“The RoseBouquet”

We had a fresh blanket of snow on Sunday, another yesterday, and again this morning. Early yesterday morning I heard a snow shovel nearby, but it got closer and closer before I actually stood up and peered over the frosted part of the window to look out. In the pre-dawn pastel light I saw a figure with a light green parka turn right and walk away with a shovel. I thought I saw a long ringlet of hair hanging down beside the hood.

Michelle? My first guess was my neighbour, Michelle, next door. We’ve only talked a few times, and I’ve been thinking I should take time to work at a friendship with her, but so far good intentions haven’t accomplished it. I tried to phone her a couple of times, and got through after lunch. We had a lovely chat, and I am determined to make time somehow to have them over for crafts. Her 8 year old daughter would LOVE to make things with old greeting cards!

Last Sunday we had rain and sleet and ice. Although I could start my car and managed to scrap all the ice off my car windows, I had this sinking feeling that it was the day for accidents, and I’d be better off to not drive all the way to my church in Neuanlage. Especially since I pick up a refugee family, and they don’t have proper boots and mitts yet. I was about to back out when I decided that I should listen to the prompting of the Lord, and NOT go. I turned the car off, locked my gate again, and came inside. I phoned the refugee family and told them I would not be going.

Then, realizing that my neighbours, Joe and Penny had not left yet for church, (and they’ve invited me several times), I called them to see if I could catch a ride to their church. Yes, they were leaving in five minutes. Okay! I quickly put my coat and boots back on and was on my way out the front door. The rest of the morning went well enough. I enjoy meeting new people and Penny was busy introducing me left and right - but I did have an odd sensation, like floating in a pleasant dream. Just going with the flow.

I didn’t need my car until Friday evening when I decided that I’d dash off to the supermarket for some groceries as I would be at the Day of Prayer all day Saturday. However, when I tried to get into my car it would unlock but the door would NOT open. I realized that the slush and sleet of Sunday had frozen into all the cracks around the doors, and sealed them.

I picked up the two foot chunk of fence post lying nearby and gently bopped my car doors around the edges. No go. I finally got the front passenger door on the right side open, but bruised myself climbing over the console in the middle. I started up the car and remembered that I had to go unlock the padlock on the gate first. I was assuming that once I had the car running a while the other doors would open up too.

However, the padlock was also frozen up. Humph! Now what?

Well, it was too dark already to deal with it any further, and I decided that I didn’t need the groceries that bad. So I locked up the car and went inside. Later, when writing up my reports and a testimony for the Day of Prayer I was thankful I hadn’t gone shopping, or I would have been working at this until after midnight.

The next morning I went out to the car early, armed with a couple of cans of Dad’s DW40. It opened the padlock for me, but not the car doors. Joe, my neighbour to the left, came along the fence between our houses and gave the door handles a mighty heave upward, and lo, they opened! I loaded down the car with the bags I needed for the all-day meeting, and headed out to the WTM office. Later in the afternoon I went to do my shopping. No problem with the doors.

But Sunday morning, guess what? I was iced out again! Fortunately Joe saw me from their kitchen window and was soon trudging along-side the fence, to come open my doors for me. We’ve begun talking about how I need a shelter for my car at least, if not a garage. So I’m wondering, dare I ask God for such a big gift? Should I settle for a tent car-port or hold out for a full garage?

Besides planning the “look and feel” of my new SBI site on aloe vera and herbs, I’ve been investing as much time as I dare pre-empt for my new business plan. I have long dreamed of a business to start once I lived in the city. Well… it looks like I might be able to start it in January. I’ve already been offered a great deal on office space.

Right now I’m trying to keep my promise to get this RoseBouquet out on schedule, so I’m going to make some key calls to City Hall as soon as I have finished this. Depending on the answers I get I’ll have more to tell you next week.

I got to thinking yesterday… After Dad died someone said that I probably wouldn’t be able to get a job since I hadn’t worked (aside from being a dishwasher/maid at home) for so many years. (Clear evidence she doesn’t know me!) But I can honestly say that I haven’t had to hunt for work - work keeps finding me!

I turned down a potential web design client last week - for lack of sufficient time. This week someone who discovered my translation skills on my genealogy site emailed and asked if I could translate some pages from a book he’s ordered from Germany in time to make a Christmas gift of it. I promised to try to squeeze it in somewhere somehow.

Tonight I am resolved to make a supreme push to get my Christmas story written and ready to print. That always turns out to be a time-gobbling project. However, it does allow me to give everyone I care about a little of my “real self” as a gift. I ignore all other Christmas fuss and bothers and just do that one thing. So I must get it done!

I’ve been hearing on the news about how the day after Thanksgiving in the USA is referred to as ‘Black Friday.’ Huh?

Yes, it is because of all the people starting the Christmas shopping the day after the holiday. They stampede in the stores, and sometimes folks get trampled.

By Monday of the following week many people have decided that’s crazy. They’ll do their Christmas shopping online this year! So they turn in huge droves to their computers and go online to do their gift shopping. Hence, yesterday was Cyber Monday. You don’t get trampled, and you don’t find yourself five seconds too late for the last of a mountain of fad toys. The worst that can happen is that the store’s site pages may be loading a bit slower for all the virtual traffic they are getting.

Nor are you likely to run into “out of stock” notices because the sites work in conjunction with their warehouses.

But did you know that you could do better still - if you owned a MyPowerMall and shopped at any of the 1100 + stores there? That includes most of the name-brand chains of stores you usually frequent. A lot of them have specials for on their websites only, and some throw in free shipping, But on top of that, MyPowerMall lines up rebates for you on every purchase. You’ll get some of your money back to spend again at another time!

So you missed Cyber Monday? No problem! You can shop any day 7/24 online. But if it has to be shipped some distance, you might want to order those gifts in the next two weeks.

Get your free PowerMall here;
MyPowerMall.com/ - It only takes a few minutes. In fact, sign up each family member, using a different email address for each one. You might as well draw a profit under each name.

About the end of November I usually get a Christmas card letter from my friend Katherine. She describes how she has everything ready for Christmas. That means her gifts are all bought wrapped, her menus planned, her housecleaning done, her Christmas cards letters just about all away. Her house decorations are ready to put up on December 1.

Katherine’s letter makes me sigh. Is she too eager for Christmas, or am I just lazy? What’s the matter?

Then I got to thinking. She’s shopping for most of that stuff. I’m doing things the homemade way.

There’s a new rage for homemade Christmases, so I’m starting to lift my head, to share my secrets. The catch is, you have to read this early to make use of many of these ideas. If you follow my example, you’re not likely to be ready early like Katherine, but hey, you’ll have fun you can do this on a shoestring budget.

You can prepare your heart to worship the Christ-child without spending a cent. It does take time to sit quietly focus your thoughts on who the holiday is for, how you will honour Him in your heart.

Many automatically have relatives and dear friends that all come together to celebrate, but if it happens that you don’t know enough people to make a joyous noise in your home, take charge, invite other lonely singles neglected people. They will surprise you with love.

For 24 years now I have not been able to buy cards for all the people I’d like to send greetings to at Christmas time, so I’ve made huge batches of my own, Often people send me their card with a note, hoping they are still on my list so they can see my card.

[Read the rest of this article in my Sharing Library - Too Eager for Christmas ]

My Christmas Cacti have been taking turns blooming. First was the one in the high east window. I noticed, but didn’t take photos.

Then I found a larger cactus in the front porch looking as if some insects had been chewing up the stems on one side, and the rest of the plant was budding forth with those pretty deep pink tips that indicate flowers are coming. So I moved it inside the living room. It bloomed gloriously for about 10 days. On Saturday I swept up the last of the dropped flowers.

Last week another cactus in the porch pushed out blossoms in the hopes of winning a place indoors. So I brought it in and found a corner on my crowded desk for it. Last week it had blossoms on almost every stem. They keep pushing out another and another blossom out of the previous one, so the flowers look longer and quite dainty with all those hot pink petals sticking out. Today it has some flowers looking droopy, so I guess it is winding down now too.

Yes, I took photos. My Christmas Cacti

The odd thing is that I would have loved for them to bloom in December since I have no room or time for a tree. This way I’ve had all my Christmas decorations in November.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends who are celebrating that this Thursday first. After that they will ramp up their Christmas preparations too.

Ah-ha. I’ve got my SBI domain name now. But now I’m suppose to produce 20-30 pages before I start promoting it, and listing it with the search engines. So I won’t give you the name yet, but I’ll tell you what it’s about.

Back at Dad’s house, for the last couple of decades, I had plants in the sunroom. Mostly aloe vera plants. In fact, they kept multiplying so much, that at some points I counted 76 pots full, and most of them were brimming with too many plants in them. I only watered them on Saturday mornings IF I was home, and it was fairly cold there in the winter, and hot as a sauna in the summer-time, but they thrived.

I did not have the heart to toss them into the garden as compost, so they multiplied and grew larger and larger. We used them to heal Dad of stomach ulcers, shingles, and so forth. He had no problem with eating the gel when I scraped it out of the big fat stems for him. Sometimes I could even sell or give away a pot full of aloe vera.

But there were Saturday mornings when I’d be watering them, which took about half an hour or more, I’d be wondering - an SBI site is suppose to be about your passion; could I make a profit off a site about aloe vera? I began to long for a chance to prove it.

Of course, I’ve also been active in learning to use the herbs all around us, often thought of as weeds, but turning out to have great health benefits, when I researched them. So my new site is going to be about aloe vera and the handy herbs that God has growing near us. No matter what our health issues, God has placed a plant growing near our house to be the cure for our problem. It’s a matter of digging for this information.

Well, I have sold and given away lots of my plants, but I still have my knowledge, and over the last month or so, as I’ve been researching the possibilities with a site on this subject, I’ve been astonished to discover that it is a very profitable topic. I will be making more money from this site than all my other sites and online ventures combined!

I have a lot of other things on the go, so I can only give this site 4-5 hours a week of my time. It means I’m progressing slower than I might like, but hey, I want to keep my promises to others, and allow time for another business venture that I’m preparing, so slow is better than not at all.

It looks like 2008 may finally be my year of abundance!

Notes: Want to read up on SBI sites? SiteBuildIt!

The links of last week for beautiful powerpoints of USA and Canadian photos, under Tips & Solutions, were not working right. I’ve fixed them, and hope they’ll work for you now. OhCanada!.pps OhCanada!.pps.ZIP (Let me know if they don’t, or do a Google search for OhCanada!.pps and you’ll find other sites which have it too).

On Sunday afternoon a dear friend called for a chat. In the course of many things, she mentioned that she was looking for those Precious Feet pins we used to sell and hand out when we were both involved in a ProLife organization in Hague. But she wasn’t sure where to find them. I said, “Oh, just a sec. I’ll check on line.” In moments I had found the company from which I had ordered them back then.

Ah, but look! Now they had all kinds of new products added. More jewelry, including Precious hands, (at that Kathy got excited!) and DVDs and books, etc. She’s still afraid to do any online shopping so she’s coming over later this week to let me help her with her order.

Where to find “Precious Feet” and “Precious Hands” pins. HarvestHouse’76 has all kinds of ProLife Resources too.

(Profile of a character in my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses)

She was orphaned as a child in Australia. At thirteen she had grown not only withdrawn, but bitter against God and the world when she was raped in a deserted stretch of woods through which she usually walked from school to her foster home.

Afraid to trust anyone, especially men, she had locked herself into a world of books, a safe and private realm where she could have adventure without involvement. Diligent and thorough, she earned degrees in literature and history while still in her twenties, and she wrote very articulate articles raking over anything she heard about God. There was no such thing,… or person– God-forbid! (She cringed internally at her faux pau. But nothing happened).

She had to set new goals to keep busy. She wrote a textbook for elementary schools, and travelled to the States, hoping for fame..

There she went to another university and got degrees in arts, music, and philosophy. Education, journalism and even political science followed. She drove herself on, only stopping to write another textbook or history tome when she ran low on tuition fees and living expense money. She set higher goals and got doctorates. No matter how long or difficult the courses, as long as she did not have to think of relationships, or her lack of them.

A time came when there were no more courses that interested her. Realizing she had some responsibility to pass her knowledge on she decided to come teach in Canada. She chose high school, rather than a professorship, so she could feel superior to her students. They would not notice her short-comings, or so she thought.

Instead she ended up antagonizing the whole student body! Some called her the Fire-Spitting Dragon, and they had no respect for her at all.

Though Phyllis had written complicated theses to prove it was impossible for God to exist, her main argument was that in all her travels and studies she had never met anyone who was the kind of transformed person prescribed in the New Testament. Sometimes she wished she could just have a peek at such a perfect person; the next moment she beat herself up for allowing such a thought into her head.

When Phyllis heard about a student of hers, Darlene Barrett, a promiscuous sixteen year old who has dropped out of school to start a dress designing shop, she decided to get over there to tell this girl off. This very Friday. Not next week!

Yes, this fifty-ish woman, who looked like a model skeleton escaped from the labs, wearing a charcoal crepe dress ordered from an Eaton’s catalogue in the early 40s, with her greying red hair severely knotted into a neck bun, clicked and clattered in her high heeled black tie-up oxfords off on her crusade. She would teach that drop-out the value of an education!

Now, if your imagination is not up to featuring in your mind what a totally transformed Phyllis would be like, then you NEED to read Ruthe’s Secret Roses and find out how I pictured it.

Darlene had been kicked out of her mother’s apartment for becoming a Christian, and with Ruthe Veer’s help, had renovated a little green cottage into a dress-design shop under her new name, Darlin’ Bonne’s Shoppe. Phyllis found a totally transformed teen. Darlin’ looked 21 instead of 16 in her very tailored black velvet suit, and her shiny black hair done up in elegant fashion curls, shaped like a crown. Darlin’ was not giggling and winking at the boys in class now. She had good manners, and when her former teacher lit into her with a harsh lecture about dropping out of school, Darlin’ responded by slipping an arm around the older woman, drawing her to a fur covered vanity stool, and asking, “Would you like to hear how Jesus gave me a total makeover? A brand new person.”

Phyllis stared. “Imposs–!”

But Darlin’ Bonnie ignored her angry words and vibrations and pretended Phyllis really wanted to hear this. Which she did, gulping it down as if she’d been oxygen-deprived.

That very day Phyllis got a spiritual and a physical total body makeover and a brand new look. The gang at Darlin’ Bonne’s Shoppe spent all that evening giving her a new hairdo, a new face, and a new wardrobe. They all worked together in one room, and even worked through all her class subjects at school with Phyllis, and showed her new ways to teach.

I assure you - when she was back in school on Monday, her students did not recognize her. The only thing that convinced them was when she humbly told the story of her own royal treatment at Darlin’ Bonne’s - her total makeover. She was going to keep working at being this new woman until she fully measured up to the description in Matthew chapter 5.

Sure! You can ….
Read more about the book first here, if you like; Introduction Or, go directly to the Order page

Or, Read sample chapters of my first novel online, starting at the Index

Order the e-book to download and read on your computer; Order page

You can order the softcover paperback from Booklocker.com

I knew this little house had mice before I moved in, and I cleaned up a lot of their waste and tried to block off all holes where they might come in. My neighbours tell me there have been mice coming from under my back porch to sample their dogs’ dishes, but so far I had seen none inside my house, so I thought I had succeeded in keeping them out.

However, on Sunday evening, sitting in my recliner for a quick read, I suddenly saw a movement from the kitchen doorway and glanced over in time to see a little dark mouse creeping under my pink chair. Like a flash I jumped and started hollering at that mouse that it was NOT welcome here! I stomped my feet and commanded it to leave.

Nothing. No obedience, no movement.

Then I realized how it must have come in. I had the back door open during the afternoon to let the bright sunshine in from the back porch windows. I know there are some gaps in the outer door frame big enough for a mouse to sneak through. It must have got as far as the kitchn in the afternoon from outside - under my porch.

Well, I think of myself as a pacifist, but I became very active and alert as I inspected where all it could go. Mainly I think it is camping under my desks and filing cabinets. I haven’t seen it leave, but then I haven’t been keeping my eyes on the floor at all times. So it could be anywhere by now. I went downstairs and brought up a box of fabric softener sheets. I had already stuck strips of this in all the cracks in the basement walls, and foundation. Now I laid some under every gap beneath my desks too, around my bed, (horrors - if it should cuddle up close to my face in the night!)

I also called Penny next door, and left a message for her to come over with her cat once they got home in case her cat was a mouser.

She did, but Buddy is NOT a mouser. He prowled and sniffed and just knew there was something under my desk, but he shivered with fear.

Other friends gave me a couple of new mouse traps some weeks ago, but when I tried to set one, I only caught my own finger in it. What a strong spring! So those are handy if anyone comes over and is able to set them. Since yesterday was a holiday (because Remembrance Day fell on Sunday) I had to wait until today to go shopping for mouse poison. That’s on my to-do list right after finishing this RoseBouquet.

I wasn’t too keen on finding desiccated mice all over the house, but now I’m desperate enough and am declaring a fresh, intensive offensive in this war! I will be rid of all mice in this house - and under the back porch too!

I’ve been discovering in my SBI process that there are some wonderful ways to monetize my site. That is, to cause it to make money! I never thought I could become so excited over income streams, but my imagination is constantly running away with me. I wish now that I’d been able to do this years ago. All my sites would be much more profitable by now if I had applied all these lessons to them. Whew!

I’m also drafting a business plan for something I want to start in January. You’ll hear more about that when the timing is appropriate.

This last weekend was rather delightful. A dear penpal sent some typing to do for her, and enclosed a large money bill. Then I went to the annual “history/genealogy” weekend of our Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan (MHSS), and though I paid up my membership and the ticket for Saturday’s lunch, the treasurer slipped me a much larger amount per my invoice for work in the MHSS site. On Saturday a couple who are related, came up to me to ask about my Firesen data, and I was able to pull my second last copy of “Our Friesens and Assorted Friesens” out of my grey bag and sell it to them.

Oh, and the lady sitting beside me at the round table complained that she couldn’t understand her genealogy programs. When I told her I was preparing to offer tutoring in computers, she was happy to give me her contact info.

Any wonder that I came away feeling cheerful? It seems that work is finding me!