Dexterity Triumph

Happy Monday! It’s a beautiful, but hot day here in the resort town of Cobourg.  No problem, I have tidying on my list to do today.  I’m afraid that I have gotten sloppy over the week, but I’m on it today!

Here we are at the end of July!  I can hardly believe it.  The years do fly by now. It’s actually August tomorrow--a new page on the calendar and a time for new opportunities. Don’t you always feel good, when there is a new month full of possibilities?

Well, I’m actually blogging about this past weekend’s opportunities. I had the switching up of the pets on Friday. I had my youngest daughter’s cat for a week and a half.  Poor Kanye was sick and Kaitlyn’s condo had no air conditioning. So, I picked him up the day I arrived back from Nova Scotia, but had to return him on Friday as my oldest daughter was coming out with her dog and it was a bit much to have the Dallas the dog, Kanye and my own cat, Jett in the same house at the same time.

Anyway, a friend of Alysse’s was hosting a painting party.  I don’t know how many folks have attended these, but they are fun! To me, a painting party was when you invite a bunch of friends over to help you paint a room in your house, but this actually walks you through creating a painting on canvas! I was excited to attend, but a little nervous, as the MS has left my hands somewhat numb and with some dexterity challenges.

I am happy to say that I actually produced a painting, and you can actually tell what it is a painting of! On top of that, we had a glass of wine, while doing it.  What could be more fun than wine, paint and brushes and a blank canvas?  Our instructor is a friend of my daughter’s and she walked us through producing the painting, step by step.  Everyone creates the same painting, but you can take artistic license and make some changes as you go. I would recommend it to anyone!

My second dexterity triumph was the next day, when I hemmed a couple of dresses. I used to be really good at this, hemming so that you couldn’t actually see the stitches on the outside. I now have to use a larger needle because of numbness, and to be able to see it well enough to thread it! But, it is still fine enough to produce a decent stitch.  The stitches aren’t as uniform as I used to be able to do, but you can barely see the stitches on the outside and I’m rather proud of that. There was just the one little incident when using the scissors, that my right index finger froze in a bent position--very painfully, I might add--and I had to get it to straighten out.  The pain was in my wrist, where I guess the muscle contracted and didn’t want to let go.  Oh well, what’s the fun in tackling something without a challenge or two.

So, I can proudly say that I managed two fairly challenging projects and triumphed! I’m rather proud of myself, I must say.  It has given me the ambition to tackle some crocheting with finer yarn and hooks!  We shall see if I can manage that.

I think it is always nice to stretch your boundaries every now and then. Enough with the same old, same old!

Well, folks, may you rise to meet all of your challenges and may you look to the new month like a blank canvas of many possibilities.  God bless!

Book Sales

Happy Sunday! A lovely day out today and I have only blogging and washing sheets on my agenda.  What shall I do with my spare time?  Ah yes, I have a book on the go!! I shall definitely get to that today.

For those of you who waited with your breath held for a blog last week, my apologies.  I was in Nova Scotia enjoying some time with one of my cousins.  It was a great relaxing time--reading, sunning on the beach (love the salt water!) and catching a video on the TV at night.  We also did a bit of wandering the country roads, including visiting some places that I visited as a child.  A great time was had by both of us.  Linda Ann is a better cook than I, so she was the cook and I, the bottle washer.  A great combination.  And oh, the seafood!

Today, I am going to share my book sales story with you.  As anyone who follows me knows, I have written four Christian children’s books.  Each with six stories, based on Bible passages, but told from an animal’s point of view.  Sales were really slow, and I knew they were meant for a rather small readership.  But then came the call from my publisher!

I self published my books through AuthorHouse (you can also buy through Amazon and various other online stores--and even find them here:  www.janetkwarren.com).  One of the AuthorHouse agents called me at the end of June to ask if I was doing a sales campaign in Africa.  I am not doing anything specific, however, I do have nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter and many are in Africa.  It seems that someone from Nigeria was buying a bunch of my books!

The fellow tells me that they were purchased on a credit card and they were concerned that it was not legitimate. I know that Nigeria has a bad rap from various scams, but if I were to steal a credit card, buying Christian children’s books wouldn’t be the first thing I would think of to buy.  Mind you, as a priest, if I did have access to a credit card that had a really high limit on it, I would love to buy, or build, a church building for our Community Catholic Church of Canada, and a new hospice for Northumberland County.  Prayers...

I suppose that I probably spend far too much time watching crime shows, so the cynical side of me says that it could be a way to launder money.  It’s a stretch, but stick with me here.  What if dirty money was used to pay a credit card and said credit card was used to purchase anything in large quantities. Then say those items were returned to put the money back on the card.  It might seem like legitimate cash.  Mind you, it is only cash on a credit card, which is difficult to use, as if it is taken off the card as cash, I think you get charged interest, even if the amount is more than the limit on the card. You see where I’m going here.  It’s likely a real stretch, but you never know and there are, unfortunately, lots of people out there to make an illegitimate buck.

The bottom line for me is optimistic.  I want to believe that the sales are real and true, but I won’t know until I have the cool cash (well the check, actually), in my hot little hands and that won’t happen until some time in the middle of September, at least that is for the books purchased in May and June.

I have been going out to the AuthorHouse website and running the sales report from time to time, to see if the sales are still showing.  So far so good.  As a matter of fact, since I hadn’t looked in over a week because I had no internet in Nova Scotia, when I ran the report when I got home, there were 60 more books purchased, listed as ‘AuthorHouse Web Bonus’ and that was dated May 31, although the entry didn’t appear until July!  Wahoo!

So, prayers for a check to arrive. And prayers that sales continue!

May your prayers be answered, as you are hoping!  God bless!!

Summer Busyness

Happy Sunday! It was a beautiful sunny drive to St. George’s this morning for Sunday service, but I shouldn’t have been surprised by the major, but short, downpour this afternoon, as I had been warned.  It is sunny yet again now.  Crazy weather!

I had the honor of spending some time with a palliative this afternoon, after church. This was at Golden Plough Lodge again.  Not my favorite facility.  It is quite old, but I must admit that any of the staff I have dealt with have been wonderful. I shall be back with him in the morning for a couple of hours.

I’m back on the topic of busyness today, as we are now into summer and it seems that some things go on hiatus during July and August, to allow for personal busyness.  I am not particularly busier than in other months, but I do have my trip to Nova Scotia coming up in a week and a half!

All three if my advisory committees are taking a break until September, but since they only meet monthly, it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. It looks like the weekly cyber Sunday service will also take a break for the summer.  That, I shall miss.  I really enjoy it.  Having said that, most of my fellow clergy do weddings, so of course this is their busy time.

Our fearless leader, the bishop is the busiest of all! Before we can upload the cyber Sunday service, she has all the editing to take care of and although she loves it, it is time consuming. Add that to all of her other duties during wedding season and it starts to get out of hand and is one thing that can be dropped when things get really crazy busy.

I am hoping that anyone that has summer holiday plans, can manage to find the sun.  It comes out every now and then to tease us, but never seems to stay more than a day or two.  I’m hoping for some sunny weather when I’m in Nova Scotia, but I can read and gab in pretty much any weather, so I guess it doesn’t really matter that much.

I am actually trying to not be too busy this summer.  I was too busy there for a while, attending the priest course, along with the friendly visiting and advisory committee meetings, especially when I was spending time with two different palliatives.  Since I do palliative visiting through both Community Care Northumberland and the Extendicare facility, I can be assigned a palliative from both.  That has only happened once, so perhaps it will only happen rarely.

I do want some time to catch up on reading this summer.  The same as I did last summer. And with my courses over, now that I am an ordained priest, my life should become a little more scheduled, so that I don’t feel overwhelmed. That, I’m looking forward to! What’s the point in being retired, if you can’t put your feet up and rest?

I would also like to plan a couple of little trips, too.  Viv and I got to Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake to see plays last year, but haven’t even gotten to one this year! Perhaps in September………

Well folks, that’s my blog for today.  May your summer be enjoyable and not too crazy! May you find the time to do the things that you like to do, rather than being pulled in a million directions. I remember the days when my kids were small and the many, many things we had to fit into the summer.  It can be exhausting!  Rest, relax and enjoy!  Life is short, you many as well enjoy it!

Blessings on your summer plans.  May they all work out as expected.  God bless!