Prayer meeting

I think it was the week before last when J was getting out of the car, accidentally put it into gear, it rolled forward & hit the old gas cylinder which sits in our garden. No major damage thankfully, but please don't do it again. It was also the week when I had to pick him up from school because he almost passed out when his Science teacher was telling them about blood.

On the Thursday we had a 'prayer for Japan' meeting which I'd organised. 10 people came which wasn't too bad considering it was mid-week & short notice & several people said they'd pray at home. It was really hard to know how to pray, the whole thing is so huge, so devastating, so tragic.

Back on the blog scene

Sorry, sorry, sorry haven't blogged for ages. This is because I just haven't felt in the mood somehow. There seems to have been a lot of the minor dramas which make up family life going on, not sure if I can remember what happened when, so here it is all a bit jumbled up:

Saturday before last we went for a nice afternoon out by the river but someone got into such an almost-a-teenager strop it turned into a horrid afternoon which only began to improve once ice-cream appeared on the scene. P & J then went out for the evening ten pin bowling with 'other church' & I enjoyed the peace & quiet.
The next day at church I took the bull by the horns & asked the person I thought wasn't speaking to me if they weren't speaking to me. This resulted in a conversation at the end of which each of us thought the other was mentally deranged. However I felt better for having got it into the open & today they did come & have a conversation with me. There is plenty to talk about at church as the work on the building is well underway. Last week the pews on one side were taken out & the people who normally sit there looked so shocked & lost when they came in - 'Where do we sit now?' Glad they haven't got to my corner now. Today something else dramatic had happened but I'll tell you when I get a photo.
Going back to the previous Sunday there was an awesome evening service at 'other church' where the minister felt God wanted to do some healing & abandoned his talk & there were people to pray with sick people & I felt really touched by God, it really felt like something lifted off my back. Afterwards two people said they'd come round my house & pray with me & they did last Friday. They recommended some CDs which I've got but haven't listened to.
Tonight we had a really good time at 'other church', they had something called cafe church where they have coffee & cakes & they had a singer who was really, really good. J scoffed lots of cakes but otherwise read his book until I grabbed it away from him. At the end we were all singing the song 'This is the Day the Lord Has Made' with great gusto & J was looking at us like 'My parents are weird'.
'Other church' is great, we love it but the youngsters all seem bored.
Usual church is in a stange place at the moment but is where we've been going for aeons & J's happy there.
Suppose it will all work itself out.

Open evening

Went to J's parents' evening yesterday. The pupils have to come along too. J looked as if he found it about as pleasant as having his toe-nails pulled out. But honestly if I was his age & had to sit with my parents in front of my Geography teacher who boomed 'So how do you feel you're doing in Geography then?' at me I'd have found it pretty difficult. So anyway Geography is getting better following the bad start which wouldn't have been so bad if J had handed in the letter explaining that he'd lost a load of his homework when the computer went wrong & please could we make the second payment for the field trip. He's doing well in English but needs to be a bit more confident, the Science teacher who speaks so quietly we could hardly hear him, thinks he's doing brilliantly, just a bit quiet, the Art teacher was really enthusiastic about his work but he's a bit quiet in class, the DT teacher says he's doing well just needs to practise using tools a bit more because he had to drill those screw-holes twice - oh no that wasn't him that was someone else who's just like him & yes the electronics GCSE results last year were rubbish but they hope to be better this year. History, French, German & RE teachers said they didn't need to see us as he's doing so well. All pretty good, he's just quiet but he can't help that, he's inherited it from his mum.

Busy Wednesday

Went to pick up Mavis to take her to coffee morning on Weds & she looked dreadful - pale & shaking & her leg really painful. I said I was taking her to the doctor & she said not to bother but as I was in the driving seat she had no choice. Receptionist said they'd see her if we came back at 12.00. Also in the surgery was retired doctor from church who said Mavis had phoned her at 5 am saying she didn't feel well! She'd told her to phone emergency dr. All they did was tell her to take paracetamol & sent a fax to GP surgery. The couple who'd had the fire next to their flat were also there. Woman is very shaken up, apparently the firemen thought their flat was empty so if they hadn't happened to wake up... Anyway there was a lot of waiting around & I had to go in to see the dr with Mavis & felt quite exhausted by it all. It turned out she had a urine infection & she's getting the leg x-rayed. She's feeling a bit better now. The dr kept saying 'these things happen with old age' & I thought she's only 68 it's not all that old. She's hopefully getting sorted out anyway.

Quiz

How often do I go out on a Saturday night? Not all that often. How often do I get a great big spot on my chin these days? Hardly ever. So why did these two situations have to coincide? Where we went was to a quiz at Tim's grammar school. Tim as in J's friend & Becky's son. We had a good time but the questions were hard. The trouble was for a lot of the questions somebody on our table knew the answer but at least one other person was saying something else & we didn't always choose the right person's answer. We ended up 17th out of 19 which was a bit hard for Becky as she's used to winning. We do think though that they recorded our mark wrong for the historical dates sheet, should have been 7/24 not 3/24.
I was impressed with myself with the round where they gave the first & last few words of books & you had to say title & author - I actually recognised War & Peace! Should have got 'Picture of Dorian Gray' though. And it's an elephant that has 4 knees not a camel. And I should have known a 3 toed sloth is the slowest animal on earth. And we should have played our joker on the Science & Maths round.

Found the phone!

Just been looking for a notebook I'd lost & looked in a cloth shoulder bag I use occasionally & there was the feedback form for the anti-bullying evening & the phone!!! How on earth the phone got there I don't know, perhaps it fell in. No PE bag though.

This morning there was frost on the car but now it's bright & sunny. Have just repotted some of J's cacti -ouch! I thought of photographing the blood but some of you might be squeamish. One of the cacti has these horrible hook shaped spines which are almost impossible to get out.

I think there's someone at church who's giving us the cold-shoulder treatment because we disagreed with them about something. This was quite difficult yesterday because I woke up early & had a nice long prayer time & felt really peaceful & spiritual then after church I was feeling like an emotional wreck. This was sad because we'd actually had a really nice church lunch - jacket potatoes & chicken in wine sauce & it should have been a good time. So is it just me being paranoid - I don't think so because P has noticed & his skin is several inches thicker than mine. It's just a bit worse for me because he can go up & talk to them whether they like it or not but it's more obvious they never come over to talk to me like they used to. So do I confront them or hope things get better? I just don't know.

Talking of church, someone we know there had a fire in the building next to their flat on Friday morning & had to move out due to water & smoke damage. They stayed in a hotel & in the middle of the night the fire alarms went off & they had to go outside & wait for the fire engines to arrive.

Black hole

Currently in the black hole in our house into which things disappear:


1 PE BAG
1 APPOINTMENT FORM FOR SCHOOL OPEN EVENING
1 FEEDBACK FORM FOR SCHOOL ANTI-BULLYING EVENING
1 PHONE !!!!

as in our porable land-line phone which I usually carry round with me so I don't have to keep scooting down to the desk in the study at the far end of the house. For some obscure reason this hasn't been ringing lately so it's no use ringing it & listening. What keeps happening now is phone rings in study I scoot down & don't get there in time then my mobile rings at other end of house so I scoot back & don't get there in time then have to scoot back again to phone the person back.

Disabled rights

Sorry I haven't put my photos on yet, this is because I haven't got round to it.

Yesterday I went to new house group then rushed off to pick up Mavis to go to Women's World Day of Prayer whioch I thought was at 1.00 & turned out to be at 1.45 so we sat in car park for half an hour as having got a good parking space didn't want to lose it.

Service was very good, written by women of Chile but I felt this little bit of discontent. It's just that the organiser never asks me to do a reading or anything. There were supposed to be 4 people from our church dressed up as 'women of Chile' & Becky who goes to the Anglican church was asked to be one of them. I've got no particular desire to wear a poncho but I just wonder why she never asks me because people have always said my reading voice is ok. I just had this thought that if it's because I'm disabled what she's really doing without realising it is discriminating against me & there must be disabled women in Chile as well so why not represent them? But perhaps it's not that at all & she just doesn't think I'd do it well enough which is ok. Becky looked pretty good in her poncho which is the genuine article as she's been to Chile.

A similar thing happened with the new youth group at church. There was a meeting for people who might be interested & we both went, me in the wheelchair as my feet were so bad. Afterwards P got an email thanking him for coming & being prepared to help but the assumption seemed to be that I wasn't able to do anything. My feet might not have totally got their act together but I've got a brain & a mouth & 2 hands & I'm pretty nifty on my scooter. Hmm. I think I'm going to start campaigning for rights for disabled people in church. On the other hand do I really want to be cooped up with 15 teenagers for the evening?

Talking of which P & J both went to youth pancake evening at church last night & had a geat time except J put too much cinnamon on his pancake.

Still no PE bag

WHERE IS THE PE BAG?

Tuesday

On Thursday we went up to Lancaster for a few days & had a really good time. I was going to show you some photos but P has put them on the other computer which J is using. I'll do it tomorrow.

Yesterday P was off & I got up late & mooched around & did a bit of washing. At dinner time J mentioned that he needed cooking ingredients for today. He needed chicken which was to be cooked at home, tortillas, green pepper, chilli, mexican spices & home-made salsa. Not exactly ingredients to be found in our store-cupboard. P had to dash to Waitrose & I'm afraid he did cheat a bit - cooked chicken & a packet of salsa.

Today I went to (old) housegroup, there were only 3 of us there & we couldn't find much to say in discussion but otherwise was a nice chat. Then my cleaner came, then I picked up J & took him to his swimming lesson, met up with P, came home & ate chicken fajitas. P had the ones J had cooked but J & I had milder ones as we don't like hot spices. J had lost a mark because his tortillas cracked but in the overall scheme of things I don't think it really matters.

Where where where's the PE bag?

I can't find the PE bag! Where is it?