Karyl's Glimpses of Eternity--  Lupus and Life

Hello dear friends!
I am doing a very belated Thankful Thursday entry.  I am grateful for many things.

1.  After allowing myself to fall behind last year (poor self-discipline), I completed a two-and-a-half year year Christian writing course before my deadline of March 1!

2.  The necessary discipline to finish that course on time was hard to come by.  I had to give up some pleasures, including blogging, and spend time in prayer and work very hard to finish, writing as much as 25 hours or more a week.  But the Lord enabled me to finish on time and my mentor says I finished well.

3.  Because the last three months of writing lessons were on fiction, I had to develop characters, dialogue, scenes, plots and story lines.  With all of the work I put in on those, I have enough to write a mystery novel.  I began working on it two weeks ago and I am excited and very pleased about that.

4.  I'm grateful for my mentor in the writing course, who encouraged and taught me, all the time while urging me to deliver more to stretch and build my writing skills.  She really inspires me to be a better writer.

5.  My DH and I had our 40th anniversary February 26!  I am grateful for my sweetie.  And he gave me a beautiful ring.

In other news, I am preparing for a repair surgery sometime this spring.  I will post when I have a date.  I believe it will be in May or June.

Our kittens, Xena Kitten Warrier and Tuxedo the Cautious will be celebrating their first birthday next week.  They continue to be fun and work for us lol.

The intensive writing to finish the Christian Writers Guild Apprentice Course has prepared me for spending time each day working on my first-ever novel.  I am setting deadlines for completing the first three chapters and for completing the book itself.  And I am hopeful of continuing on with the CWG's next course, Journeyman.

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Hello dear friends.

I want you to know I am doing fairly well,  improving on priorities, but still not where I need to be to resume frequent journaling and reading blogs.  I hope that with continued discipline, I will be back in J-Land before spring arrives.

But in the meanwhile, I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year and am praying for God's best for all of you!

loving you with His love

karyl 

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Dear friends, I am taking a break from journaling for awhile.  I've turned my alerts off as well.

I have not been able to keep up with all of the reading and commenting lately.  I am OK -- just not managing my time and priorities as well as needed.

In the last year I have added several worthwhile activities to my schedule that take time and energy.

I recently realized I have not been doing those things that help me take better care of me and was feeling physically about the worst I've felt in over a year.  I know I need to re-prioritize and take better care of myself or I will be really sick again.

So --until I get the rest of my schedule into better shape, I will be absent from J-Land.  But I will be thinking of and praying for you, dear friends.

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1.  My DH has offered to help with the trench I've been digging to install the (flimsy) black vinyl lawn edging around the front yard project.  I've been out after supper for two evenings trying to dig one curving section approximately 15-18 feet long in our baked clay soil.  If I can get this part of the edging done, I can start spreading my rose quartz rock and my mulch and the project will begin to look less 'in process'.  I have more edging to put down in other spots but this is the most pressing part.

2.  I am grateful we had a non-windy evening tonight.  I got some layers of newspaper laid over miscellaneous sections of the project where I'm still battling grass and weeds.  Doing this with wind is difficult lol.  And here in KS lack of wind is rare.  I weighted the papers down with rocks and doused them with the hose.  Later I can add the landscape fabric.

3.  We brought the old red wagon (that my DH built for our son 32 years ago) upstairs and out to the garage for me to use as a garden cart.  I have many happy memories just seeing it.  It will do well for hauling my garden stuff around.

4.  We've had a couple of days' break from the intense heat we were having, making outside work a bit more comfy for me.

5.  Thanks to Gretchen for lending me her Thankful Thursday.  See the original Thankful Thursday at   http://journals.aol.com/ksgal3133/LivinginSavannah2/

Tomorrow I am going to try and take some digital pix and upload them into the computer of the front yard project so you can see what I've been working on.

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After visiting Curves this morning I went to my first volunteer job with the Technical Arts Minstry at church, making sermon copies for those who request CD's or audiotapes.  I tinkered with an extra project there, but unfortunately was not able to complete that part of my job.

I also have a second volunteer job as receptionist (and also hope to complete training as counselor) at an abortion-alternatives clinic.  I will be writing an entry about that another time.

After church, I went to Lowes for a couple of bags of garden soil and discovered a sale in progress in the garden center.

I assume I need say no more than ---- wahoooooo!!!

I wandered up and down the aisles several times, admiring pansies and other lovely annuals marked down to good prices.  But I'd decided not to plant any more annuals this year.

I forced my eyes away from the pansies's pretty little faces and surveyed the other offerings ---- perenniels --- that's what I need.

oooooooohhhhh, everywhere I looked there they were

-- in rusty red

-- pale lilac

-- medium purple

-- creamy white

-- vivid yellow

-- palest white tinged with lavendar frills

So I began pondering the color scheme I wanted --- and loaded some in the cart

-- and a few more

-- and tomorrow's task is awaiting me out in the front yard project

-- even though I am not caught up with what I've already got going out there

-- so please --- don't tell the Official Front Yard Landscape Inspectors to come by my house.

Mum's the  word.

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For a really upbeat entry, if you are on her list, don't forget to visit Tish's journal!  For permission to read, email her to request at mztishgray0726@aol.com   She is definitely worth reading!

http://journals.aol.com/mztishgray0726/all-things-are-possible-2/

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I got started back to Curves this week for the first time since a knee injury six weeks ago and held my breath while stepping on the scales to see how I'm doing on weight control.

Though not participating in an exercise regimen while the knee was too sore, I have been landscaping, gardening, prepping for another garage sale and chasing kittens up and down the stairs alot.

I am down two more pounds, making a loss of twenty since December.

That is certainly slow enough lol --- but I am keeping it off as I go, unlike other times in my life when I 'dieted' to lose and then regained it as soon as the diet was over.

This time I have been making small changes and choosing changes I can, the Lord willing, continue to live with the rest of my life.

So I am a happy camper.  I can tell some of the twenty has been pared from that lovely apple around my waist and that is very satisfying.

Now I am starting on the next twenty pounds!

I got a yucky chore done this afternoon.  I had the top half of an old defaced pie safe (no I didn't do that -- I found it that way years ago) on my front porch, used it for storing flower pots and accessories for years.

But it had become an eyesore and today was its last day on the porch.  I pounded and pulled it all apart.  The pieces are awaiting nail removal so it can go in the trash.

The only salvageable parts are the door handles, which are the old clear knobs that inspired new clear knobs that are available now.

I have organized better storage for my pots near my potting bench and have a plan for the space formerly occupied by the pie safe.

I have an old wood screen door that I plan to paint a pretty color and I have two half-moon shaped black wrought-iron baskets to attach to the mid-section of the screen door and put flowers in them.

I will hang my decorative clock-thermometer at the top of the door and then lean it against the porch wall.

The screen door won't take up as much space as the pie safe did and it should look nice with my faux wicker chairs and barn-wood bench.

Picturing that is a nice end for my week.  I hope and pray yours is going well also.

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Tux and Xena are now just over five months old and becoming very affectionate with us.

They love to be cuddled and petted and enjoy our company, a far cry from those first days in May when they hissed, spat and smacked their tiny paws on the floor as we approached them.

The kittens continue to grow in size, affection and mischief.  Tux, large pawed, big-boned and big-eared, is more laid back -- unless under the influence of catnip.

Tux looks nearly twice as big as Xena, who is physically small-boned and delicate but large in Kitten-Warriorhood.  Tux is still a bit more cautious than Xena.

Already this morning, Xena has unplugged a hanging lamp, jumped and turned on the hallway light-switch and removed the sink stopper from the bathroom sink!

To say she is a busy kitten is a massive understatement.

I have to admit the words 'devil kitty' have escaped my lips more than once.  My DH says she is an angel kitten lol.

Xena is very energetic and ambitious.  She also daily leads her more cautious brother into trouble.  I suspect Xena of framing Tux sometimes, making some mischief and then speeding off leaving him with the evidence dangling over his paws or face.

Yikes!  Right now I hear new noises coming from the kitchen.  I am afraid.  Very afraid.  I have to go look.

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The past several weeks have been busier than usual for me.  I was getting ready to have a garage sale -- my first in several years -- when I got word that my brother's condition was worsening.

Jim has been in the hospital since July 2.  He had his 45th birthday there.  His lung function is only 30 percent and he had pnuemonia.  He has four stents and two wires installed in cardiac blood vessels.  He has ulcerative colitis and years of taking steroids to keep that beaten back have wrecked his bone density, so he has four compression fractures in his spine.  He has a blood clot in one leg, so is on blood thinners.  He has pain from all of the above, particularly the compression fractures, so he is on a combo of very strong pain meds.

The evening I heard that he was incoherant and disoriented part of the time, I knew I should go.  He is about 200 miles away and they had been telling me I didn't need to come -- and I read that as meaning Jim didn't want me to come.

But that night's report sounded pretty ominous, so I drove over the next day and got to spend most of four afternoons and evenings with him, giving his wife a chance to get some needed rest and take care of some business.

Jim is the youngest of us five sibs.  I am the eldest, with nearly 13 years between us.  I left home when he was six years old and we didn't see much of each other after that.

Our visits as adults have been brief and more as strangers than kin.  I'd been told he regards me as an 'extremist' because I am a Christian who really believes in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.

Jim, taking our daddy's lifelong agnosticism a step further, seemed to be an atheist.  He had been very insulted when I asked some friends to pray for him during frequent bouts of pneumonia.

I am happy to say that during the time I spent with him in the hospital, we connected in more loving ways and that was sweet.  When I left, he told me for the first time I can recall that he loved me.

Jim is still in the hospital, unable to go home until he is weaned off some meds and stronger.

I don't know how the weaning back will go.  I know it's tough and he needs a lot of prayers for help.  And for the first time ever, he is willing to be prayed for.  And I praise the Lord for that.

Once I got home from Missouri, I sprung back into preparing for the garage sale and we set up Wednesday and ran Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday.  My dear dil helped me and our dear daughter too.  My DH helped me take it all apart, which blessed me a lot since I was tired.

The garage sale can be counted as a success.  I got rid of a lot of stuff and we hauled half of what was left to the Habitat for Humanity store and the rest is going to Goodwill today.

I plan, the Lord willing, to have another sale in October.  There are still bastions of clutter in the house and I am trying not to leave our children with the World's Largest Estate Sale when we pass on lol.

Amazingly, other than some aches, pains and fatigue, I am holding up fairly well physically.  I hope soon to be back working on the Front Yard Landscape Project.  More about that another time.

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