Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday once again- and today I've got an especially big Thankful!

1. Thankful that Dilly has survived my mothering so far because today she turns 21!! Exciting or what?! Of course she's not here to celebrate but we'll have a knees-up next month when she comes home. For fun, I dug out the album with her 1st birthday photos- and believe me, at the time I remember being so thankful that she'd survived that long!
...your eyes do not deceive you: she took the candle off her cake and ate the candle...

2. Thankful that after 6 days in bed with a lurgy, and 2 days shuffling around the house, I'm finally on the mend.

3. Thankful for my parents who helped the Hub with the School run and getting BBug to places.

4. Thankful for Permaculture Magazine, which has kept my thoughts occupied whilst lying in the dark feeling rotten, lots of ideas and information to mentally process!

5. I think I've said this before, but every so often it hits me again: Thankful that I live in a place where I have the freedom to choose my way of living, and the freedom of information and knowledge to make informed decisions. I am allowed to have morals and ethics and to demonstrate both in my lifestyle choices, even when they deviate from 'normal'. There's a LOT of people in this world of ours who don't have these freedoms.

Happy Thursday, people!

Challenge Report # 4

Please click here for my One World One Heart Giveaway.

If you follow 'Timeless Treasures' I'm changing things there a little...

D'you see the Google whatsit on my sidebar? Well if you stick your email address in there you'll receive my fortnightly 'ish' Newsletter from the Shop, along with Nifty Thrifty ideas!

And now to business:

How’s your week been? All I’ve to show for Dottie Angel’s Challenge is a Great Big Mess:…six pairs of old jeans in mid-? up-? re-? cycle…and since I’ve sent out the call for more I guess I’d better get these finished soon! My sister in the Foreign Office has sent out a request, Dilly has put a notice and basket backstage in the Theatre where she works, and Sos has put out the word to all her friends in the Institute…
Raw material coming up, I hope!

And Creative Every Day?

Well, since the Body theme probably ended last week, I’m doing a final posting today to wind up- but a bit different, not just the five senses, but one memory for each as well.

Sight and Sound

Early on Sunday morning I sat for a while and watched the snow falling. It always amazes me that it it so quiet, and it also seems to hush the usual country sounds. It was so beautiful, big white flakes thickly falling and hardly a sound anywhere.

Memory: In East Africa we used to go on safari to the Game Reserves sometimes (expensive!) and the quality of the silence out in the bush was more than just a lack of sound. The soughing of the breeze in the dry grass, distant honks and growls and sudden flap of wings, the cries of birds of prey, and the huge African emptiness. In the evenings there were crickets, cicadas and animals closer, tree frogs, birds and the sudden scream of unknown things.
Sounds once heard, not soon forgotten. Sounds which settle inside you forever, I think.
(Sorry about the zebra- my sisters have a 'thing' for zebras...I was looking for a photo of just savannah but zebras keep popping up everywhere when I enlarge the thumbnails!)

Smell

Here in the West of Ireland each season has a smell, and even coming snow has a scent, dank and raw and bitterly cold. The spring smells of mould, the summer of harebells and wet hedges, the autumn of smoke and dead leaves. This last week has had that dank winter smell to it.

Memory: The dusty musty smell of the first shower of rain on the earth after a dry spell, mmmm.

Taste

On Saturday evening the Hub and I had a Chinese takeaway…it must be over a year since we did that and it was fun! I really like Chinese food.Memory: In Nairobi there was an old restaurant, The Hong Kong, where we used to go to eat out as it was relatively inexpensive there. It was still a treat and afterwards we would drive through the city looking at the lights. To me Chinese meals and city lights still go together!
(photo of Koinange St, the HK is on the left there somewhere!)

Touch

Texting…those of you with family and friends far away, don’t we appreciate the ability to text? Yesterday I had texts from-
...my sister in Buenos Aires complaining that it was pouring rain on the one day she was invited to a pool BBQ…
…the folks to say they’d arrived safely in south of Spain, AND found their hotel…
…Dilly in Dublin to say she had done the Theater ‘Getin’ and was now relaxing in a pub where a Trad Session had just begun, and she was so happy…
…B to ask to be collected after Church from a friend’s house, and to say Sos wanted to come home to lunch…

Memory: I would have loved that luxury in East Africa!
Mom wrote to me every week for 15 years, and that was the only contact I regularly had with home and family. Phone calls were one every six months from the Head Office if lucky (we never had a phone), and we never had access to a computer. There was no English radio, local newspapers were sporadic, and we didn’t have TV.
Cut off? Yes, but it was completely normal.

And I guess that completes the study of the Body Beautiful!!!!

Let me tell you- its lucky I started this early as the post has just been delivered with the latest Permaculture Magazine so you won't see me for dust the rest of today! Yippee!!