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B, I am just shaking my head at your boys. Kids are so, so, KIDS!!!
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
~ English proverb Neak's Story
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Well, Neak, wait till yours are teenagers. I was quite embarrassed. But they have been good boys, kind and decent. They always got good grades, never were in trouble, no drugs, etc. Plus they faithfully went to church and youth group.
Sorry you have been going through so much lately.
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(From my thread.) It was the first week the new pastor came, not even to preach, but just to meet everybody. I had heard really good things about him from Neaksis, who had heard good things about him from the other members of the board, and lots of other people.
His wife is a beautiful woman. Her first husband was Muslim, and she even went with him to Saudi Arabia (I think Mom said that's where it was). She has written a book about her experiences, I believe the title is "Out From Behind the Veil", and I'm pretty sure her name is Esmie Brannan. Or close to it. Hey, I was rattled by the time I got done, ok?
We chatted a bit, Esmie and I, but they had a previous appointment that afternoon and had to leave, so she excused herself. I shook her hand firmly, saying, "It's SO nice to meet you. I've heard nothing but good things about you..........so far."
Sadly, the floor did not open to swallow me, and I was left stammering something about, "Heh heh, not that that implies that I expect to hear something bad about you later!"
Then I walked away with as much dignity as I could muster. It wasn't much. The sympathy is appreciated, Believer. I think I'm getting fatalistic. I am almost to the place where I could bring myself to ask what next?
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
~ English proverb Neak's Story
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You are still very young. There are seasons in life where it seems so dark that you almost give up hope. But the Lord has plans for you. I'm sure of that. So hang in there girlie, to see what waits ahead.
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I feel old right now.
And I hope God does not have too many more drawn-from-real-life-experience books for me to write.
Sigh. But even if He does, you are right that He has plans. And His plans are always for the best.
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
~ English proverb Neak's Story
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YOU feel old neak? Crikey I think there are times when I make Aussies Aunt feel young.... and shes 85. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> But you are going through a hard patch so take a bit of time to smell the roses a moment or two. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> The fire place is romantic hint hint !! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> of course the key question now is who does the wood chopping?? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> I was reading my log I had done on request of my doctor when I was working on understanding what happened to 'us'. I had to think back & record the big issues I felt guilty about and why. It was very mixed up with Aussies injuries, PTSD & the affair. A very confused mix My husband can't sleep.
At night, in the warm summer heat of our Perth home he shares with me & his 2 children, he surfs the Internet, roams the house, the yard the neighbourhood. He lies down and gets up again. He drinks a beer and stares out the window at the black fire burned hills beyond our home to the east. Hours pass. He can't sleep. Before the war, he could have six beers and sleep like a baby anywhere anyplace at a drop of a hat, but now that works against him.
Drinking may help get his head to the pillow, but it also ratchets up the nightmares. For a while, he sweated out his bad dreams on the living room couch, and it drove me crazy. I would come out from the bedroom, touch his shoulder, ask what the problem was. He would just turn his back to me and not say a word. Now I know better than to ask, though occasionally when the silence between us is too deep, I'll put it out there, What're you thinking about?
“You” or '' Mazar-I-Sharif,'' he'll say. The pain is equal. And then the silence falls again.
He pops Ambien to coax some sleep. Then another. The results are mixed. On the advice of his doctors, he is taking three different pills for pain, a pill for swelling and another pill for depression. There are days when he is unrecognizable to himself, a bloke who a few years ago was a loving friendly man & gentle - strange that - and who is now engaged in what can feel like a never-ending battle to see his own future brightly. Death crawls around him like a insidious lover.
The only person who understands him is his mates, all of them restless, all of them much the same as my H according to their wives. If you ask them they will say ''I can talk to me mates -- I can't talk to my wife,''
I have spoken to many who were there when he was injured, when they thought he was dying. I have read the official version which even now is heavily edited for security reasons. The 50 yr rule applies apparently. But I have what they told me and what I have pieced together, what hes not told and what he remembers and mutters about half asleep.
I have his nightmare and I can do little. Being sorry, the regrets, are meaningless. Some has changed some hasn't ....... interesting ..life can be stranger then you ever think.
Life may feel as if you are constantly getting kicked on a daily basis, living is about picking yourself up each day and going on and on and on regardless.
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Hi AW--Sorry I can only pop in and out for a moment. Another horrendous night, and I finally got rebellious (after 11 hrs.) and said I was taking a 10-minute break. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> I'm tired of nursing. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> It's all Neaksis' fault. SHE'S the one who asked what else could go wrong!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> Yesterday morning while they were getting ready for church, the power went out. The girls live a couple of miles from each other, and neither one of them had any electricity. Neaksis showed up at church with a wild-haired Diva and some curling irons because they couldn't do any fixing at home. By the time Neak left around 10 or so, the power was back on again. After church Neaksis' group stayed for the potluck. Neak's family got hustled home so mama could lounge around the afternoon in wilting lassitude. Eventually Neaksis took all the kids back to Neak's house and when I got over there just before 6PM, Neaksis was just leaving to go to the school Christmas play. I left Neak's house at 6PM to go to work, and decided to run into Neaksis' house on my way past to scavenge for my missing cell phone. When I walked in the door, I smelled smoky, hot electrical wires, and heard this unidentifiable roaring sound, which I followed to the kitchen. There I found the garbage disposal running fiercely, so I turned it off, ran water down the drain to cool things off, and left for work. I thought someone had left it running when they left for the Christmas play, and wondered what kid had been so dumb. As it turns out, Semi-Brow was using the garbage disposal in the morning when the power went off, and being a juvenile doofus, hadn't turned it off when it quit for lack of juice...so it had been running non-stop for eight hours, ever since the power came back on. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> And from the smell of things, it was awfully close to ignition when I "accidentally" walked through the door in search of my elusive phone. How nasty would THAT be--coming home from the Christmas play to find your home burned to the ground? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> So, Neaksis, don't you DARE ask what next? It could be you. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> t&l
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YIKES tl see what I mean?????? Thats why I like the Residual Current devices - RCD's - we had put in the house when we built it. Any inquiring little minds can stick a fork in the toaster - ummm Aussie I mean <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> - and NOT get electrocuted. ANY electrical unit -like the garbage disposal -if it got hot the circuit shuts down ..well I hope it does. It does work you know.. it decided to become faulty on a weekend - Of course it had to be a long weekend - and no power until I had to pay a contractor 5 times the normal rate to fix it...the mortgage on that is paid up soon! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> Ahh the challenges of life .... SO SO glad you got to that unit before it became a fire!! Go buy a Lotto ticket for Xmas tl ... you just gotta win!!
Life may feel as if you are constantly getting kicked on a daily basis, living is about picking yourself up each day and going on and on and on regardless.
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Hey Mom - see if I let you borrow my cell phone again. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Don't worry, I will be able to pick it up on my way past Neaksis' house. Cell phones: 2 T&L: 0
Happily recovered!and Happily Married :0)
Commit your works to the LORD and your plans will be established.
Proverbs 16:3
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Hey AJ - Good to see you posting again. You are always welcome here. Sorry about your phone. Good luck getting it back.
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Hey Mom - see if I let you borrow my cell phone again. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Don't worry, I will be able to pick it up on my way past Neaksis' house. Cell phones: 2 T&L: 0 Boy, that Neaksis has a BIG MOUTH!!!!!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> she wasn't supposed to tell you! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> I think I'm going to have to quit carrying cell phones in my coat pocket, that's that I think...assuming I ever get to have a cell phone again. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> t&l
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Hi Believer, I think I need to get Mom a coat for Christmas. One with deep pockets and snaps like the one I got my dear wife.
Happily recovered!and Happily Married :0)
Commit your works to the LORD and your plans will be established.
Proverbs 16:3
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Mom, call Dad. Also, he will be home soon.
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
~ English proverb Neak's Story
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Hey guess what. Esmie Branner, your new Pastor's wife, did marriage counseling for Flard and I back in the day. Oddly weird.
I'm at the computer lab writing my final papers for classes, so I need to run. Just checking in.
Love,
Me
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I meant "Pre-marriage" counseling. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
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gellnjen - Sounds like you're working real hard in the computer lab.
AJ - Yes, a coat like you got your wife! That would be most excellent.
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hee hee, working hard indeed. I just spent 40+ minutes catching up on MB, listening to music with my head phones on, dreading the thought of writing that very first sentence to open up my 15-page paper, due tomorrow!! Its a take home test, so its not that difficult, just time consuming. I'll be online for quite a while! Goody! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
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YIKES! What is the paper about? Maybe we can help.
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The paper is about the Renaissance <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> What was “Renaissance Humanism?” How did women experience the Renaissance? What political, civic, economic, and/or military factors contributed to the growth and development of the Renaissance? I get to talk about neo-Platonism, Dante, Petrarch, luxury consumption, conspicuous consumption, urban development of the Renaissance, Machiavelli, Pico, Christine de Pizan(the first Femenist!) rhetoric, the classics, and a bunch of other stuff Hiphip horray! For instance, men of the Renaissance concur in one conclusion: "that the behavior of women is inclined to and full of every vice." OH GOODY!!!!!!! Christine de Pizan, in her book, "The Book of the City of Ladies" (1405) says, "Alas, God, why did You not let me be born in the world as a man, so that all my inclinations would be to serve You better, and so that I would not stray in anything and would be as perfect as a man is said to be?" I can already hear Thndr snorting, all the way in Washington State <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> However, Christine was full of hyperbole, and in her book later refutes all conceptions of women as vile, temptresses, [email]Wh@res[/email], etc. Indeed, I am having a blast--as fun as a snail who has just been squashed.
If this world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
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Ok, so I wasn't going to go into further detail into my paper, but this was too fascinating to not pass up!
"The citizens of a city--it is supposed to be Siena [in Italy]--once had a general who had liberated them from hostile oppression; every day they deliberated about how to repay him, and they concluded that no reward within their means would be great enough, not even if they made him lord of the city. At last someone rose and said, "Let us kill him and then worship him as our patron saint." And that is precisely waht they did with him, mor or less what the Roman senate did with Romulus."
Grrrreeeeaaaatttt. A bunch of Renaisance geniuses hard at work.
If this world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.
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