A birthday and other stuff 12.10.05

so, it seems like ages since i was here, for various reasons, not least my teenagers, we really need another computer, hopefully one of them will win the blue peter competition for a lap top

we had a really nice weekend for menekses birthday, slightly belated, but my sisters came, and menekses friend from york, and also of course my lovely niece, and i got to babysit her all by myself, alone!! a miracle, no-one interfering. meric had a gala in pickering and we won, which means we are division two champions and get promotion in the east coast league, its very good news, especially in light of the close call we had at driffield. meric is swimming very well just now, he is having to swim in the open relays because we don't have enough older boys, but its improving his times so thats good. on sunday my littlest sister's boyfriend came, its the second time we have met him, poor guy was in at the deep end - he is very very quiet and our house is very very noisy and completely chaotic although not actually during the week when we are doing school, and i find alot of noise very stressful, but, since it was also a birthday last weekend and the visitors it was particularly noisy. its a girl thing i think. my husband, the youngest of three boys, regularly tells his mum 'thankyou so much for not having any girls'!!

anyway, on monday the teenagers, me, my middle sister and my lovely niece all went to scarborough to meet up with our friends harry, robi and lesley. we met with robi first, he takes excellent photos and we had asked him to take some of the three kids so we can send them to mum. we had a nice time with him and then we all went for fish and chips together. very nice day. my sister then went home, her car had failed its mot, the exhaust dropped off in boston spa so then she had to come back!! which meant we got more time with them. we took the baby swimming, well, i didnt swim, but meric did, and my sister and niece, she is so confident in the water! incredible, and has learnt the begining of a tumble turn, apparently it will take 8 years to perfect

the rest of the week was as per, my lovely niece kindly gave us all a stinking cold. we had our bible study on wednesday night, the guy from bristol came, he is going to be looking after our church until we get a new minister, he spoke very well and was really nice, left his phone number and everything, very approachable, so that went down well.

dear me, i feel like my entry today is all disjointed, i have been doing my 'night job' of delivering pizzas, well, more correctly, i drive and meric delivers. we got lost tonight, well, not lost, just couldn't find the right house. my husband knows where each customer lives, more or less, but he is laid up with this cold. by the time we found the house i was feeling extremely anxious. anyway, its the end of the night, the kids are in bed and i have a few more minutes in front of the screen.

we called my mum today, on a landline at someones house, she says the people in brazil are wonderful, well, everywhere i think they have been they have met with amazing hospitality and friendliness. today is her birthday, so we called to sing etc. she is feeling pretty sad because she is missing us all and because she missed lovely nieces first birthday yesterday. of course, one year olds being what they are, i don't think lovely niece remembers mum at present and thats what mum is finding hard, her wonderful relationship with our two kids is set solid as a rock but of course when kids are little they are very fickle. as soon as mum is back it will only take a day for the relationship to be re-established, i mean mum taught lovely niece how to crawl!! (she taught our daughter how to eat an ice cream, i have the photo to prove it too ) anyway, mum sounded a bit sad, but hopefully the excitement of what she is doing will soon compensate.

which brings me nicely to lovely nieces first birthday. my sister goes to this lovely coffee shop in otley with very nice lemon drizzle cake, so thats where the party was, because of course first birthdays are usually for the adults not the kids. we had a really nice afternoon and it was even better for me because erdinc came with us, he shut the shop too . medium sister, my brother in law and lovely niece are moving house soon, nearer to us, so we are booked to go and help clean etc. menekse will be able to go over there on the bus i think which she is very excited about. we are going to work really hard at school stuff for the next couple of weeks so that we can have the time off to go and help. i also want to fit in some leafleting for the shop, its been a bad summer and its pretty quiet now too until the run up to christmas, so whilst we are saving money on wages it might be nice if we could rustle up a few more delivery customers, so the kids and i are going to to drop some menus around the doors.

the people mum is staying with are very religious Roman Catholics, she told them 'my daugher julie has Jesus in her heart' - i was very touched to hear her say that. we had a minister staying over this weekend, well, a missionary/evangelist actually, he was really very nice and spoke very very well at both services, he was very positive and encouraging and we had a good time of fellowship, i invited andrew over for the afternoon too, so that was nice. the missionary guy went down well with everyone but we don't know if we can call him as he is not an ordained man, but the state of the mainland means that a missionary might be more suitable, well, in my humble opinion, of course at the end of the day i am waiting for the Lords leading in this but its interesting to keep note of who comes and who makes a real impact like this man did.

anyway, its getting late and i am still trying to establish the habit of getting up early, its the one thing i would change about myself - i find mornings so hard it takes me ages to come round and get going and it isn't because i don't work outside the home, i have always been the same, i am just a nightowl i think thats the problem, but even when i get up early i still end up staying up late, plus lately i have been suffering from insomnia (well, if suffering is the right word), tomorrow i am going to buy us a new bed, lets see if that makes any difference.

in the meantime, goodnight

Lovely Weekend 3.10.05

we had a lovely weekend, really lovely. i am pretty tired now and feel a bit stressed, but it was worth it. and we have had a nice monday too. meric and i are working as the delivery team, menekse is helping her dad in the shop, so meric is coming on here now and she will be here later, which means my time is up!!

Another BBC rant 30.9.05

well, its been a funny sort of a day, we have visitors coming this evening, so i always feel a bit in limbo when that happens, we are more or less ready for them so now we are just waiting. meric is watching basil brush and i am sorting bits and pieces out. i think this computer is going to have to go and be reformatted since it is still playing up that means we will be without any internet connection again for a few days and i will lose everything, still worse things happen at sea.

the BBC, again!!

i watched the news the other night. at 6 p.m. i did miss the very begining of the bbc programme, but saw half their programme and the headlines, the lead story was the labour minister who is going to DEFINITELY sort out school dinners i then switched to ITV. now, i know that the bbc has a tremendous government bias, anyone with half a brain can see it clearly. but what happened next took my breath away. the lead story on ITV was the 82 year old chap getting shamefully manhandled from the balcony at the labour party conference for shouting out 'nonsense' during jack straws speech now i am sure that everyone has now read and heard all the coverage about this and i know bliar has apologised etc etc, but what i was incredulous about was the fact that the bbc didnt even mention this!! i mean seriously, how could they NOT? if this had happened in turkiye it would have been seen as a serious human rights violation and jeopardised their admittance to the EU, in china there would have been headlines all over the world, but with new labour and our national television station there is NOTHING, it took me ages to find it on the website too. it seems to me that we live in a police state, voices of dissent are not allowed, whatever happened to free speech?

i was hoping to go to london next week to protest about the religious hatred bill which is being brought before the Lords just before being made law, doesnt look like i am going to make it which is a great pity, i would have liked to have taken the children.

something that puzzles me, after i watched question time last night i was thinking about this. everyone you talk to is 'anti-war', no-one admits to voting for labour - so how on earth did they get back in and why didn't the lib-dems with their 'leave iraq' agenda get in or at least get more votes. its a mystery. i voted conservative. i would have voted UKIP but there was no candidate where i live, mind you it makes no difference - i live in a conservative safe seat anyway, my husband voted labour i think.

meric says he doesn't like doing all his book type work all together in the mornings, he would like to split it up throughout the day and intersperse it with other things, so we have compiled a bit of a timetable for him, and we will try it out for a week to see how it goes. it is doing him good to do deliveries with me on mondays and tuesdays, i think he sees how hard his dad has to work for not much return.

oh yes, my brother in law finally called to let us know he was ok after the hurricane, they evacuated to friends in austin.
well, i have to go and get menekse from riding, so that the party can begin, we have another birthday cake too!!

Tired, and its late 29.9.05

well, i have been trying to get on here all day, to no avail.

meric and i worked last night as the delivery team, Team Pizza, , so i didn't get him up early, menekse though got herself up early and did all her school work so that she could go up to the stable yard for the afternoon. we had just got nicely settled with our tea/coffee and bibles etc, when my little sister rang. i haven't talked to her for ages so we had a lovely long chat, i am very excited that they are moving closer to us. i could hear my lovely niece in the background, she is 50 weeks old!! i can't believe it, and i still can't believe how much i love her!! my sister and the baby are coming at the weekend, along with our other, little, sister (who is actually 26!!) and menekses friend from york, they are coming over for menekses birthday, rather belated, but people were away etc. we are all going to see pride and prejudice on friday night, well, i am hoping to go, we are going to leave the baby with meric all being well, if she seems unsettled i will stay home with her. then menekse and her friend are going up to the yard on saturday morning, my sisters are going up at 1 p.m. and they are all going out on a trek and i get to watch my lovely niece sleep (hee hee, or not ), we are having a night of chick flicks and chocolate, meric is going to a gala in pickering, so he is going on the bus. not sure what we will do about tea - maybe go to Leos. then i am making sunday dinner, middle sister and baby are staying over until monday. i am looking forward to it. i like family get togethers. of course mum won't be here but no doubt she is having a great time and will, i am sure, be thinking about us all.

the 50th birthday the kids and i went to last week was really nice, lesley was so pleased to see us, so i was glad we had made the effort and i overcame my nerves. we stayed quite a long time before the smoky atmosphere got too much for us all, not just meric, its surprising how much we notice smoke - because i don't think we know anyone english really who smokes, - of course loads of turks do and they are usually not considerate with their smoke either (no offence!!). anyway, we had a good time and it was nice to see lesley, we are going to take the baby to see her on monday all being well.

since then it has been a whirlwind of birthdays and horses and getting ready for the swimming club agm, i resigned, finally, i am just so fed up with the two faced hypocrisy and the politics of it all, opposition all round to anything new from the old guard who seem to think they will be there for ever, goodness knows what will happen when any of them want to leave and they have driven all other volunteers away anyway, the stress was just too much so i resigned, and thankfully someone else has been pressganged into doing it. my husband is relieved bless him, and i am trying to make the stress in my life somewhat less so that i don't feel so awful for so much of the time. i am also trying to change the way i eat but we won't go down that particular avenue just now. the demands of homeschooling are increasing as the children grow older and also for the first time ever i am helping my husband in our shop so that we can save money on wages. i feel pretty good about that. i am also doing the childrens meeting on monday evenings at church, its nervewracking and we keep praying for more children, we will have to see how it goes.

anyway, its pretty late, i want to get up early and i am going for coffee at the chairmans house (swimming club), i think she might want to tell me off or something - my report was quite blunt. anyway, perhaps i will be back tomorrow, if the kids and the computer will allow it. i think this computer is on its way out, but i am trying not to think about it as we can't really afford a new one even though dell have some very good offers.

I'm back 27.9.05

again with the Gary Glitter?

well, thankfully my computer has been repaired and didn't have to be wiped it still looks a bit odd though - the icons and font sizes etc. to be honest its pretty old, we could do with a new one, but finances being like they are it will have to wait, we will keep on plodding on with this - it does the job even if it is clockwork

anyway, you might be relieved i wasn't online last wednesday 21st september. there would have been a MAJOR RANT on this blog about radio 4. in fact, i might just RANT now, even though its late and i should be going to sleep.

once a fortnight (thats two weeks for my american friends), our church has an early morning prayer meeting, 7 a.m. every other wednesday. we are a small church so its very encouraging to have at least 7 or 8 there at that time of the day. i watch very little t.v., don't buy a newspaper because the smaller ones are too sleazy and the sensible ones are too long - who has time to read a broadsheet everyday? so, i listen to radio 4 and the Today programme, i know the bbc has the worst labour-bias in history (most likely), and its full of pretentious luvvies who don't live in the real world, but, at least if i listen to it i know whether we are at war and if tony bliar has resigned or not.

last wednesday was dreadful. i emailed the bishop of Oxford a while ago - he was on 'thought for the day' going on about how any sensible person can't possibly believe Creation as in Genesis 1-11 - duh, silly bishop, if you can't believe Genesis how can you believe John 3:16? i am digressing. its because i was SO cross!! but before i go back to the original story, the bishop kindly emailed me back and told me that christians like me made him depressed, poor guy -i mean, imagine being the chief exec of a company with no faith in its product? how could you do the job?

so, there i am driving up to the prayer meeting about 6.45 a.m., meric and i, menekse was at home not feeling too good. john humphreys comes on, all jolly, about what a long tedious book the bible is, how no-one can possibly read it ALL THE WAY THROUGH!!!!! seriously, what is the matter with the man? then informs the listening public that some bishops (again!) have put together a 'bible' that can be read through in 100 minutes, yes dear reader, 100 minutes, your eyes do not deceive you and i have not lost my marbles. not yet anyway. john humphreys finds this very amusing and proceeds to introduce one of the Today programmes 'thought for the day' people (whose name escapes me he will be relieved to know). the conversation went like this:-

JH - 'so, have you read the Bible all the way through from page 1 as it were?' ha, ha, guffaw, guffaw.

thought for the day guy, and presumably professing christian....
'ha ha, guffaw guffaw, well, i've got one of those read it a in year thingys, but have never got past january, haw, haw haw'

JH - joins in laughter, mocking, derisory, then says 'lets hope they've left out all those boring bits in leviticus, ha ha, guffaw guffaw'

more mocking conversation followed concerning the point of this so-called 'bible' (to give people a taste of Christianity apparently), and what style its written in, journalistic apparently, not AV (more mocking laughter).

now, i know that the establishment is rabidly anti-biblical christianity, but seriously, was this necessary? the bibles not that hard, and its very interesting, our kids have both read it all the way through - the AV too, its the only version we have in the house. and more to the point would anyone have DARED to give the Q'uran the same treatment?

to quote someone on lenny henrys show....'I don't fink SO!!

anyway, its making me cross just thinking about it again, if it wasn't almost a week later i would email the programme. but instead i will go to bed and try to get a good nights sleep, i want to get up early tomorrow. one other piece of news, i have resigned as swimming club secretary, i will miss the photocopier.

goodnight.

A Disaster 16.9.05

something has happened to our computer at home . it is, as we speak, in the repair shop, the guy says it will have to be 'wiped' . i am at the library, putting all my lists on 'no mail'. our daughter is already suffering from withdrawal, how on earth is she going to talk to anyone on msn until the small wee hours? its a funny thing being without a computer, it makes me realise how much i actually use the thing, and i am not even that much of a technobod.

the most irritating thing, well, probably not the most, i am prone to exaggeration at times. is that i spent quite a while yesterday writing an extensive post about things of a spiritual nature and how i am currently feeling about stuff in my church and prayer life etc. it was time for me to collect menekse from riding and my husband went on the computer to look at football, he closed all the windows when he had finished and so i lost my long blog entry

anyway, we are off to a 50th birthday party tonight, me and the kids, i am not much of a party animal and i am finding the thought of it quite stressful, but i am sure that once i am there it will be fine and there will be people there that i am quite anxious to see so that will be nice.

anyway, i need to get home, i feel guilty sat here in the library - as if i am doing nothing, lol, so i am off home for afternoon tea and read aloud with meric. who knows when i will be back.

A worker......13.9.08

i was going to say 'a working girl' but these days that could have a connotation i don't especially want.

i am the 'official' delivery driver for our shop tonight, we are trying to save money on wages, so my husband and daughter are working in the shop and our son and i are doing the deliveries, well, he is going to scouts as well. i am a bit anxious - will i be able to find the right house in the dark, etc etc.

so, the gala went ok on saturday, meric swam very well - especially in the open relays. my starting was ok, i am getting more confident, i really need to do my practical exam. the fly in the ointment, as usual, was kingfishers, they are such cheats and bad sportsmen (the coaches, not the kids particularly), what does that teach the kids though? what is the point of cheating? at the end of the day its the kids that are being cheated, its really really stupid and annoying, it spoils the galas .

one of the boys in our club was, once again, particularly unpleasant to meric. apparently this boy hates me and meric - he doesn't even know us, and says i am trying to close the club down - of course his mum is one of those who just drops him off and doesn't get involved, in spite of the fact that swimming, in common with alot of activities these days, is desperately short of volunteers, most parents seem as if they want as little to do with their own children as possible, but i suppose that is a whole other entry. anyway, alot of the behaviour exhibited by the other swimmers is, apparently, all to do with school - well, Praise the Lord we don't do school then is all i can say!!

we were up late watching casualty, but it made no difference, i still couldn't sleep. my husband filled the car with petrol 'just in case' apparently people are panic buying, stockpiling and even ringing 999 to find out where petrol is available , - get a life people, its not the end of the world. actually, it might be nice to be forcibly immobile for a while, not that i am holding out much hope.

i woke up on sunday feeling terrible as a result of a cold, my voice had been a bit iffy on saturday (you try shouting 'take your marks' 48 times), anyway, i took echinaca and garlic, went to church, felt pretty bad, drank alot of ribena, started the dinner and left the kids too it, for the first time in months i felt cold and tired!! how incredible is that? the kids managed to cook dinner without killing each other - just about anyway. then menekse went to work and meric and i went to church, i then had an early night and woke up on monday feeling alot better. we had a couple in church from New York - on the 11th too, they were very nice and kind, especially in view of the singing which with no piano and so many away was not that good. who am i kidding, it was terribleD thankfully i know what the bible says - 'make a joyful noise to the Lord' and mine is both a noise and joyful.

anyway, monday was one of those weird days, we didn't seem to do much but actually did quite alot. menekse was at riding again, its throwing me off a bit, but i am pleased that she is being kept busy and its healthy - all that fresh air and excersise. now i need to sort meric out with something equally good. i had a hospital appointment in the afternoon, a follow up to the procedure i had done in february, everything is as it should be.

meric and i then played risk and watched 'the ashes' along with the rest of the nation, not that i understand cricket one bit - and me a yorkshire lass too. but, its easy to get caught up in the moment and the excitement, i even managed to tell my husband we hadn't had to rely on the weather to win but pieterson had had an excellent innings. well, i might be wrong about the name, but you get the gist. personally i prefer football and rugby. cricket is just too complicated - how can it be over before its over? and then be called a draw

didn't sleep a wink last night, a really bad headache kept me awake until the wee small hours, i should have got up and taken something, but i didn't. spent the day pottering about whilst meric did school work, i feel really tired just now and am wondering if that means i will get a good nights sleep. no idea. i have some other stuff going around in my head that is slightly deeper than my usual ramblings, so, i am going to put it on a separate post. i am now off to do a delivery!!!!

Confused?

Well, i don't think anyone actually reads my blog, but, there has been alot going on for me lately and i started to keep a journal, only just, today as a matter of fact :0 but as i was writing it this morning i thought there were some things i would like to share with the blogsphere, plus i have alot more time on my hands lately for reasons which i will explain in another post. so, anyway, i started looking around at my blogs - yes, i had two of them, this was the first, then i think i lost it and started another at blog.co.uk then i seem to have briefly come back here, gone back there and then given up. so, i am staying here, but alot of the posts on the other blog are quite interesting, well, to me at any rate, so i am moving them across - so, those posts have the original date in the blog title.

btw, does anyone remember a crazy programme called Soap! at the beginning of every episode the announcer would do a recap and then say 'confused? you will be after this episode of Soap!!' - well, thats what you will feel like when/if you read my blog.

so, off i go, usually i put a little waving smiley at the end of my entries, but i don't know how to do that on blogger, perhaps i will just cut and paste one for now.

I wonder why......10.9.05

So many people are able to keep blogs?

think about it, how many times have you heard someone say, or even said yourself, 'i'd love to keep a diary but i just can't keep up with it'. and yet this new internet craze of blogging seems to have taken off like wild fire, why is that? i do think of it as a diary type thing, and its quite therapeutic, i write mine as if it is private mostly - not always, but i don't think anyone is reading anyway apart from my sisters maybe and my friend janet. but nevertheless, the possiblity that someone IS reading is there and yet i, and others i have read, are quite open about what we write as if it were our secret diary. why can i quite easily write reams here but am seemingly incapable of keeping a diary at all - i had a five year diary as a child, it has about a dozen entries.

the other thing i found myself wondering about the other day is what happens to all the things i read about? now, i read ALOT, its my leisure activity of choice (if reading can be classed as an activity, lol). someone asked an opinion of a book i have read recently, i told them what i had thought of it and went back to the book again for another look, its called 'the Family, Gods Weapon for Victory' by robert andrews, its very good but teaches restoration theology and the quotations are mostly NKJV which i don't like. anyway, i hadn't actually finished this book which is unusual for me. so i started again from where i had left off - only to find that i can't really remember the rest of the book, i can remember the gist but not the detail. so then i got to thinking about other stuff i have read, and i wonder, where does all that information actually go? some books i read through twice. i have read some parts of the Bible (the book of Genesis for example) many times, i have read the Bible all the way through several times but sometimes when i read something i find myself thinking 'i have NEVER noticed that before!'

so, i imagine that all the information we get from reading text is stored in our brains much like a filing system and then somehow comes together to form our world view and thought processes.

which brings me to my next point.

have you ever noticed how bodies of text are being phased out in favour of pictures or just a few words in large font? i have noticed this with childrens books and the media. a friend of mine who is a teacher told me that she would give me any help i needed in keeping up with the National Curriculum, she advised me that in my daughters school year the reading matter was something called 'the flour babies' by anne fine, (reviews on amazon), well, i didn't know what that was, so i just said 'well, at present we are reading 'les miserables' by victor hugo, her face was such a picture that i felt obliged to add 'well, its a translation, not the original french', but it seems that she was surprised that we are reading 'proper books' - menekse is currently reading 'a tale of two cities', meric's books of choice are non-fiction technical books. so, i wonder why this is, why do children not choose to read, why are books being 'dumbed down'. personally i think its to do with the godless nature of our society, after all if a child can not read a page of text what will that child do when confronted with the bible? panic and disregard it. what a great pity.

anyway, the day is moving on apace and so far we have little to show for it. meric and i went out for breakfast and then to tescos. menekse is at riding for another hour or so. meric and i have a gala to go to tonight, its local so that is a relief, we should be home by 8.30 or so. i will be starting and he will be swimming. we are going to play Risk together now.

i have just spent some time going back over my entries, i have noticed quite a few typos which is very irritating. probably i will end up going back and correcting them. spelling mistakes really irritate me and generally i notice them straight away, at the caravan show earlier this year i ruined someones day by pointing out a mistake in a very expensive display!! anyway, off i go to find Risk and the games table.

its my brother in laws birthday today, hope he got the cards we sent, especially since they are off to france tomorrow with my lovely niece, she really is the light of my life, it was such a shock to me to realise how much i love her, she is the first niece on my side of the family - although as i have said i am great aunt on my husbands side, but somehow, this niece, she is part of me, its almost like having another child of my own to love, also i suppose as i remember her mum being born - there is 12.5 years between us, that makes it all the more special. anyway, its her daddys birthday today, he loves being a daddy so much and is very good at it too. she is a lucky little girl to have such a lovely family. and i am very thankful that i have such great in-laws!! i know alot of people that aren't as blessed with theirs as i am. they are all coming to me for christmas, first year at our house, every other year we have gone to mums, so, i am excited about it and a bit apprehensive too, i hope everyone enjoys it, it will be so lovely having a little one again - my lovely niece will be 14 months old. anyway, i don't know why i am thinking about christmas - could it be because tescos ALREADY have some selection boxes etc on the shelves

well, time has moved on, i have talked to my sister on the phone, collected menekse from riding, discovered a whole lot of emails in 'spam' that are actually not spam, including one from my mum so that means i will have to check that most days now too. so, i need to go and put my whites on and do my bit for the community - keeping kids off the streets and all that.

Photocopying 8.9.05

well, its been a funny sort of a day, not funny ha ha, but funny peculiar.

haven't done a great deal of anything. i couldn't sleep again last night which resulted in us getting up late, by the time we had said our prayers etc it was time for me to take menekse up to the stable yard. i then spent the afternoon poodling about on the computer doing swimming club stuff, trying to get all the things for the agm finished and get the constitution sorted out. spent a bit of time with my husband this afternoon - he had the night off to go and watch the football, fyi turkiye won and england lost!! aagggh, how terrible will that be if turkiye qualify and we don't? not sure that i can stand the inevitable aggravation that that scenario will no doubt produce. still i have about a year to really worry about it!!

we watched Lost again tonight, meric is really hooked, its weird because nothing much really happens but its gripping! i think we are watching less tv now that the one in our room is gone, but we watch stuff together. i did miss my tv the other day, i was feeling quite stressed and wanted to lay on the bed and watch something mindless and rest, but it was a fleeting thing, its quite good not having two tvs, makes me more selective about what i watch and i can't be bothered to sit downstairs late so i just read or listen to the radio. i am now doing some photocopying whilst i write this. heard from my mum today, she was cooking a chicken and doing laundry in a bucket, how the other half live eh?

anyway, thats about all for tonight, not much i know, i have a particularly bad headache so i have taken some tablets and am off to bed.

The weekend.....on Tuesday!! 6.9.05

So, we had a lovely weekend with our turkish family. We drove down on Friday, the traffic wasn't too bad, more or less straight down the M1. of course yenge, my sister in law, had made LOVELY turkish dinner, my favourite stuffed vine leaves - with leaves from her own vine in the backyard, very impressive!! our niece and her three children were there and later we went over to our nephews house to see them and their three children - yes yes i know, that makes me a great aunt , but i am so young i hear you cry!! my husband is the youngest of three, i am the oldest of three. anyway, i finally got to see the baby who was actually born on may 16th, but our daughter was ill when my husband and son went to see him and then the baby has been in turkiye all summer (not on his own you understand, with his mum and siblings).

on saturday we played cards and our niece and i took all seven children to see 'shark boy and lava girl' , it was ok, it was in 3-d, i wouldn't rate it particularly, the kids loved it mind you. then we went back to yenges for dinner and more cards. oh, yes, i also got our niece to show me where the church is which had been recommended to me, good job, i would never have found it with all the roadworks.

sunday our children and i got up and went to church, i found it really easily which is a relief. the service was very good, just what i like - AV bible, old fashioned hymns, and a good long sermon, not much mention of The Blood which i was a bit concerned about and hardly any of the ladies were wearing headcoverings which is a pity, but these days we can't expect to have everything. then it was back to yenges for more food and more cards, some people came from derby so it was nice to see them.

we got up monday and more or less got ready to go straight home after a late breakfast. our daughter was anxious to get back in time to go to the stable yard - she started 'loaning' a horse this week. however our son managed to lock the car keys in the boot, so, i had to call the RAC. i don't know how much we pay to be in the RAC, but its worth every penny. we were in the car and on our way in about an hour. we had a nice time with the family, its a pity we don't live nearer to them. we don't get to see them that often just due to life and busy-ness.

last night there was a committee meeting at swimming club, meric didn't train because he has a cold and a terrible chest, don't think its infected but his breathing is not great.

after the committee meeting i was once again approached about the incident involving meric and another swimmer a couple of weeks ago, this happened on the dry side of the pool, an area supposedly off limits to everyone connected with the club - that is any incident on the dryside is supposed to be dealt with by parents, swimming club have no responsibility, unless you are part of the 'inner circle' of favourites - which obviously i am not and neither are our children. anyway, after a nights sleep and thinking it over i have decided to resign from the committee and from my role as secretary. i have enough to do at home with home-schooling and leafleting for our shop as well as bringing up our children and running our home, i am due to start leading the childrens meeting next week at church, i have the silk route stuff to maintain so, enough is enough, i can't do with the two faced hypocrisy of swimming club, i am not a favourite of the chairman or the head coach and i really think i have done my share of the work, let someone else do it. i realise that sounds incredibly petty, but our son has been seriously bullied earlier in the year and the coach was VERY unpleasant to meric and me and the bullying was never really taken care of, so, i have decided enough is enough, and i am out of it. i do get the use of the photocopier, but seriously is it worth the stress? i don't think SO!!

so, i have spent today tying up loose ends for swimming club, i need to clear the decks so that i can pass the work all on to someone else, the agm is in a couple of weeks so i have to do the minutes for that etc. its time consuming but i have actually quite enjoyed being the secretary, it has helped me to understand more about the sport and what is important, especially doing Swim21, but i can't stand all the politics and toadying that goes on, i am going back to sitting on my own and reading my book, which is what i used to do before i got sucked into carrying a clipboard and a stopwatch.

so, watch this space to see if i carry it through! i have verbally told the chairman but haven't written anything down yet, mainly because i want to get a lot off my chest and am not sure that is exactly the way to go.

My Husband 2.9.05

it occurs to me that i don't talk about my husband very much. i wouldn't want anyone who is reading this to get the wrong impression.

we have been married for just over 19 years, its 20 years since we met. i am married to the worlds best husband. he is wonderful, kind, gently, hard working, thoughtful. he is very turkish, has the sexiest accent in the world and loves football. we own a kebab shop and thats why i don't talk about him much - we lead quite separate lives alot of the time. he works from 4 p.m. until about 2 a.m. seven days a week. because we have two children and we homeschool i work all day and evenings too. so he sleeps all day, i sleep all night (well, i try too!!). we try to always have sunday lunch together, and his morning coffee (my afternoon tea), but at this point in our lives we are very much ships that pass in the night. over the summer i have been helping in our shop for the first time ever, not much, just answering the phone etc. but it was nice to be together doing that, i enjoyed it.

so, thats my husband, i am blessed and privileged to be his wife, he is really the most wonderful man ever and i love him more than anything in the world, being a wife and a stay at home is also the best job in the world, i know i know, its too late to be this gushing and sentimental.

Just when I thought it was safe......1.09.05

I don't know if i have mentioned this, i probably have, but i am, currently, suffering from mild depression, brought on by a huge amount of stress earlier in the year. i am in fact taking anti-depressant tablets, yes, yes, i know, is that the sort of thing christians should be doing i hear you cry, but if i had a broken leg i would wear a plaster cast, if i had a chest infection i would take antibiotics wouldn't i? so i don't feel guilty (anymore ) about taking anti-depressants.

anyway, this week had been going pretty well. school was going very well, my new plan was working out ok, i have caught up on a huge amount of work, last night after swimming we had a nice evening watching Lost on tv, our son really really likes it, i think because of his imagination. then we went to bed, that was my first mistake.

i couldn't sleep, i listened to the shipping forecast and then i think i did drop off until about 3 a.m. when i woke up again, put the world service on and tried, in vain, to get back to sleep. my husband came to bed at who knows what time and we spent some time talking together. he told me that there had been a phone call from hull and our friends wife is very poorly, but no other information. now, chrissie (the wife of the friend) and i were very close for a long time when our kids were little, life was much more simple then, before we started homeschooling our children are all about the same ages, well, two of their 4 are the same age as our 2. so, i laid awake feeling terribly guilty about our recent lack of contact - due to nothing more than busy-ness, i worried about what could be wrong with her. so, in the morning we got up late due to the fact that i didn't get back to sleep until about 5.30 a.m. then i made a couple of phone calls.

i got my husband up at 11.30 and we went through to hull together, so we had a day in each others company which doesn't happen often enough, we went for lunch, he bought me new pjs and a new skirt and then we went to the hospital.

chrissie is on the high dependency neuro ward . we found her husband, sahin and got the full story. seems that chrissie has been suffering with bad headaches for a few weeks, so bad that she went to her GP (first time for 6 years!!), he fobbed her off with migraine tablets, but then she got a large very painful bump/lump in the middle of her forehead, so they went back, sahin wanted her to go privately for a scan but that couldn't be arranged quick enough, the GP still wasn't concerned and sent them away to wait for an appointment. that night chrissie started vomiting, so sahin took her to the A&E. she was admitted, some scans were done, turns out her sinuses were really really badly infected and the infection was going into her brain. so they drained her sinuses, some time later were still not happy so she had to have brain surgery to remove part of her skull - it is being kept 'alive' on her stomach somehow - this is to let the swelling go down. all the infection has been removed, she is on antibiotics, is heavily sedated and on a ventilator. she is younger than me.

so, i went in for a few minutes and chatted to her, told her we were praying, she is a JW, but sahin over ruled her wishes and told them to proceed with a blood transfusion thankfully. then erdinc and i went to cash and carry and came home, by which time i felt totally drained. i tried to get some sleep but failed so i watched the news. the wickedness of some of the people in new orleans left me breathless. how can people behave like that when their neighbours are dying of thirst? and why on earth hasn't the US government, the richest country in the world, done something more quickly? hurray for ITN and their excellent pull no punches news report. it seems that it is the poor black people who are suffering the most or is that just the spin?

needless to say my mood is in my boots tonight. i went to church with meric, that did me good, everyone is praying for chrissie now and i have been praying for her all day. that does help. tomorrow we are going to visit my in-laws for the weekend, they live in leicester. it will be nice to see them all again, and i will at last get to see the baby. i will be back on monday night. hopefully i will get a little r&r, not that i really need it except that i feel really really tired , i am going to bed shortly in the hope of getting a good nights sleep, i want to be up early so that we can pray etc before we go. so, i will say goodnight and goodbye for a few days.

not only that.....

if you read my last post about wanting to find a non-ecumenical, reformed church when we move then you may, or may not, be interested to know that i also require it to be AV only and also that the ladies wear a headcovering out of conviction and not just tradition or because everyone does it.
i know, i know, you think i am crazy, perhaps i am.
the AV thing is important, the new versions are based on erroneous texts (just google westcott and hort or go and listen to the stuff on sermon audio, or check out http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/ they have loads of info) the text that did it for me is in john 5 v 6 which, in the AV reads 'when Jesus saw him lie, and KNEW that he had been now a long time.....' (emphasis mine)
the NIV reads 'when Jesus saw him lie and LEARNED that he had been.....' - emphasis mine again.
well, i know it's only one word, but what a difference it makes to the sense, this was just the verse that got me looking, once i started there was no way i was going to use a modern version again.
the hat thing.
don't get me wrong, it was a struggle for me, i like hats, i like scarves, i am married to a muslim. so, there was no way i was going to start wearing a hat just because some man told me i had to. then i read the relevant passage and started wearing a hat. of course once again it is much clearer in the AV and it's all to do with creation, authority and Gods order of things, there is alot more i could say here but i don't have time, really really got to go to beverley, deep joy. plus i am freezing, but again there is plenty of stuff on sermon audio for anyone really interested. i have a little book too. obviously.

on finding a church and other things.....

well, first things first, the 'forsale' sign has gone up. it's bright pink ('magenta' said the estate agent somewhat defensively imho, apparently some of his older clients thought he had 'come out' as our town's first gay estate agent ) anyway, the sign is up and soon there will be a virtual tour of our home online , i am just hoping they have the technology to edit out the mess piles of educational materials essential to home-edding two teenagers.
secondly i have had to change my weight loss tracker. this is because i couldn't get to ticker factory to change the last one, the clicking wouldn't work for some reason, so i made another one, this time i put my heaviest weight in - from last year, before i started cambridge i had already lost about 28 lbs, give or take a couple, i have also lowered my target weight, which may seem a bit mad, but i don't want to put all the weight back on and so am going to give myself a little bit of leeway. i don't ever remember being thin and am not sure i can eat like a thin person, but i am already having so much fun shopping that i think i will like being thin enough to control my eating. i am hoping that almost a year on cambridge will help me to re-educate myself - after all i am managing to survive quite well without all the stuff i used to eat. although i have had a couple of days 'off' - when i have cheated quite spectacularly, you are supposed to do a week of 'add a meal' every so often with cambridge, but i think the meals are supposed to be chicken and green veg - not chocolate and biscuits but, anyway, i am back on track now and determined to get to goal. my birthday is in may and we will be on a protest so i will be having a packed lunch that day - i am looking forward to it.
so, finally, that brings me to the point of my post. the main 'worry' i have about moving is finding a church. if my reader has read my testimony (well, the half of my testimony which is on here, i don't think i ever got around to finishing it, note to self, finish it quick!).if you have read even that half you may recall i had a very unpleasant experience in the charismatic/ecumenical movement. i left that particlar church and did alot of bible study and research and came to what is commonly called 'the reformed and separatist position'. i must stress that this WAS a direct result of alot of prayer, bible study and research. i had a bit of a problem, there was no church in my area which wasn't a part of the ecumenical movement. eventually though God, the God of the impossible, brought a free presbyterian church to the town - see the link in my linkys. i have been there ever since. the preaching is fantastic. just good, solid, expository bible preaching, nothing added, nothing taken away. doctrinally they hold to the westminster confession of faith and are totally separate from the world council of churches/churches together/general ecumenism. just what i wanted and what i feel is the biblical position. don't get me wrong, i am not against unity, just not unity at the expense of doctrine, no compromise, that's my motto. it was good enough for the reformers, it's good enough for me. if men (and women) were prepared to go to the stake for their protestant faith then i should be prepared to take my stand, no matter how feeble. (read foxes book of martyrs for more on this, for example).
of course there are other churches which take a similar separated stand, we know of some independent, strict and particular baptists for example. however they are few and far between and there's the rub. i need to be in one of these churches, preferably i would love it to be a free presbyterian church since that is where my heart is, but at the end of the day we have to go where the Lord leads us and where He opens the door for my husband - who obviously isn't the slightest bit concerened about what church there will or will not be for me, he just wants to earn a living and take care of his family. so, i am trusting God with this. He has already answered prayer in a wonderful way concerning the asking price for the house - let's now see what we get. anyone who is interested in a 5 bedroom mid-terrace house in need of quite a bit of work located in the armpit of the universe should check out harrisbell.com for an absolute bargain.
so, dear reader if you are a christian and inclined to pray please pray that God will order our circumstances so that our home and business sell promptly, that my husband finds the right place at the right price at the right time for us to earn a living and that there will be a good church there for me. thanks.
we have been to cash and carry today and shortly will go to swimming, if/when we move i have determined NOT to get involved in the administration of the new swimming club, i am going to be one of those parents who steadfastly looks at the floor whenever someone asks for helpers, i will continue to act as an official if i have the chance but i am NOT getting involved in the other stuff. no way.

long time no blog...

well, i re-discovered this blog when creating one for my mum, its been a long time and part of the reason is this.........i have, dear reader, turned into a 'swimming mum', it seems that our son is actually a very good swimmer - two coaches from other clubs informed that his times are fantastic considering how little training he does, for this and various other reasons we have left the club where we have been for about 8 years and gone to one up the road - a half hour drive, its tricky with the hours we keep, but we are managing to get up at 4.30 a.m. four mornings a week, to go training for 2 hours, then go back four evenings a week to train again, water time has gone from 6 hours a week to 14 hours a week, plus 8 hours of driving, so obviuosly with school work and delivering pizzas my times is just about gone, don't even think about housework - finally a reason not to clean, no house move news yet, but i am sure that it will come.
in the meantime i am alive, i am still here, the soul is willing to blog but the body is too tired, for the time being.

obviously taking into account the length of time it has been since my last entry here i have alot more news, not least the fact that we appear, DV, to be moving house, i will hopefully post a bit more about that at some point. for now i am fiddling with the settings, see you soon.

still seren-ish!!....31.8.05

Well, its wednesday. today was slightly different. we still got up just after 6 a.m. but got ready to go to our early morning prayer meeting at church, much to my husbands amazement, he was trying to watch something about the EU in turkish . the prayer meeting was excellent and then we went with nora for a bacon buttie, very nice.

when we got back we had our devotional time together. meric was grumbling about doing school work ALL day, i pointed out to him that it was only the stuff he hadn't finished in the morning that he had had to do last night, that quietened him. so, we were late starting this morning. this meant we didn't get to do reading aloud and hot chocolate until 12.20. after that i gave meric until 2.30 p.m. to finish his mornings work. perhaps i should explain that we are generally pretty autonomous in our home-education, but i do believe they need to learn the basics, so i buy a curriculum from Christian Educational Resources (see link) and use that as the foundation, then we go off into other things that interest us along the way. this morning for example we had a brief foray into dinosaurs and plan to do some more of that this afternoon whilst doing art. anyway, meric did spend a large part of the morning day dreaming, today he was doing nothing in a more disruptive way which did irritate slightly, i managed to stay cool however. he also tried to convince me that the handwriting he had done yesterday was in fact todays " class="middle">, i know i know, isn't he a bit old at 13 to be doing handwriting? well, yes, but since his writing looks like a 5 year olds i feel its something we need to work on, he can do beautiful writing but is basically too lazy anyway, needless to say he hasn't finished his morning stuff but i got alot of work done - answered emails, did the minutes for swimming club and started on the agm things so i am pretty pleased with what i have done. so this afternoon i am going to keep him busy doing chores and other things and then after dinner tonight we will come back in the school room to finish off the mornings work!! the thing is i also have a star system going, 10 stars earns half an hour on the electronic equipment of choice (x-box), 11 stars are earned for doing the mornings work in the required time, if all the work isn't done in the time no stars are earned, so when he realises he isn't getting on his beloved x-box we might start getting somewhere. in the meantime please pray that i will continue to remain calm and serene!!

the x-box, seriously, i could throw it out of the window. what happens to my lovely son when he has been playing on that for any length of time? where does meric go? why is it all he talks about and why does this condition seem to affect some boys and not others? its a mystery.

i think that the reason i am feeling calm about school and the way meric is, is because i have managed to put a time to things - not a timetable, just a period of time - morning stuff should be finished by lunch, then we will do something different no matter what, instead of letting meric's disruptive behaviour upset the whole day and we get nothing done. we are going to leicester on friday to visit family, so there will be no school friday or monday. when we restart i am also going to be doing calculadder - speed maths drills, these will be part of the mornings work.

anyway, i am off for my own lunch now, we have swimming club tonight, i quite like being the secretary and i quite like starting or judging at galas, but i can't do with all the politics and hypocrisy, it really gets me down. when i didn't know anyone and could just sit reading while the kids trained it was really nice, i valued the time, now i just end up getting all caught with the gossip and politics, people are so two faced it makes me crazy, so, i am considering whether to stand down at the agm, i have done three years, but i bet no-one will volunteer to take over and then i will feel guilty, plus i have access to the photocopier - everyone has to have a perk and i use the computer for alot of swimming club stuff.