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Thursday, 12 November 2009

  • Waking Up

    When I woke up today, I could not get the song, "Covered," out of my mind. 

    I don't know all of the lines, but it goes something like this:

    "Covered, covered in prayer.  I've got you covered." 

    It just kept playing over and over and over in my head, and it was such a comfort to me because that is not normal.  I knew it was because so many people were praying for me.  Thank you very much all of you. 

  • We Have a Prizewinner for Worst Day This Year

    2009 has had some really horrendous days in it (my husband's heart attack, threat of being out on the street for lack of finances to name just two), but today wins the prize for worst day.  I can't go into details, but I will say if I get a day worse than this one in this calendar year that I am going to cash in my chips, and get a different life on another planet, or maybe a different solar system altogether.

    You know, I will say this.  Christian people are just absolutely amazing.  Yesterday, people I don't know prayed for me with just as much intensity as if I actually belonged to their church.  It was amazing.  They actually cared about me when I was at a huge crisis point.  Today, people who are lay pastors at yet another church and who do not get a salary from anyone, spent hours at my house.  I know absolutely for sure that one of them was facing a huge business crunch and really needed to be elsewhere, but stayed here to support me.  On Monday, a pastor that I know only marginally offered to give us pretty much an entire day of his time for nothing.  He has a very small house church in a city so far away that I am sure he knows that we would never be regular attenders there.  He just offered because of His love for Jesus Christ.  Today, one of my near and dear friends, prayed for me on the phone.  She would never claim to be a spiritual giant, she just loves Jesus.  Do you know what she did?  While she was praying for me she said, "You know, Sofa, I am just going to go big on this.  I am going to ask for a miracle."  It makes her sound like Oral Roberts or Benny Hinn.  She is not even charismatic.  She just loves me like that.  My bible does not say that faith is motivated by big money seed giving, but that faith works by love.  I believe that God is going to "go big" and answer her prayer.  There have been many other amazing instances of people showing me great grace and favor today, on this, the worst day of my life this year, maybe of my life so far.

    If you were one who prayed for me, on the phone or just alone, thank you.  I have told God today many times that I do not possess adequate words to thank Him for how he has come through for me today.  I think that part of His "going big" was showing me that He is bigger than I thought.

Friday, 06 November 2009

  • Just Reporting In

    I am glad to report that I actually wrote addressed, stamped and mailed exactly one thank you card.  I'm sure it wasn't for anyone who reads my blog so don't get your hopes up.  I was going to go walking, but by the time I got it together it started raining.  I am disappointed.

Thursday, 05 November 2009

  • Starting A New Season Of Life

    I realized that I already blogged today, so I am taking things into my own hands and writing on a completely different, but frequently mentioned subject for me.  I am still working on being not a home school mom anymore, but I had never cleaned out The Home School Cabinet.  You know, that place where I stored all of my current "we are using it this week" items for the last fifteen years.  It just seemed like everything else was always more pressing.  Probably it also made me kind of sad to actually have to do something that showed that I accepted that those days are gone because I really liked those days.

    Last year I must have read four books telling me how to down size, right size or have a more organized life.  This year it seems to have soaked into my brain, and I am pursuing it.  Also, I was once again procrastinating grading papers for my Basics With The Classics class, and it seemed like a good alternate activity.  It took hours to clean out the closet.  I removed and sorted it all into the give away, throw away and store somewhere else piles.  It is now a really great cabinet for all of the stuff for my current class.  When I was done cleaning, I actually graded those papers, and I enjoyed it!  (My class is making tremendous strides forward in their writing ability.  How fun is that?) I think that having a place for everything and everything in its place is actually kind of therapeutic for me.  I do not like working in a messy, disorganized area.  Let's be honest:  I hate it.  The only problem is that now I have a pile on the basement floor of stuff that used to be in the home school cabinet.  The somewhere else pile has migrated down one level. 

    The next most pressing organizational problem area is actually the laundry room despite the new pile on the basement floor.  Believe it or not I recently caught up on all of my ironing.  It was actually fun because I was listening to tapes and Cd's the entire time.  However, my former desk in the laundry room is stacked in a terrible fashion with things that I actually need to make a decision about or take action on.  Please read the following because it will soothe my conscience a little bit;  if I owe you a thank you note, it is probably recorded in that pile.  I actually have thank you notes and stamps so I may be sending you a vastly overdue note in the next few days.  Or not.  It just kind of depends.  Today is my day off, and I have not gone running or even walking for a week so I may or may not get to that stack today.  Eventually, I will do something.  How's that for a non-committal life resolution.  I am gradually adjusting to my new season of life, but it is not happening as quickly as I thought it would.  Sometimes my forward momentum wanes a little, but I am still walking down the road.  As Carol Benjamin once said, "Life is so daily."

  • Giving Up Your Favorite Drug

    Over a week ago, I went cold turkey on Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke.  I won't wallow in facts about how much I was drinking or the effects of drinking that instead of healthier things, like water.

    I will just say that it is harder to get free from caffeine than I thought that it would be. 

    About three days after I quit cold turkey, I started a 1300 calorie a day diet.  Mostly that means that I am counting calories, and I have not been as successful counting calories as I have been in not consuming diet colas.  To help me on my low cal journey, I have available to me cases of products from an unnamed company that my husband invested in last year, thinking that we would become distributors.  Mr. Sofa is a wonderful, intelligent businessman, but he does not really have the kind of personality that goes along with that kind of business.  He invested in it against my better judgment and without my consent so he was leery of asking for my help when it came time to sell it, and not just listen to tapes about it.  I offered my support nonetheless, since it was already a done deal and a lot of irretrievable money had been spent.  By this time, Mr. Sofa decided that he had pretty much been snookered because he planned to sell it by phone, using a leads list generated by the company's infomercials and he realized too late that this approach was not going to work although it had worked with him.

    I said all of that to say this:  caffeine is hidden in a lot of products to 'help' us. 

    Yesterday, for some reason, I missed taking the supplements that this company supplied, and I felt absolutely horrible.  Like really bad.  I had been taking one pill from four different bottles, twice a day.  They recommended three times a day, but I felt like that was just too weird.  One was a multi-vitamin.  (Who needs three of those a day?)  I will not give the brand names of these other items, just their listed functions:  bottle two - nutrient support formula, bottle three- dietary supplement, and bottle four - promotes weight loss, boosts metabolism and builds energy.

    Trust me when I say that I felt all day like I was craving caffeine, and I had a monster head ache.  Two ibuprofen barely smoothed the edges off of it.  When I got home from my second job, I just crashed into bed, fully clothed, and slept until 5:30 this morning. 

    Yesterday turned into a horrid day for other reasons as well, and sleep was the best tonic for everything that went wrong.

    This morning I have found out from research on the web that green tea is a big source of caffeine, and that just one pill from bottle number four had 84 mg of caffeine in it.  I think I was getting more caffeine from those supplements than I had been taking in with diet cola.

    Here's my philosophy of life on the last few days:  life is a journey and I have been on Stupid Road.  I am going to be taking the multivitamins which do not appear to contain any caffeine, and I am dropping the others.  I will still use some of their shakes from time to time, which when added to milk with a little protein powder are not too bad.

    I don't use them everyday, but they are not bad for a meal replacement once in a while.

    My conclusion is this:  it is harder to give up caffeine and to truly get away from it than you think it is. 

uglygreensofa

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  • I have an ugly green sofa so that you will feel welcome, comfortable and relaxed. Sofas are great for thinking, reading and relaxing. If you doze off, no one will be so rude as to call it to your attention, but if you stop thinking, we will all feel free to comment on it.

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