This is THE BEST! It made me and QB so happy this evening. It lifted my depression for a few minutes... You have to copy and paste it into your browser.

Holocaust survivors will confront BNP on Question Time 

I  am SHOCKED that the BNP is appearing on the Beeb's Question Time.

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We will be out of town next week for our annual visit to Roanoke/Salem, so I will be posting/commenting even less than usual, i.e. not at all. Hopefully we will have some good pictures when we come back. Bella is coming with us ~ our first experience of having a dog with in a hotel.

We visited the podiatrist yesterday. He told me my toe was healing well (he performed pretty drastic cutting on the toe I had ripped the nail off last fall a couple of weeks ago). I also told him of pain I was getting in that foot so he took X-rays and found that I have dislocated a bone in my foot. Probably from clambering around our hilly yard but who knows for sure?? Anyway, I now have this foot support to wear which hopefully will put everything to rights. There is a pad underneath which puts more weight onto the metatarsal bones - where the dislocation is.



Here is a picture I found on my camera of quilterbear in the dentists parking lot. Sadly I have no idea when it was taken. It must be at least a year old! LOL!

Bella is all clean now! (And so am I!)

This weekend I hope to plant the last two plants that are going in this year - a clematis and a delphinium. When that is all done I will take some more pictures of the good looking bits of our yard and post them. Just have to persuade quilterbear to loan me her camera, download them off the memory card to her computer and then share them to mine. Here's hoping, LOL!

What a day! After 3 days straight of Dr's visits, mostly for quilterbear I suddenly had two for myself today! Last night I realised that the toe which I ripped the toenail off last fall was infected! Ack! I already had an appointment booked to see the podiatrist next Tuesday but this needed treatment sooner than that. I called his office this morning and he will always see emergencies on Friday's and on weekends even though the office is officially closed. I went to see him at ten this morning and he took (cut) two big chunks of nail from either side of my right big toe. Despite two lidocaine shots (ouch!) the left side hurt like crazy. I did a lot of yelling and I think he was surprised how OK I was afterwards.

Also, the folliculitis on my chest is starting back up so I needed to see the dermatologist again. I persuaded them to fit me in today, which they did at 3:00 this afternoon. That office is in the same town as the podiatrist, about 20 miles away but I came home in between. He gave me 30 days of Doxycyclin with 5 refills. It apparently takes a lot to really knock this out of the system.

In between appointments our little dog Bella (she's the one in the icon) escaped. Off she went running across the neighbours yards and no amount of calling and squeaking one of her toys would bring her back. Eventually, some time after we sat down to eat lunch at around 5:00 (I know! Much too late...) she appeared at the front door. Nearly 6:00 I think. I raced there to open it but she was gone again. Thankfully when I squeaked a toy she came back and is now safe and sound, although rather stinky. Pretty soon I have to give her a bath. We were both very upset when she ran off, quilterbear especially so as she has had dogs disappear and other bad stuff happen when she was a child. We are both so relieved she is home. My thanks to all your kind words in reply to her post.

Fla. city to workers: Wear underwear, deodorant

http://tinyurl.com/nfdbsg

I agree with the mayor, not that I personally like to go commando but still...

And they are even more awesome than before. Check out these videos from the top 20 show.

Here are the pics of the flowers we have so far! The first set is of begonias in pots along our ivy covered wall. We call this the english cottage garden! LOL! These are followed by a few of the geraniums and cilantro, again pots, on the retaining wall behind our house. This wall stops the hill behind the house from crashing down into us. We can see the flowers from the kitchen window.


( Click here for more pics )

Here are a few pics of our yard. First the runner beans that pds_lit kindly mailed us and then some of the few flowers we have so far! I went to Lowes today and bought some more today so I need to get those planted tomorrow. I hope it will not be too hot to work in the yard. I don't do hot very well these days!



( Click here for more pics )

Yet another interesting article.

http://tinyurl.com/kjtk9y

An interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor. Wouldn't it be great if the two sides in the great abortion debate could come together and work at achievable solutions?

http://tinyurl.com/luwjee

I have been blessed to be able to listen to this book on audio as I drive to school most mornings. This paragraph stood out to me as a contrast between how the Chinese pray and how we often pray here in the West...

I have a friend in Japan who provides resources to the underground church in China and often worships among them. One day I asked her, "How do Chinese Christisns pray? Do their prayers differ from what you hear in the U.S. or Japan?" She replied that the prayers closely follow the pattern of the Lord's Prayer. The church has spread most widely among the lower classes, and when they ask for daily bread and deliverance from evil, they mean it literally.

She continued," I've heard Chinese Christians pray for the leaders of their government, but never for a change in the government - even in areas that persecute the unregistered churches. They pray very practically, thanking God for today's grace, asking for tomorrow's protection. They tell us visitors, 'Don't pray for me to get out of prison, please pray for courage and strength so that I can witness boldly in the prison and not lose faith.'"

Makes you think, doesn't it?

The following quote is taken from an article in this weeks Entertainment Weekly about Kris Allen - 2009 American Idol.

If there's one Idol-related topic that elicits a note of disappointment from him, it's that the media analyzed the finale in politically charged, culture-war terms: edgy, androgynous Lambert versus wholesome, Christian Allen. ''That was rough,'' says Allen, a worship director at a non-denominational church in Conway, Ark. ''It's frustrating that the world is still like that. Like, get over it. Adam and I are great, great friends. Our relationship is, hopefully, an inspiration to people: No matter who you are, you can get along with anyone.''

I love this man's graciousness towards a fellow competitor whom so many would see as the complete antithesis of Allen and therefore unacceptable as his friend. Oh that we could all remember "No matter who you are, you can get along with anyone."

A little pitchy but well worth a watch and a listen...

quilterbear has been buying some Sinead O'Connor on ITunes. We heard her a couple of times recently on the Graham Norton show. It reminded me of Hazel O'Connor (who remembers Des O'Connor?) and Toyah Wilcox from my younger days. I also took a group of students (Years 7 & 8 in England) to what was basically an afternoon rehearsal for her evening show. The school was in Dagenham and we went somewhere south of the river - New Cross or somewhere like that. The venue was basically a cinema stripped of seats and projection equipment and so was a vast open space. The volume was indescribable so my colleagues and I sat in the bar foyer where the volume was tolerable! Our students seemed quite scared of the south London kids which surprised us. Their main enjoyment (boys anyway) was that Toyah wore a short leather skirt and they could see right up it! Oh the joys of teenage boys. Simple pleasures back then. Nowadays they want to be making babies. Oh boy :(

The young man (who is K's aide's son and a former student of mine) came to weed eat the yard yesterday. It was a big job as he hadn't been able to get here before - life happened in all our lives!~ He brought his Daddy who is retired from the mines and has back problems because of it. Guess who did most of the work - Daddy! We will see what happens next time. Mama came too and we all stood/sat on our porch through a thunderstorm and really enjoyed talking with them. We hope they might become friends...

I am sure quilterbear will write about it today. I have a quilt on the machine which I absolutely MUST finish this weekend, but my blood sugar has been messing me around this morning so I will wait awhile before I start. I also have to bake some bread. Cracked wheat this week! Still loving the bread machine ~ Thank you pds_lit and realthog

I was completely shocked when I read this article yesterday. To me as a christian it is a no-brainer that torture (in any form or of anybody) is unacceptable. The end never justifies the means. Once we go down this slippery path we are no better than Hitler or the communist secret police who would torture innocent christians (Read Richard Wurmbrands book, Tortured for Christ, about life in communist Romania) or the terrorists we are seeking to stop. In fact, I think it makes us worse because we know better.

Follow this link to read the article in it's entirety.

http://tinyurl.com/qfqkeb

I have copied this excerpt because sadly I believe it to be all to true. It is sad that christians don't shout about these issues as much as they do about abortion and gay marriage.

"There is a version of Christianity in America that I think is not adequately committed to the Bible's teachings about the sacredness of every human life, including the lives of our enemies," Gushee said. "It's also insufficiently committed to the peacemaking teachings of Jesus and the example of Jesus as one who did not resort to violence or cruelty to accomplish any of his goals and instead suffered violence instead of inflicting it."

If you are on quilterbear's flist you will know that we had to go to the ER yesterday because she had a positive sputum test for MRSA. The ENT doc said she needed to go to the ER to get a chest X-Ray and be checked out by a doc.

I need to back track a little first. A couple of days ago, quilterbear and our beagle boy Spencer heard a loud noise in the AC and then it started squeaking some. He kept running from register to register sniffing and barking (which he did through the night). A bit later a strange smell started emerging from the AC which eventually settled to melting electrical insulation so we turned the whole thing off. We had already called the HVAC engineer and were waiting on him.

Anyway, yesterday morning an student worker from the office brings me a note that I need to call home urgently. I leave my cell on vibrate because teachers in this backwards school district are not allowed to have cell phones on when they are teaching. Go figure! I usually don't feel it vibrating. Anyway, I call home and K tells me what the ER doc is saying. (Actually it started with you need a chest X-Ray and moved on to seeing a doctor). This was at the end of 2nd period. At first I arranged to leave early at the beginning of 7th period but then when it became apparent that it was a full blown visit I found some wonderfully generous colleagues to cover my classes for the rest of the day. Bless them!

As I arrive home, the HVAC man is arriving! He come in to do his stuff and goes off to the basement where the unit is located. Whilst he is doing that we start to get ready. K shows me pictures of MRSA which looks very much like the folliculitis I have and have been battling with for a few months now. The treatments I have been receiving have not been too effective. Anyway, we decide I need to be checked by the ER doc also!

Back comes the HVAC guy. There was a possum in the fan unit - dead of course! How did it get there - we don't know but $70.00 later our AC is working again.

So, off we go to the ER, see the triage nurse, get registered and start the waiting game. I think this was somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 p.m. It wasn't too long before we were called back and put in a negative pressure room. Lord knows why as most of the staff left the door open. The ER doc is a good guy, an older man, asian, who graduated from med school at the age of 22. He orders a bunch of tests and chest X-Rays. We give up a few pints of blood between us. Poor K was stuck twice, me just the once. Then they came and took us for the chest X-Rays. After that the waiting began. I think it was 2 hours before the doc came back to tell us that the chest X-Rays were fine although K has some very mild bronchitis. He said he would give us both antibiotics and steroids, starting with shots in the ER. Poor K got 3, whole I only had two. In the upper butt, which seems to be the place of favor in the ER! He also said that if the MRSA was really a bad strain in her lungs she would be extremely sick and would have been in hospital days ago. That is good news but in the end not a very satisfactory explanation. So I will be off the the pharmacy later to get all the prescriptions filled.

Oh! He wanted another sputum sample from both of us this time and we had breathing treatments to help us cough something up. The lab tech said it didn't work in 8 out of 10 case. Guess what - we were in that 8. K eventually coughed up a tiny little bit but not me! We looked like we were smoking a hookah when we were on the breathing treatment! quilterbear will post a couple of pictures of me and the lab tech later today.

While all this was going on, our daughters arrived to get checked as they were concerned they might have caught the MRSA from K. After 9 hours of being ignored after triage the had to leave and go to another hospital. quilterbear will tell that story in more detail.

It makes me very angry (who with I don't know) that from time to time K gets these extremely serious phone calls from doctors offices expressing great concern about something and she has to be seen NOW and then it turns out to be much less serious than we originally thought. Her health is so fragile it scares her badly and that is why she will post about it quickly. The emotional toll on her outweighs the relief every time. She will need (and get) lots of TLC this weekend!

A thunderstorm had started earlier that evening and we were concerned because our Beagle goes crazy when it thunders. But other than that we weren't worried. We went to the store to get a few things for supper and went hope. It was raining and blowing with some thunder and lightning but we weren't too concerned. Didn't take as long to discover we were under a tornado warning! Which would continue for quite some time. Apparently one was spotted near our town (but I don't trust the local weather watchers too much!) and the radar showed the path of the storms going right over us. There was another a little further north over Bluefield and Princeton, WV.

We heard about a house in Grundy being blown away but I can't find anything on the local news reports that even mention last nights storm. Bizarre. We are under a flash flood warning for much of the day. I hope we can find out more later.

Sorry this is so long! What a day!

Addendum:

I forgot to mention earlier that the doc wanted a culture from my folliculitis but of course there were no pustules...

After not having time to continue reading Philip Yancey's book Prayer. I finally have it on audiobook and have been listening on the way to and from school. So here is another excerpy which grabbed my attention. It is taken from theologian Ray Andersons' book "The Gospel According to Judas'.

"Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives."