Rainy day

Last night J had Tim over for a sleepover which went very well. Now Becky's taken them both off ice skating & I'm sitting here looking at the rain, feeling bad about having eaten the chocolate, feeling I should do some of my theology course (once I've got past the next bit about reading Revelation I'll get to the bit when I can start writing essays) but really I just feel like going to sleep.
Later I'm going to make some pancake batter for P to make pancakes when he gets home, perhaps I'll cheat & do it in the food processor.

Snow

I should have mentioned - it snowed today.

Problems

I felt quite burdened at church this morning. There are several people I know quite well who are having a hard time. One woman's brother has just had a brain haemorrhage. The person sitting next to me is feeling really down. She's going to come round for a chat sometime as I know what's it's like to feel really low. And Mavis who I bring to the coffee morning is also in a really bad state. She's had a very difficult life & has been badly rejected but something has happened recently to make her feel very unwanted & she was sitting at the back of the church looking terrible. I sat near her at coffee but then Kate, with whom I'm quite friendly, came & sat the other side of me & I really wanted to catch up with her & she's got her problems as well, so I ended up hardly talking to Mavis.

I just want to make all these people better & I can't. I suppose I just have to accept that while I'm doing my best to help them & pray for them ultimately they're not my responsibility.

I've told J that if he helps me tidy up tomorrow he can have a friend for a sleepover. We shall see.

Pie

Here's a bit of lemon meringue pie to get me in the mood.

Pudding & prayer

This morning while I was in the bathroom J was outside the door singing a song that basically went:
'Mum is mad, Mum is mad, Mum is mad...' I thought the lyrics lacked a little something personally.
'Look, you're meant to be pleasant, well-mannered and sensible,' I said.
'That's just at school,' he replied.

There's two things I never feel all that good at, well there's more than two but I'm mentioning these two in particular: praying and organising things. So how has it come about that I'm organising a 'Pudding and Prayer evening' at church. Well, how it's come about is: I suggested to our minister that such an event would be a good idea and he said 'Yes it is, I'll leave it to you then shall I?' The moral seems to be don't suggest anything unless you want to organise it.

So this evening I've been writing an article about it for the church magazine and I hope lots of people come. It's not until the end of April so I have a bit of time. Last night I was looking for creative prayer ideas on the internet. One said:

Materials required

Water
Towel
Large bowel

The mind boggles!

School report

According to J's school report he's sensible, pleasant, well-mannered, conscientious, hard-working & a pleasure to teach!
He is though very quiet in class & especially lacking confidence in oral language skills & his PE teacher did sort of imply he's a bit unfit. In fact I think the comment for PE that 'he has tackled each new challenge with a positive attitude' is a way of saying 'he tries hard but...' Really considering the genes he's inherited poor J doesn't have much of a chance of excelling at sports. P did a lot of cycling & was super fit but he's never been into team games & as for me, I was like every PE teacher's worst nightmare - completely lacking in aptitude & enthusiasm & so shortsighted I couldn't see the ball anyway.

A difficult interview

Yesterday I went to Becky's house as I'd agreed her nephew could interview me for a project he's doing on 'the emotional aspects of physical disability' for his psychology degree. This nephew was born with major health problems & not expected to live, among other problems he has a curved spine, no abdominal muscles, short stature, deformed fingers, dyslexia & is doubly incontinent. He has had about 70 operations. He has been through so much & yet has achieved so much & is such a lovely person it sort of breaks my heart. I can't explain it really, people like that just get to me because they are so brave and compared to them I feel pathetic. Anyway this made the interview quite difficult for me, I was just so aware of how much worse his problems are I found it hard to talk about mine. Apart from which really I just don't like talking about my illness. I might whinge about it on here sometimes but normally I just don't talk about it. P had a major illness when he was young & he was the same, for years he hardly spoke about it. It wasn't until I too became ill that he felt even able to talk to me about it.
I just hope Becky's nephew does well in his degree & manages to get a job.