Milestone!

Happy Saturday! Good afternoon blog friends!  I’m really tired today.  I was in the city on Monday, didn’t sleep well that night because I wasn’t in my own bed and arrived home about 12:15am Wednesday morning and I feel like I have been running every since.  This morning I got up at 7:30 to get ready and attend the Women of Faith breakfast at our local Anglican church here in Cobourg!

Doesn’t sound like much, I know, but I am getting older and the MS seems to want me to rest more. Not a bad week coming up, although I have something on every day, it seems.  Ah well, this coming week will end with a weekend visit from my cousin from Ottawa and her friend.  I’m quite looking forward to it.  I will do much ahead of time and use my slow cooker, so that I’m not spending too much time in the kitchen.

As to my milestone, I actually kind of missed it.  This is my 152nd blog post, so I missed the celebration of 150!  Wahoo!  I have managed to keep it up all this time.  I’m kind of proud of myself, I must say. I don’t exactly have any super exciting posts, but I am reasonably consistent.

This is simply a part of my spiritual journey that began when I was a kid. I have had a few detours along the way, but it’s all good. Major life lessons are always worth it.  It may not seem so at the time, but you get to grow as a person.

There was a lovely lady speaking at the faith breakfast this morning, and she mentioned more than once, that there wasn’t a person in the room who hadn’t gone through challenges in their life and, of course, she is right. Some have had rather minor challenges and some have some pretty tough challenges.  In her case, she married someone who became an alcoholic.  After her divorce about 15 years later, she met a wonderful gentleman, and after a time they planned to get married.  Two weeks before the wedding, he died of a heart attack and she was on her own again, not only with her daughter from her first marriage, but the two children of the groom-to-be. Very tragic.

Like many of us, she is a survivor and carried on.  She met and married someone else some time later and outlived that fellow as well and in the midst of all of that, her first husband died, too.  Wow, it kind of makes you feel grateful for your own challenges.

It reminds me of a story I heard recently about someone carrying a cross, signifying his challenges. The man complains to Jesus that it is too heavy a burden and Jesus takes him to a room filled with crosses of all sizes, giving him the opportunity to choose a new one.  The man looks around and feels that some are way too small and would be okay for a child, but not for him.  Others are too big and he feels that he cannot manage those.  He picks one out, convinced that he can manage it and Jesus tells him that it was the one he was originally carrying, given to him because Jesus thought he could manage it.

I believe it to be true.  You will only be given what you can manage.  As the saying goes, ‘If God will bring you to it, he will get you through it.’ Challenges may seem unmanageable, but be patient, you will get the help you need.  I certainly did, in my life.

So, hang in there! And, don’t be afraid to ask for help.  Sometimes, the right people show up to get you through a rough time.  I remember as a single mother thinking that if I just went to the food bank once, I would be able to get ahead of the money running out before the month did. But I was stubborn and just kept going.  I did get through that time, but it would have been much easier, if I had asked for help.

I pray that you have a gentle week and may God bless you all!

Busy Times

Happy Sunday! It’s a sunny day out here and actually above freezing, melting the snow we got this week.  Yay!

I’m looking at a bit of a busy week this week.  Heading into the city tomorrow for a physical, and then my selfish nail appointment and in the evening, I’m going to see the show ‘Book or Mormon’ at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto with my youngest daughter.  I haven’t decided if I’m heading home after that, or staying over for some Scrabble with Viv. Wednesday is a dental appointment.  Thursday is the friendly visit and the priest class. Then I wrap up the week with a couple of meetings and my selfish pedicure!  A stellar week, but busy.

I had almost forgotten to blog! I know that I do it mostly for myself, as I don’t actually have many blog followers, but I do like to put something out there, so matter how short.

I was so thrown off today with timing, as I was involved in the Community Catholic Church of Canada cyber Sunday service this morning. I got to write and present the homily.  I had written one for class a couple of weeks ago, but I have to say that I truly enjoyed writing and delivering another one. Perhaps this is the reason why I was drawn to writing?

I have much to learn yet about writing and delivering homilies, but I am enjoying the opportunity and the journey.  We will be doing these services weekly, but after today, I think we decided that live is a challenge.  We are talking about putting it together a day or two ahead and that way, we can edit. Unfortunately, we cannot edit the sounds of my cat requesting attention during my homily, but perhaps it is entertaining, anyway.

For any of you who would like to tune in, you will find us as the Spirit of Love Ministries on Blogtalkradio.  You can even set up a reminder to tune in each week. We expect to put a service out there for 10:30am Eastern.

I’m actually pretty excited about this.  The experience was great, and as anyone knows, there are any number of challenges with radio, especially, if there are several people involved in the show and we are all in different locations.  It was fun, nonetheless.

So, tune in next week (I hope you will!), and see what we are up to.

I thank those who did tune in.  I hope you found it worthwhile!  God bless everyone, have a gentle week!

Further Cat Troubles

Happy Sunday! It’s a sunny one out there today, although perhaps the calm before the storm, as we are expecting snow tomorrow.  We were planning to go into the city Tuesday (Cavan to a work luncheon and me, just get beaten at Scrabble a few more times!), but we will see.  It’s not worth fighting snow over. Today, we are in the city for Cavan’s mother’s 85th birthday. We’re having dinner at his brother Sean’s. It will be a nice get together!

As to further cat troubles… I always swore that only three things wake me in the night--the phone, kids and cats.  Well, my kids are grown and on their own and they were the only ones that might have called past my bedtime, so now I just get woken by cats.

Jett, my only remaining cat has always woken me, about every other month or so, throwing up whatever was in his stomach. He has a habit of eating stupid stuff, like the lint off the bathroom mats, and plants, of course, but none of my plants are poisonous, and I think that a little greenery is good for cats. I, of course, leap out of bed and clean it up right away.  Fortunately, he throws up in my bedroom on the hardwood floor, so that at least I am not cleaning carpets in the middle of the night. I even have a flashlight in my night table, so that I don’t wake Cavan.

Well, Saturday morning, Jett didn’t start his issues until about 7am. Just getting me ready for the time change, I’m sure!  This time was different, though.  He threw up on the rug in the livingroom. But that was only the beginning, at least the beginning of what I saw.  He had also pooped in one of his cat beds (yes, there are two). That was really unusual, because he is really good about using the litter box, unless he is upset about something, like my daughter’s dog visiting. But it was the sign that I knew something was wrong.

He then kept squatting like he wanted to poop, but couldn’t.  He wasn’t straining or anything. He would even half lie down looking quite upset and would drop a spot of diarrhea here and there in the house. Poor fella.  It was too early to call our vet, as they didn’t open until 9am.

This went on for about an hour and then he had a regular poop (on the carpet in the basement, yay!) and then he seemed to be fine.  There was no blood in the stool, or anything, and he didn’t seem to be in any pain, just somewhat distressed that it was happening. As was I, I must say.

Any of us who love our little fur babies know how distressing it is when they are not well and watch them like a hawk, until we reach the point that whatever it was seems to pass, or we run them to the vet to see what’s going on.  In this case, it did pass and he had a long nap and then was eating and drinking fine, so I believe he is back to his noisy old self. As a matter of fact, he is sleeping on the blanket in front of my monitor, as I type this (which is why I use a keyboard tray).

I got to clean floors and spot clean rugs and carpets yesterday--oh boy! Swiffer Vacs and Swiffer WetJets are great inventions and I love the Bissel spot cleaner! But the good thing is that it is over now and all is right with the world, as he lays here snoring oblivious to the worry he caused.  But then, it’s what we do, right?

So, God bless you all, and your fur babies and may God especially bless all of you and your pets with good health!

Cat Challenge

Happy Sunday! It’s a rather cold, but bright, Sunday out there in the resort town of Cobourg. We kind of got a spring ‘teaser’ with some warm weather, but now the chill is back, although truthfully, it isn’t far below freezing.

As a quick follow up from last week mentioning my first sermon, it’s done.  I think it was okay and the feedback was pretty positive, although I think they were being kind. The only thing I can base that on is that mine was very different from the other two sermons given that night. My style is quite different, but I have to admit that I really didn’t get the lesson from the other two.  Perhaps that was just me, but they didn’t grab me like some sermons do.

So, to the cat challenge. If you follow my blog, you know that I had two cats, a little female calico and a big male black cat.  My little calico, Squeaks, died just after Christmas and now I have Jett, also known as chatty catty. Hence the problem.

With Squeaks, she would wake me in the morning to be fed. She had done that for years, but seemed to understand ‘Sh, time for sleeping’ and go settle at the end of the bed until the alarm went off, or until I got up to feed her.

Now that Squeaks is gone, Jett wakes me, even in the night for attention. He requires a good head rub and cheek stroking for about 10 minutes and then he will settle down for a few more hours. Now, I’m a cat person, and a parent, so being woken in the middle of the night and settling down some being is not foreign to me, but Cavan is not a good sleeper, so any disturbed sleep is a big thing for him.

I don’t know what to do.  I’m not up to getting a new cat to keep him company.  I just don’t feel like breaking in a new one. Jett is over 15 years old, so in cat terms, he is geriatric. He isn’t likely to be around more than five more years.  It has only been two months since Squeaks died, so perhaps in time, he will settle down?  I don’t know.  It is rather frustrating.

No, I don’t have the heart to spray him with water or anything nasty like that when he does it.  I did try taking his head and giving

him annoying kisses when he does it, but that requires me to leap out of bed when he cries out from the bedroom door, or at the very least find him on the bed and do it.  That requires me to be more awake than a simple head rub that I can really do half asleep.

Any thoughts?  No, I won’t lock him in another room.  His crying would break my heart.  Heavens, when my daughter left her dog downstairs overnight, I couldn’t take the crying.  I went down and slept with the dog all night. I think Jett is too old to train otherwise and I’m just hoping that over time, he will settle down.

Perhaps that is hoping against hope, but let’s see how it goes over the next couple of months.

Well, folks, that’s it for my top challenge so far this year.  May your challenges not be so noisy!  God bless!