Power Struggle

For real!

Power… as in electricity.
Not the kind that runs through our veins 😛
The kind that powers a household… lights, no camera, but fan action for the heat (no aircon).
The kind that a business needs to be able to operate.
The kind didn’t exist way back when.. but we’ve been really grateful ever since it got discovered!

WELL!!!

I’ve mentioned loadshedding before. Where they cut our power for time periods throughout the day and night. Suffice to say we have an energy crisis. BUT! In order for me to NOT get all political on you, and maintain my inner peace on this very humid Sunday morning, I shall refrain from saying more. You’ll have to Google it! Ha! (And it may be best not to discuss it with me 😛 )

ANYWAY…. we’ve reached pretty ridiculous levels of it the last few weeks.

(interesting side note : MY town, where I live, is the only one who loadsheds 3 and a half hours at a time! Everyone else has 2 and a half hour slots. Hmmmm.)

I’ve had more than my fair share of days where the schedule means that out of the 16 waking hours in my day, we only have power for SIX hours!
Bearing in mind, my water supply dwindles when there is loadshedding too.
So… in those 6 hours, I am trying to catch up with washing (clothes, dishes), shower, vacuum and clean the house, try and give attention to computer work stuff, etc.
AND, our humidity levels have been at around 94%. With very little cool wind accompanying it.
So when you are done rushing around trying to accomplish all you need to before the next time slot, and you’re starting to overheat, and finally get a chance to sit down. BAM! The fan goes off. Sigh!

BUT, HEY! AT LEAST WE STILL HAVE POWER, RIGHT? I have to work really hard to find the rainbows here 😛 😉

All of the above is my reason for being so absent.

Just when I was getting back into the swing of things, our ONLY electricity supplier said, ”NOPE!”

(Insert massive eye roll here 😛 )

Today, I have a reprieve of sorts. Our power was off last night from 11pm till 2:30am, and then again 3am till 6:30am this morning.
The good news is that it means I have a whole day electricity today – unless they changes stages again and notify us last minute of a new schedule. My power will be off this evening again from 6pm till 9:30pm.
But I have today 😉

My washing machine is working overtime, my vacuum cleaner awaits. But I had to pop in here and say HI 😉 Because I can 😉

And I thought I’d share some romance, just because. 😉

I love music. It’s hard to choose a genre. It’s even more difficult to pick a favourite song!

And yet, the one that gets me every time, is good old Frank Sinatra, and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’.

It’s been on my mind a lot the last few days and I find myself singing and humming it quite a bit.
NOOOOO! There is no romance in the air – no new interest for me. (Loadshedding DOES mean occasional candles though, and what’s more romantic than that 😉 )

But perhaps it reminds me that one day there might still be. Who knows?!?!?!

What I DO know is that it makes me feel warm, and it makes me smile.

May you all have love in your lives this festive season.
May someone glow when they think of you.
May you touch someone’s heart.

May your world be romantic, even if just for a moment, even if not with a partner 😉 ❤

Advertisement

When I am frustrated…

… I WILL PERSEVERE!

I sometimes sit down and type random word documents ‘to myself’. They’re either part of a bigger picture, or just something that has struck me in the moment. I am currently extremely frustrated (it’s a very long story, ha ha!) and I happened upon this piece that I wrote about 4 years ago….

”Are you a stubborn person? I know I can be. Not all the time, but I have my moments.
Perseverance is stubbornness, with a purpose.
It’s a good kind of stubborn.

Albert Einstein was heard saying that he was not a very smart man – it was just that he ‘stayed with his problems for longer’. In other words he persevered, until he found the answer.
Did you know Walt Disney was turned down 302 times before he got financing for his dream of creating the “Happiest Place on Earth”. Today, due to his persistence, millions of people have shared ‘the joy of Disney’.

Thomas Edison said that many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

You’ve failed many times, although you may not remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn’t you? Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat? Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.

Macy’s – R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs.

Don’t worry about failure.
Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”

Of late, I find myself waking up each morning to the sound of my alarm, and uttering with a sigh of relief : ”thank goodness I GOT TO WAKE UP this morning!”

The days are incredibly challenging, to say the least. And not just for me, but for so many who I know where the hits just keep coming, and not just ‘the small stuff’ that makes up daily life.

And so… my challenge to myself at the moment is to continue to persevere, to continue to be grateful, and to continue to search for the good, because it is definitely there, in each moment!

My hope for you is that the light at the end of the tunnel is NOT another train coming 😉 Just keep persevering, and may you be rewarded with something good! ❤

Life goals and Superhero’s

I saw this on me.me, and it made me wonder if I should reassess my life goals. Because apparently, Batman is it!

~ photo credit for the pic below : boredpanda.com ~

I also got it completely wrong! After finding a ‘boyfriend’ to kiss, I completely forgot to jump to step 3! (Must have been some kiss 😛 )

I also found another picture on boredpanda.com, and I laughed out loud :

I remember someone saying to me once, ”don’t take life too seriously, none of us are getting out alive anyway”. It was a quote they had read, and it was said with a wink and a smile.
The other day, as I was reminded of ‘silly life goals that were just plain fun’ when I saw yet another shared meme, I remembered that statement.

There is, indeed, a time for everything. And there always has to be a time to laugh! 😉

But what about serious life goals? (What? Being batman is not serious???? Good grief, Meg! 😛 😉 )

We all know it, but I’ll share it anyway. According to an article on Mindtools.com, the reason why we should set goals is this :

Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation . It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the most of your life.

Have you ever looked at someone, at their life, and thought to yourself, ”They clearly don’t have any goals in life!” Or perhaps you have chatted with them and concluded, ”they really need better goals – they’re not going to get anywhere with those”.
You know what? If you have never thought that way or reacted that way to someone in your head? Then I really take my hat off to you!
Sadly, I have ‘misjudged’ a few people in this way, over the course of my life. 😦

Recently, in my household, we have experienced the ‘Google is listening’ thing that seems to be happening. My son and I will talk about something, and suddenly we’ll start getting ads on our social media about that very thing!
I was comforting my daughter the other night through her heartbreak, and I went on to Facebook a short while later and suddenly a ‘suggested for you’ page popped up with a meme about heartbreak 😮

It seems Google can read my mind too 😮

I was sitting and thinking about this whole ‘life goals debacle’ and picked up my phone to scroll through Facebook, and the third picture I saw was this one :

I read it through a few times. It spoke to my heart in a way I can’t explain. And I shared it to my personal profile, with a caption, adding ” #lifegoals ”

If I have learned anything about myself the last few days, it’s that I have the audacity to believe, and hope, even when things are going wrong… or perhaps I finally have truly lost my mind 😛

Perhaps my life goals as listed above seem insignificant to you. Perhaps they don’t equal your interpretation of success.

But for me? I can think of no better reasons to be considered beautiful.
For me, these are my primary goals in life.
I want to come alive, while I am still alive ❤

Is love invisible?

This is not a romantic post! And in case you’re concerned about me, I am not depressed about being single either! 😛 Sure, it would be nice to have a hand to hold, and a shoulder to lean on… but that’s a whole other post entirely! Ha ha!

I am also not going to focus on the horror that is happening in the world right now! (Who needs Halloween? 😦 )
My mind boggles and my heart actually hurts every time I happen to see something ‘newsy’. Because, truth be told, I am trying really hard to avoid ‘the multitude of hurts out there’. Not because I am trying to hide from it, or deny its existence. Simply because, at this point, it is causing me major distress and far too many tears. Coupled with the frustration of having zero control over any of it, and not being physically ‘in that place’ in order to help in some way. Well… I just need to try and avoid it at the moment.

There have been events this last week that have made me stop.
Sit down, head in my hands, muttering out loud,
”Where is the love? How did we get here? Is it just temporarily invisible or is it gone?”

We see it everyday – impatience and rudeness with cashiers; irritation directed at the mommy who has an unhappy baby while standing in a queue; purposely not allowing someone into the traffic in front of you; avoiding helping others that you really could, because you’re ‘too busy’, or it would inconvenience you.

I think it was Oswald J. Smith who said :
”The heart of the human problem, is the problem of the human heart.”
(I’ve seen it adapted to : the heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.)

For me, it all comes down to love.

The Beatles were right! 😉 LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED!

For me, personally, love covers it all! Love is kindness, it is tenderness, it is patience, it is helpfulness, it is compassion…. and so much more!

I’ve been told way more times than I can count :

”You’re being unrealistic. You’re just a doormat. You deserve to get hurt. You’re idealistic. You’re so sunny, you make me sick.”

And those were from people who supposedly liked me 😛

But, everyone, I see the truth behind those words, and there are times that I need to concede that in a particular situation, they’re probably closer to being right than I am. Sigh.

There are times. But it’s not every time.
And the unfortunate thing is that being this way is what works for me. It’s what keeps me alive, in a way.

Here’s what I know : I can’t change the world. I can’t impact all of it.
In fact, considering how many people there are in this world, I probably won’t be able to positively impact even 1% in my entire lifetime!

BUT when it comes to this? THAT is not going to stop me!

I am still, and always will be, a firm believer in the ‘pay it forward’ effect – even before it was a ‘thing’, it was my belief.
Perhaps it is something unrealistic that I need to hold on to, to keep me going? Who knows! In this instance, I actually don’t really want to know or care about the WHY, I just want to keep doing and being.

My theory is that if I can positively impact one person, they may be encouraged to impact another, and that other may be encouraged to impact someone far removed from me etc.etc.etc.
(Please don’t try and change my mind – this is a worthy theory 😛 😉 )

A silly example : What if that mom in the queue with the crying baby is on the edge, wanting to give up? Perhaps her partner just left her, and she has no family or friends to help her. She’s in that queue, trying to work out in her head if she is going to have enough money to cover the needs her and her baby have in their basket. Her baby is miserable, because, well… teething… except she has been unable to give the poor little one anything because she has run out, and the bread and milk in her basket are unfortunately a higher priority right now.
Perhaps she looks the way she does not because she is on drugs, but because she’s been up most of the night, ran out of coffee a few days ago already, and didn’t have the heart to leave her baby screaming while she took a quick shower. Perhaps she is just exhausted. Broken.
AND THEN, a stranger in the queue in front of her (YOU!) turns around, not to stare with irritation at her crying baby, not to judge her appearance or add to her discomfort, but to smile at them both! To talk softly to baby and try and distract him or her. To tell Mom, ”oh dear, looks like you’re having quite a day!” To start a brief dialogue, that also distracts that Mom.
And perhaps, as she straps baby in, perhaps she feels a slight shift in her hopelessness, because she has remembered that there is still a small measure of kindness (love) in this world. And it inspires her to reach out, instead of give up. And maybe later down the line, she helps someone else!

(Yes, this is what I do. I look around me, not to pass judgement, but instead to try and understand. And help, if I can. I do the story thing often! It distracts me from standing in the queue 😛 )

Of course, it isn’t always as I have outlined above. Sad realities are sometimes harsher.

We do need to be discerning; we do need to protect our hearts and minds in some cases.

But I choose to NOT live as if love is invisible, or gone. Even if I do it alone.

I want to be more kind. Judge less. I want to be graceful – showing mercy and compassion to others. I want to smile at strangers, talk with those other people don’t seem to ‘see’, allow someone to go before me, even if they don’t seem to deserve it.

Please leave me in my fairytale 😛 It makes me smile 😉

Because all I need is love 😉 ❤

An old Western, of sorts!

They say that the ‘art of writing is in the rewriting’. If this were 100% correct, then the blog post I will be publishing should be a masterpiece worthy of an award. Ha ha!
I have worked on this post (written, deleted, rewritten) for almost four weeks now! Goodness gracious me! 😮

I’ve now reached the point of no return – I need to publish something, and so here it is. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (She tips her hat, loops her thumbs in her leather belt, and puts one cowgirl boot forward. 😉 )

It’s been just over three months since my last blog post. That’s just sad! I didn’t realise it had been that long. And yet… at the same time… so much has happened in that ‘short space of time’ that it feels longer.

Long story short? (When have I ever managed to use less words when telling a story, ha ha?!? I’ll do my best here though…)

I’ve been extremely ill. And many will mutter ‘over exaggeration’, and that’s okay because even now when I think of it, it seems unreal that that is what I was reduced to! There were entire days where even getting to the bathroom seemed impossible, let alone trying to get my brain to focus!
I went from Severe Bronchospasm, to Bronchial Pneumonia, then Pneumonia, and throw in some Pleurisy too. Along the way (at the beginning, with sufficient time in between) I had two Covid tests, but both were negative.
Blood tests about 4 weeks ago (because I just wasn’t recovering) showed that I had indeed had Covid, and the conclusion was that I now have Long Covid. Up until the point of the tests, the fatigue (coupled with the chronic fatigue that I already suffer from) was debilitating, to say the least. Thankfully, treatment has been adjusted, and I can make it through a good few hours before I feel like my whole being will shut down.
The ‘Porridge Brain/ Brain Fog’ is something else… especially for someone like me! If you love to read, like I do, you will understand my pain when I say : I could not even read half a page in my book! 😮
And apparently I have developed asthma!

The GOOD news is that I am definitely recovering! So, my beautiful blogging world, you’ve not heard the last of me yet! 😉

I already know that what I am about to type now is going to hurt me somewhere deep inside, and the tears will fall uncontrollably as I type, and I will have to stop to try and settle myself, so that I can see the keyboard and screen, and get through this.
I feel my chest tightening already, and I am struggling to swallow the lump rising in my throat. I am actually feeling physical pain, as if my heart is breaking all over again 😦

Five weeks and one day ago, at 2:10pm, my beautiful big companion and very best friend (my boy, Toffee Dog, who I blogged about here, and have mentioned countless times along the way) collapsed. I had to rush him to the vet, somehow knowing that ‘this was it’. I still don’t know how I drove us there safely, and made it home safely. Because I sobbed, both ways. You’d need to read the blog post, and perhaps try to understand (draw on your sympathetic and understanding part of your mind), in order to appreciate the drastic impact this had on me.
Honestly, it was the hardest goodbye of my life thus far.
(He had a brain tumour.)
And true to being a psychologists nightmare (which I often declare that I am, ha! 😛 ) I still struggle to say the above out loud, and my composure still shatters, five weeks and one day later, when I think about him too much!
So… now that you have confirmed your suspicions that I am a special kind of crazy (I am smiling with my tears) let’s move on, shall we?

I’ll leave you with some good 😉

In the three+ months that I have been M.I.A from WordPress, despite physical and emotional pain, each and every day has given me an ‘in your face’ moment of gratitude. Something good has happened (albeit something small most days) in a way that I have been unable to overlook! An email; a message on my phone; assistance in some way (a meal delivered, my kids helping with the housework) – all things that brought a smile and a whispered ‘thank you’ to my lips.
All things that equate to acts of love.
Love that fanned the flame of hope, so that even if it wanted to, it could not die.

May hope spring eternal for all of you, every day, in some way!
Please don’t forget that the world needs someone like YOU, and you are loved! ❤

Thank you for reading. ❤ Here’s to me writing to you all again soon 😉

Where’s the photograph?

Photo credit : Pinterest

I am probably the worst when it comes to taking photographs! And I don’t just mean selfies. I mean in general. It’s pretty much an ‘every time’ thing : I see something, and a few minutes after that particular thing/moment has passed, something in my brain says, ”You should have taken a photo!”

It was my daughter’s birthday last week, and on the Saturday that has just passed, she had a small get together with nine friends (at another friends house) – a ‘party’ on a budget, and so I worked hard! Ha ha!
(I can confirm that my lungs still work well – I managed to blow up 17 balloons without incident! 😛 😉 )

Knowing how dreadful I am with picture taking, I asked my daughter to take photo’s of ‘the party’ for me! And then I got busy decorating, and setting the table.

The following morning, I was very excited when she came to me, cellphone in hand, to show me all the pictures she had taken.
But alas, there was not a single one of all my hard work! 😮
I did not let my disappointment show, and smiled and laughed as she enthusiastically shared all the pictures of her friends. When she was finished, I casually commented, ”Why no pictures of the food and decor; all the stuff I did?”

She smiled, and replied,

”Because, Mom, isn’t it better to see the amount of happiness and fun what you did produced? You know I appreciate everything you did – look how much everyone else appreciated it too!”

That made me want to cry!

Because I really had tried, on a very limited budget, and had been so worried that it would be a flop – so many had already had rather elaborate parties that I could never have ‘matched’… but maybe I did 😉
Because… despite everything that was lacking… the evidence was in every photograph of how much fun these teenagers had actually had! (Even though all my balloons, and prettily folded serviettes, and homemade foods etc. were nowhere in sight!)

It was yet another great reminder of ‘the little things that count and make big things happen’… like all those smiling faces and laughter as a result of a bunch of ‘little efforts’ in various ways!

Photo credit : shotkit.com

I sincerely doubt that I will ever really improve when it comes to ‘taking photographs’…
Maybe I am more the ‘maker’ of the photographs 😛

Here’s wishing you all plenty of happiness and love, and heartwarming tears 😛 , for the moments you create that bring joy into the lives of others 😉
(Even if you forget to take a picture 😉 )

Mud therapy

At the beginning of Spring each year, I find myself in my little front garden, weeding and planting seedlings. One year, I found myself sitting in mud, almost up to my elbows in it! Ha ha!
It had rained heavily the night before, but I had planned to do my gardening that particular morning, and a little mud definitely wasn’t going to stop me!

My neighbours came home, and stopped their car next to me. The boys were 3 and 4 years old then, and were both very amused, and rather amazed, that Aunty Meg was as dirty as they normally are when they play outside. Their mom just shook her head at me, asking me, ”How do you do that? I can’t stand to get my hands dirty, let alone the rest of me!” And I just laughed, and explained that I found it therapeutic, even the mud 😉

(She has since started her own little front garden, and has garden gloves a little bit longer than usual so that she is less likely to get dirty 😉 )

It’s been a really tough week for me here where I live, both personally and compassionately – plus everything going on in the rest of the world!
I didn’t want to blog about all of it though – there’s just so much sorrow and pain out there, that you don’t need little old me to feed you more. SO!

In an effort to find goodness for the purposes of this post, without harping on about ‘small things and little blessings’, I went to see what Days of the Year had to say about today, and this new month.

Apparently this month it is INTERNATIONAL MUD MONTH!

It’s history is this (quoted from their site) :

In 2009 the children of Bold Park Community School joined forces with the boys of the Nepalese Panchkhal orphanage to celebrate the visceral and primal connection we all share with Earth and the outdoors.

Bold Park used this opportunity to raise funds to help support the less fortunate children of Nepal. Since that fateful beginning, schools, families, and ECE centers from all over the world have worked together to promote the idea that we all need to play in the mud sometimes, just to remember what it means to be human.

In 2015 it was decided that one day of playing in the mud simply wasn’t sufficient to ground us after a year of being lost in the technological glitz and digital glamour of our modern world, and so it was changed from “International Mud Day” to “International Mud Month”, and thus the celebration continued!

It’s not all about our personal connection with the Earth, but also about how we as humans connect to one another, and the relationships we form throughout our lives. Like any two ponds of mud, no two humans are exactly alike, and so International Mud Month encourages us to share that diversity and celebrate it!

Naturally, as you will know if you read my blog often, I like that it celebrates that we are all different…because we really are! We all deal with things in our own way, we grow differently etc. Less judgement, more acceptance…. 😉

On their site, they share that we should celebrate this month by ”First off, get ye to the mountains and fields! Out among the blooming flowers and down into the flowing creeks. Head out over the airy mountain, and through the wooded glen, and get muddy up to your neck in search of fairy dens!”

Can I just say right now : I LOVE THE THOUGHT OF THAT!

And it was a great reminder to me that although doing those things won’t solve my problems, or change anything, it will feed my spirit some goodness, a therapy with no cost, and we could all use more of that! 😉

I’m off to make some mud with a hosepipe and some dirt. (But not a lot because we have water restrictions, ha!)

Cracked Pots

quotefancy.com

I also like to think that that is how the light shines through.

It’s a nice thought : some of us are perfect. But it’s not true. Even if that is how we may perceive some people to be.

I painted this weirdo about ten years ago :

My favourite thing about him was his cracks. I loved filling them in, and in the odd spot? Adding in some of my own. 😉 For me, when he was finished, he was ‘perfect’. Just the way he was. He still stands in my home, and is one of my sources of joy.

This morning, I read (for the umpteenth time) this little story, and wanted to share it with you :

”A water bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”

The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you’ve watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

If you’re feeling a little bit broken…
(Side note : broken crayons still colour 😉 )
If you’re worried that you may not measure up…
If you’re struggling to reach perfection in areas you are certain that you should have achieved it in…
If you’re feeling inadequate, and imperfect?

Please remember : Without you being just the way you are, there would not be ‘this beauty’ (the beauty of you) to grace the world!!!
You may feel like your light has grown dim, but it is still shining – and even dim light can brighten up the darkest room!

(And yes, we should all try to do better and be better… there is always room for improvement. But along the way, while you are trying, it’s important to remember that there is still beauty in you. You are loved ❤ )

Sharing IS caring, no matter how little

This morning I sipped my coffee and pondered the three different blogposts in my head, struggling to decide which to post first. As WordPress loaded on my computer, I found myself thinking, ”you should at least try to catch up on a few other blogs before you even think of typing a post”! I was stopped in my tracks at the very first page I visited. A memory popped into my head, from about ten years ago – as clear as if I had seen it happen yesterday!

I am sure many of you are familiar with the statement : ”Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse…”
I am seeing a lot of that of late. More friends have passed in such a short space of time; our crime has escalated to a point that is even more frightening than what it was; I am seeing more and more people suffering in so many ways. And I feel utterly helpless.

To echo a line from the blog post that I read : For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand

I’ve had to stop trying to understand.

The part of this particular blog post that sparked the memory in me was this :
But give in proportion to what you have and can comfortably give (I did say ‘give’ and you will be giving, be that advice, consolation, time, physical resources). They get it for free and you pick up the tab. But as with food, there’s more than enough to go around. If only the world could grasp the fact that if each of us gave from our excess then we would change everything.

I remembered : sometimes we also just need to share the little that we have.
(And to quote another line from that same blog post : ”It’s a Law of the Universe that we get in order that we can give and then the Universe gives us more.”)

The only thing I have in excess is a heart full of comfort and caring, and my smile that comes from an unexplainable happiness within me. Those things? I freely give and share, because it is easy to.

The struggle comes in when it comes to the things I don’t have in excess…
And discernment is important in situations like that! I may not have in excess, but there are times where I have had to share what I did have – a loaf of bread halved so that we can eat, and so can someone else.

The memory that jumped to the forefront of my mind this morning was this :

About ten years ago, we were still relatively safe driving along, and parking, on the esplanade of our main beachfront – so long as you kept your doors locked and your windows up. I had been at a government building and had another couple of hours until I needed to get back. Since this was the route I was driving, I decided to stop and just watch the waves for a while. As I was driving along, looking for a good spot for me, I noticed an old beggar shuffling along, stooped low and leaning on his stick heavily.
I pulled in at the shop along the way and purchased the largest soup of the day that they had, and a loaf of bread. It was all that I could afford that day. I then doubled back to where he had settled on a bench, and went to give him the bag from the shop. He smiled, and thanked me, in his native language. I returned to my car, and looked back at him from its warmth. And what I saw made me cry – even now there are tears in my eyes.

A short distance away was a group of street children – about five of them in total, varying in age (the smallest looked about five years old). They were sitting on the wall, messing about in their ragged clothes. The oldest was scratching in the dustbin nearby, and unfortunately making a mess with the contents. The old man shouted something to him, and from the expression on his face I think he was chastised for his behaviour, ha ha! He hastily began putting the litter back in the bin. When he was finished the old man called him over, and they spoke for a short while. It looked serious. Suddenly a look of disbelief came over the child’s face, and the old man nodded and shooed him away.

I watched the encounter with great interest, wondering at this point what on earth had happened.

The child ran back to ‘his crew’, and the next thing they all jumped up and came running over to the old man. Some sat on the wall opposite him, two sat on the ground at his feet…
And I watched him share out that loaf of bread, and place the soup in the middle of their little group so that they could all dip their bread into it.
As the tears rolled down my face, I found myself thinking, ”But what will the old man eat tonight?”

I remember that that night I was so very grateful for the toast that the kids and I ate. And the thought that then went through my mind was : ”I suppose it was all he had to give them, to try and help them. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t solve any of their problems, but at least those kids had a meal that day!”

I don’t understand what is happening in this world right now. I can’t help everyone, all the time. But what I can do is help at least ONE person, in ONE moment!
Perhaps someone will notice that… not to pat me on the back, but to be inspired to do the same. The whole ‘Pay It Forward’ concept in a way.
I know everything is broken. But we can still try and bring small bits of sunshine to dark and gloomy days. ❤

Dumb and Dumber

In my early twenties, I found myself ‘between jobs’ due to a retrenchment. A friend of mine begged me to step in and assist her husband for a few months before applying elsewhere. He had just started a small company in the telecommunication industry, and office work and administration was not either of their strong suits. So I agreed to help out.

In the office was my friend’s husband – late forties; a guy in his late twenties who was our ‘technical wizard’; and two young men showed up to try their hands at sales. They were fresh out of high school, and overly enthusiastic with far too much energy, ha ha! I was only four years older than them… but it felt like a lifetime!
Our tech wizard affectionately called them ‘Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumb-er’!
And whenever the two of them called me, ‘Mommy Meggie’, I’d reply, ”yes, yes, Laurel and Hardy, I care.”
(I’ll name them Jason and Dave for the purposes of this blog post.)

They really did look like Laurel and Hardy!

Photo credit : laurelthemoviewaffler.com

I chose this picture, because even the driving scenario was the same 😛

Once there was successful implementation of procedures, I moved on from the job and took another. But we all stayed in touch, and all still were, until circumstances changed 😦

Jason and Dave were actually part of a trio. They talked incessantly about a guy named Thomas. And even though I’d see the other two regularly (we’d meet for lunch, or go out dancing – and I was always only around for my nurturing… their sober driver, and to take care of them when they’d overdone it 😛 ) I only met number three (Thomas) in 2012. The day I met him, I felt like I already knew him.
Unfortunately, I stopped ‘socialising’ with this trio in 2013. We were just on completely different paths. Jason and I still spoke regularly on the phone though – and he’d often tease that ‘one day when he grew up, he would marry me because I was marriage material’. I’d always laugh and say, ”why on earth would I want to marry you?” and then we would both laugh, because – again – despite the small age gap, I was just plain OLD in comparison!

I don’t know why, but in the year 2015, everything changed as far as staying in touch went. For all of us. Jason and Thomas were housemates, and worked together – but Dave had started moving in a different circle, started his own business – and we were all just ‘busy’.
Before we knew it, the year had almost passed us all by.
And then I got the news. Jason had driven to a ‘famous bridge’ a few hours away, and ended his life. I was shattered.
(Later, I heard the ‘why’/ circumstances – it sounds strange to say, but it helped ‘knowing’.)

On this past Easter weekend, I got another message that almost broke my heart. Dave also took his own life – age 40. I instantly reached out to Thomas – the last one of their trio – because I knew he would not be okay.
A lengthy phone call followed – brokenness, heartache and plenty of tears, from both of us.

Initially, I planned on blogging all this. Then I changed my mind.
But a couple of days ago, I saw an image on Facebook, which I will share at the end of this post, and it was almost as if I was physically nudged to just ‘type the darn post already’!

In that lengthy conversation, something that Thomas kept repeating, every time his voice broke and I could hear he was crying, was this : I’m sorry, Meg. I know I’m supposed to be a man and be strong. But how? I am just so broken!

As I mulled that repeated statement over in my head, I got really cross and upset. I had conversations with my adult son and teenage daughter about it. I also spoke to a couple of other men that I encountered that day about it.
The general reply was this (and this is GENERAL… I am not saying that everyone thinks this way or is this way, so this is in no way a personal attack on ‘every person in society’) :

”Men are expected to be the strong ones, and the definition of that strength seems to be that they are not allowed to feel or have emotion, like women. Crying is a definite no. Being sensitive is also a no. Unless you get permission from ‘your woman’ to be that way. If a man is not hard to the core, he’d better be ready to apologise for failing. And heaven help him if he admits to having mental health issues!”

Well, good grief, ”society”!

I KNOW I am not alone in the saying this…. here’s the image from Facebook….

MEN! YOU ARE LOVED TOO! YOU ARE WORTHY! YOU ARE ALSO STRONG WHEN YOU ARE BRAVE WITH YOUR FEELINGS!

And don’t listen to the naysayers, please!
Find the people who will cry with you, and still appreciate the value within you! ❤

*insert Mel Brooks ”Robin Hood : Men In Tights” 😉 musical clip about manly men 😛 * (To make you smile after a rather heavy post!)

(I probably haven’t done this topic justice… but, simply put, the above is just processing how I feel in an uncomplicated way.)