there’s been a cyclone. There’s been winds and rain which have adversely affected dozens if not hundreds.
And what am I willing to DO about it?
Just a thought for today, dear Reader. Have a blessed week ahead.
Something I’m enjoying about being back in the library again, is recommending books and book series to my patrons, be they Year 12s or Preppies. And I’ve recommended several books to staff members too, over the past few weeks!
And seeing as I’m trying to recommend books from a collection I’m unfamiliar with, it behooves me to get my speed-reader on, and get familiar with it!
And a title I was rather impressed by, the last week: Cinder, book 1 of The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.
Think Cinderella with a slice of James Cameron’s Alita and set several centuries into Earth’s future. And Cinderella doesn’t lose just her shoe, but her whole foot (did I mention she’s a cyborg?)… I also felt there were hints of Jay Kristofer’s Lifelike series in there too.
An interesting read; I’m hoping the rest of the series lives up to the premise!
And until next week, happy reading yourself, dear Reader!
It’s Saturday morning, and we’ve finished Week 4 of term. Nearly half-way there! And I feel like I’m starting to emerge from the ‘head-down-bum-up’ non-stop ‘doing the work’ that’s been my life this year.
Take a breath.
Look around.
Take a second breath – because I can.
It certainly has been a busy start to the year. The line between important and urgent, work and home has been blurred, and I’ve made more mistakes than I’d like to think about… but praise God for sustaining me to reach this morning, this day, this weekend!
A day in which to reconsider priorities, rather than just paddle, paddle, paddle furiously like that duck who seems to be swimming serenely but underneath the surface, the legs are flailing relentlessly.
And this is where I’m thinking I’ll start. This post, which came across my feed the other week, and had me thinking about the spectrum of ‘focus’ to ‘scattered mindset’:
You see, when there’s multiple things pulling at your attention, it’s easy to do the ‘fun’ thing. To mix the ‘important’ with the ‘urgent’ and focus on the wrong thing. To allow distractions to take over, to move you off course. Or maybe that’s just me?
So today, this morning? A reset. A chance to sit back and look. And think. And re-prioritise. Circle those 5 things and – more importantly – identify those 20 distractions.
Here’s hoping for quite a lot more clarity by the end of it! And for you too as well, dear Reader!
I love functional things. It comes from being an organiser, I guess. But as I age, I’ve discovered that I like also making time – and spending money – on things that make me happy, too.
I spent a few hours yesterday in at work, starting to set up my office. The furniture arrived Friday, so I was super-stoked about that! And knowing I wouldn’t get time during the coming work week, I unimpressed Hubby and went in to school… but as I was working out what should I go where, I also thought about my new revelation – making room in my life for things that make me feel happy, just because they do.
Hence my Flareon, gracing the corner of my desk:
And I also saw this cutie online. And it made me smile 🙂
For many years now, there’s been a small area in my backyard lawn which has grown a really cool plant. When you touch its dark green leaves, they curl up so you can see the purple undersides. How amazing is that! I have memories of my Mum showing it to my middle child when she was still in single digits (she’s the one who just graduated high school last year) and the two of them were leaning over it, heads bent together, stretching out their hands and gently stroking its leaves to watch it react.
Fast forward to a few evenings ago. I was walking barefoot across my lawn, playing with Kiya. Something I do extremely rarely, as there’s generally lots of twigs, leaves, and of course, the risk of snakes. But the lawn looked so inviting, and the grass so green and soft.
Until it wasn’t. Two steps was all it took before I was yelling in surprise and trying to work out how I’d stood on several bindiis in each foot when it’s not even bindii season.
Huh. That shy little plant, which curls its leaves when touched, has a MUCH darker side.
In fact, I’d venture the suggestion that it doesn’t so much curl its leaves because it’s shy, but removes its pretty face to expose its thorns! Because YOW!!! They hurt!!!
And to think that all of my dogs, year in year out, have been running across this foot-stabber, and I’d never known because I’d always worn boots!
So down I went. The several thorn wounds in each foot were throbbing, and I wasn’t careful enough getting them out and managed to prick my left thumb as well. But by the time I was thorn-free, I was also determined. No longer would this cute looking plant live in my garden. I was going to rip it out, then and there.
Easier said than done though. I often garden without gloves, and I didn’t want to waste a minute, so I started pulling at the first long stem I could find (imagine a clover plant structure… a little like a snowflake where the stems run along the ground and smaller stems branch out from there.) Now imagine that there are two thorns which jut out from the stem, approximately one centimetre apart. EVERY SINGLE centimetre!
Seriously! The only place this thing does NOT have thorns is on its roots!
But I was determined. By the time it was too dark to see, I’d pulled by about a third of the patch. By hand! I was quite proud.
In the kitchen that evening, I was relating the story to my middle child when she said, “do you mean the mimosa?”
I replied with, “I don’t know?!” as I’d never been told the name of the plant. Then, when I showed her how purple my left thumb had turned, and the cuts from thorn-skewering on my right hand, and mentioned that I could still feel the holes in my feet throbbing, she said, “I wonder if it’s poisonous?”
Huh. Turns out it is.
My feet holes were still a little ‘twingy’ the following morning, but my left thumb and thumb / index / middle finger of my right hand? Very noticeable the next day. Left thumb still purple! And when I went to get some more Mimosa out (using gloves this time, you’d be glad to hear) I had to stop because I COULDN’T GRIP AND TWIST WITH MY RIGHT HAND!!! The joints in both knuckles of my index finger would NOT move the way they needed to! Crazy or what?
They’ve calmed down now. Mostly. It’s three days later and all except the top joint on my index finger are back to normal. And that joint will hopefully regain its flexibility soon. But I now have a VERY healthy respect for that Mimosa’s defence mechanisms!
I told my mum the story yesterday. She laughed quite a bit. “Didn’t you know it had thorns?” she asked.
Well, no. I wouldn’t have let it remain alive in my backyard if I’d known!
I made the observation that she seemed to have known. “Of course!” she replied. “We used to have to weed it before and after school, back in the village,” she finished (she grew up in Malaya in the 1940s).
Huh. If only someone had told me.
So: lesson learned. Sometimes pretty things hide a defence system that is so overwhelmingly powerful it can take out your right hand for several days! Who knew?
Have a great week of learning yourself, dear Reader!
I was blessed, Monday just gone, to listen to a couple of AMAZING speakers at my new workplace’s staff retreat. Now I’m not one of those people who points her phone at, and takes photos of, a speaker’s screen… but this week, I did.
This one because it’s kinda funny (and true of not just Gen Alpha!):
But this one because it’s really indicative of how society is changing, and the trajectory of this change. It’s not difficult to predict what will be next, yes?
Anyway, these are some thoughts I’ve been pondering over the past week. How my generation influences others… and how they will influence others on turn. No wonder God says to “teach your children” (intentionally!) – Deuteronomy 11:19 and Proverbs 22:6 spring to mind – because it’s so important!
Without intentional teaching, things change unintentionally. And that may not necessarily be a good thing for society at large. Humankind is far more well known for its greed and selfishness than its compassion and altruism.
So: I wonder what this coming week will bring? And how I can go about being more intentional in it?
It sounds like the start of a riddle, doesn’t it? “What do dogs and libraries have in common?” And I must admit to not being witty enough to solve this one, sorry… my blogpost title just refers to these as the two main themes of this last week’s photos!
You see, my girl Kiya turned 2 on Wednesday. This was her on the beach the day before:
And then on her birthday itself (photo taken by Miss17, on whose birthday Kiya was born!) Check out that tongue and the ear curled back 🙂
It was also the week that I started, officially, back at school. New year, new job – Head of Library at Nambour Christian College! So I’ve been thinking all things ‘library’ this week, as I’m out and about, both online and IRL. Proof from my camera roll:
I’ve been back on Pinterest and saving inspirational pins like this:
And from Facebook, an idea that will mean I can keep a ‘live’ plant in my office without potentially killing it:
And for the library floor itself, check out these plants I saw when in Cooroy Pharmacy on Monday afternoon. Don’t you think they’d look good spread out around the library floor, near shelving or book displays?
Anyway, that’s been my week. And today it’s Bloxham Birthday Party day, to celebrate Hubby and both daughters… it’s our eldest’s last day of being a teenager today… now is that a milestone or what!
Miss16 has until July to get her 100 hours of supervised driving in. But seeing as she’s had other priorities, we started the year at 6 hours and 5 minutes.
Cue a roadtrip, the plan being to drive to Yeppoon, crash at an AirBnB, then drive back the following day, adding an extra 10 – 14 hours drive to her tally.
To start off with, everything went well. But around 3 hours in, she started hurting. Maybe all that anxiety? Her wrists, her back (although to be fair, she’d hurt her tailbone quite badly, recently) and then when her right ankle joined in on the party, I figured it’d be better to turn around and head back. So we arrived in Boreren, enjoyed a beautiful cheesy garlic bread late lunch before starting the return journey. We made it to Childers and by then she was in enough pain I took over. On the up-side though, her confidence is vastly improved, we missed the storms which hammered our place back home, and I now know significantly more about the wonder that is Star Rail 🙂
The following day, Hubby went fishing,
I decided to finally learn the alphabet codes so I no longer have to try to think ‘m for… um… moustache’ (which was, literally, a conversation I had on Friday!),
and council mowed our road. Check out how pretty it looks now!!!
Looking ahead, it’s school stuff buying time (books, uniforms) and collecting textbooks and laptop, before starting officially on Thursday. And that, dear Reader, is just a little bit EXCITING!!!!!
