Always at the wrong time

As is typical, at the time when I really need my voice, my energy, my enthusiasm and all the zeal I can muster, I have lost my voice, feel rather ill and a bit sad.  Not helped by the inclement AKA bloomin' freezing weather!  However, despite this, I am soldiering on through.  Wednesdays are my hardest day, even though by rights, Tuesdays should be harder.  It's the three full hour lessons of Year 3 recorders that are the main killer as I need to be able to sing above the sound of 31 raucous beginner recorder players as well as Singing Assembly, Choir and a year 4 lesson.  Luckily, the year 3 lesson plan worked out to a certain extent as it was the lesson where I finally show them Every Good Boy Deserves Football and Face in the Space for reading the stave and then they have to read and write down the notes for Jingle Bells. Happily, I must have taught it fairly well, despite feeling awful, because actually, most of them got it right and those, with maybe 2 exceptions, who needed help, corrected their work well.  I guess it just proves that something good can still come out of something that might otherwise have been not so good.  Also, a lovely year 4 class were very kind to me and when I apologised for how awfully I had demonstrated something they had to sing, one boy said, "It wasn't bad Miss and it was the best you could do with your voice the way it is." (he's in the same class as the 'Hickory Dickory' girl mentioned last week.)

If you are in the habit of praying, please can you pray for good health, a voice and energy so that I may get through this season. I desperately need my voice for Friday night as the combined year,3,4,5,6 choirs are singing outside for the lighting of our school Christmas tree for the school fair and usually this requires me bellowing out the tune as a keyboard cannot be heard outside!

Meals with vegetables: Veg stir-fry

A little while ago, I tried tracking my vegetable intake after news articles that suggested we should be eating 10 portion of Fruit and Veg a day. Not once did I manage this although I did manage around 7 on average. A few people worried that they did not eat enough fruit and veg as a result of reading.

I figured it would be nice to share some meals in which I feel you can boost your veg intake.  Now a disclaimer here. I am NOT a good cook or any sort of expert and I hesitated to post this as it seems rather like teaching Grandma to suck eggs.  However, it is my blog and why not just post it regardless even if people think 'So what?'

 This was tonight's dinner which I cooked for CBC and I.
It was a vegetable stir-fry.
It contained 1.5 blocks of noodles

• 1 whole courgette, 
• 3 large carrots 
• double portion of frozen sweetcorn
• 2 whole Pak choi,
• 1 red chilli.
• crispy dried onion
• 1 free range egg.
• Coriander
• Sweet chilli sauce
• Toasted Sesame oil,
• Teriyaki sauce
• Soy Sauce
• Coconut oil

Usually, I would add a whole onion sliced thinly but I forgot.  Here alone in one meal, even without the onion, we had 4 portions of vegetables which is a good start. We might add prawns or tofu on another occasion but this was what was in the house. I think the key to it being simple and tasty
is the addition of the oils and sauces and the egg. I break the egg into the vegetable mixture before adding the noodles and sweet corn and stir it around and all the little eggy morsels are delicious! You could even serve a fried egg on top like they did in Bali or add chick peas. I might also include peppers!

I always have a bag of frozen sweetcorn and peas on hand and simply added the corn to the noodles boiling. You've added an extra portion of veg (or two if you added the peas) without any addition saucepans or trouble.  I think one veg stir-fry a week minimum is a great way to eat extra veg if you have been lacking on other days.  Aldi is nice and cheap for veg so that's not a problem!

What about you?  Do you cook a Vegetable Stir-fry regularly? What veg might yours include?

xx

Healing

I am going to share something personal in here. Please read it in the hope that I can be of some comfort to you if you have been in a similar situation or you might be in the future. I don’t usually share this much, but I feel I should here.

 

I’ve been absent from Blogworld for just under two weeks. Apart from one of two of you who I have mentioned it to, you probably haven’t noticed since I scheduled a few posts to publish whilst I was away. It’s been a bit hard but refreshing. There were a few reasons for this. Firstly, my church, for the new year, was having a fortnight of prayer and fasting to prepare the church for the year and to pray about what is in store for us, especially in our centenary year.

 

The reasons for Christian fasting are numerous but often is for trying to hear God’s voice better, spending the time instead with him. It’s not always easy but it is a really good thing.

 

There are various fasts you can do, refraining from certain foods, missing one meal, one meal a day, refraining from food for one day or a longer period. and it does depend on you, your help and what’s right for you, your health etc. It’s not a competition and it’s between you and God. I have exercised various fasts during this period but one thing was, I did want to have a ‘fast’ as it were, from blogging. Because it has tended to take up a lot of my time in recent times and I did think it would be healthy to take time away from it.

 

One thing that I particularly needed to pray about was my health. It was with a shock on Christmas Eve after midnight service, that as I was about to go to sleep, that I discovered a lump in my chest, quite a large one. I was filled with horror at the time. I told and showed CBC. As I went to sleep, I prayed. If I am honest, my prayer has been very sporadic in recent times. It showed/shows, I do find I am lost if I don’t. I got out of pattern. It was Christmas day the next day, so I/we didn’t tell anyone but I was aware of it, all day, praying at any interval. On boxing-day, I continued to think and pray about it. I was worried but I had to trust in God. What else can I do in that situation, but trust. You immediately fear the worst, no matter what rational solutions come to mind. Finally in the evening, just before bed, I told my Stepmum who thankfully works in a Doctor’s surgery. She was off to work the next morning. She told me not to worry. The next day, she managed to get me an appointment for midday. Thank God that she worked there. I saw the Doctor who examined me. She said it was definitely there and it was big but that hopefully because of the size, it might not be so serious, hopefully being a cyst. Because of the time in my monthly cycle, she told me to make an appointment for 1.5 weeks time when I was back from Northumberland. I felt somewhat reassured by that, but again, I had to trust in God.

 

The thoughts came to mind, that what if it was something serious like cancer but I felt protected from worry though it came to my mind every so often. I am the type of person who naturally worries about ‘the worst’ so this is one reason why my faith is so important to me otherwise I would still be that perpetual worrier for everything.

 

When I went back to the Doctor, my family doctor, he examined me and said, he thought, hoped and prayed it was a cyst but of course, sent to the hospital for me to have an appointment. He thought from the size, that it was probably a cyst, apparently, cancerous lumps are usually very small.

 

So there I was, at the beginning of the prayer and fasting with the appointment coming up. In essence, it was the perfect time to pray. I felt fortunate that I had this. Not everyone is that fortunate. Apart from my sister and one or two friends, I didn’t tell anyone though. I thought, that it wasn’t worth telling them until I knew what exactly was what. In essence, it felt like there was more for people to worry about than something that ‘probably wasn’t anything’ and God was on the case through my prayer and it would be selfish to burden them with it. It felt like I’d be attention-seeking to share.

 

It wasn’t until the Thursday the first week, during the devotion at church that said, “By not sharing you deny others a chance to pray for you,” that I realised I needed to share with the small group I was with- 4 others, so I told them the situation. They prayed for me there and then, and subsequently.

 

The night before the appointment, this Tuesday, I did suddenly get worried, more than I had been since Christmas eve/day. I did cry, having read an article in a magazine about a doctor who had had breast cysts and then got cancer. I suddenly felt that I should share with my dear friends at church. I sent a text to them, asking them to pray around about half midnight. I expected others to turn off their phones at night like I do, but apparently not. A dozen loving messages saying they were praying followed. Before I fell asleep that night, as usual, I felt the lump, it was very much still there.

 

The next morning, as I got up and dressed, I felt like I had done every day, for the lump. I couldn’t find it. I felt around and around and it wasn’t there. I was puzzled and somewhat disbelieving. I made my way to school. Every moment, I was alone, I checked again, to see if I could find it. I felt something small that I thought it was, might have been but then I couldn’t find it again. As I walked, I sang with a light mind. I shared with 2 teaching assistant friends of mine who are Christian. The worry I had felt the night before was gone. I was happy, it felt like having been prayed for by all those people might have made it go away.

 

When I got to the hospital and saw the consultant, I told him that it felt like it wasn’t really still there because I couldn’t really find it! After I saw him and he examined me, he sent me for an ultra-sound (as an under-30 year old that’s what you get first.) When I saw the lady, she used the ultra-sound and told me that what was left was/had been a cyst. It looked black on the scan ( I think sinister lumps are coloured as it were). She used a syringe and literally, there before my eyes, sucked out what remained of the lump, the black vanished.

 

She said that breast-cysts may return but always to get checked out if I am not happy with what is there.

 

Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I am quite certain that the prayer of my friends helped- they saved me from much worry, that lump reduced overnight to virtually nothing. I felt in receipt of a real blessing.

 

If you are ever in this situation, please remember: 

• Always get it checked out. 
• Tell people/friends. Do not keep it to yourself. People care, they want to know, they may want to pray. Why miss the opportunity of a blessing- it can only help. You are important. Prayer can’t hurt you, it can only do good.
• Try to see the good in situation. I have learned a lot from this situation. A lot. It has helped me focus in a way I haven’t been able to for ages. I have found so much in the situation. I have seen love from those around me.

I’ve missed you all.

 

xxx

Cinderella, The Crystal Maze and wisdom teeth

Hello!  Greetings from under a loud accompaniament of percussive rain on the conservatory roof!  Wow, how rainy it has been!!! Let's start with the positive!  I always smile when I wear this M&S Per Una knitted dress as it was the bargain of the century some years ago.  I like the fact it looks like fringing!  I tried to wear it with a Peter Pan collar top underneath today, to give it a bit of interest but I'm not sure that colours really go.   Also pleased as, like Cinderella, I got my missing shoe back!  One of these boots has been missing for a year!  It was in a drawer!

One really fun part of my day today was having to be the teacher in the knowledge and understanding area (i.e. science and stuff) in Reception.  One of the activities that had been set up was a series of half-pipes which were balanced in a downhill of great length from the water-tray to a bucket down the other end. 

I challenged the children to get the balls (lots of them) from the water tray to the bucket without touching the balls with their hands!  So they used the water! It was TOTALLY a Crystal maze challenge from the Oceania zone!!! Do you remember it?  I always wanted to go on the Crystal maze as a child and to my delight, I discovered they show Richard O'Brien repeats of the Crystal Maze on Challenge TV on a Saturday morning!  We had great fun and a great system going until I made the mistake of issuing the challenge to a very bright child of getting the ball to go back uphil from the bottom and applying the right science of needing a greater force, he dumped the entire bucket of water from a height onto the pipe in order to get enough force to push it back up!  Let's just say I was a little wet afterwards!

On the converse, last night, the area around the gum of where my impacted wisdom tooth wishes to come through began swelling up and being sore.  It started coming through a few weeks ago or so - well part of it through a flap of gum!  I felt a bit like a teething baby.  I brushed at it because I know the importance of not allowing any bacteria to build up!  However this morning it was really swollen to the extent that it was catching any time I shut my mouth properly and ate. It was really sore!  All sorts of thought ran through my mind thinking I had an abcess or something and I managed to secure an appointment with my dentist for after school.   He said I'd done the right thing in brushing it (but not so strongly!) and said that's it's because my tooth is at such an angle and because the other tooth above it coming through into the cheek so it's digging into the gum where the other one is coming through!  He suggests that if it continues to cause grief (I have gel and optional antibiotics), I might have to have the TOP one out, as that can be done as a local anaesthetic whereas the bottom one is in a very difficult position and the roots are very near the lower jaw nerve so I'd have to go to hospital!   Eeeeeek for both options!!!! I want to know if anyone has had these procedures done and what it was like and any issues!  I really dislike any dental procedures!!!

Anyway, I'll leave you with the dove of Peace to end on a positive hippy vibe! Peace man!