“The RoseBouquet”

This is strange. I ought to be in a panic, and when I allow myself to think of it all at once, a bit does rise within me. This December has been unusually busy, and it looks impossible to get everything done that I’ve taken on, yet, day by day God provides for the next step, so if I just focus on what I need to do for now, somehow I keep moving forward.

Producing my Christmas card, cum story booklet is a large job in itself. I was blessed in that last week Joe spent a day printing out 100 copies of my pages filled with photos, and I’ve been busy over the weekend, addressing my mail, however, I can see that I’m going to run out. So much as I think it will disappoint some people, I’ve just prepared an online version. I’ll give you a link here, and if you click on it, and follow it, you’ll be able to read the whole booklet online - or, if you choose - download it.

Hey the colors in the photos will be more true! You can print it out if you like, and if you don’t, you have nothing to throw away afterwards! Clever, huh?

My annual Christmas story is my gift to my friends and family, but this year it is a photo story of my very Eventful Year 2007

By the way, did you want a SiteBuildIt! too? Ken Evoy wrote yesterday that he’s offering his two for one deal again over the Christmas holidays. This is so popular that people wait for it to show up again. (And you know how fast December is racing by).

So many generous gift-giving situations…

Parents give free sites to their children. And vice-versa.

Wives to husbands. And vice-versa.

Friends to friends. And vice-versa.

And SBI! is MUCH more than just a gift. It’s a chance to acquire an important, brand new LIFE SKILL. and a web business if you want it to be!

Go here to look it over and buy - SiteBuildIt!

I’ve been busy painting and adding pretty wallpaper borders to give the suite of three rooms a touch of class. Saturday, I spent the day steam-cleaning the carpets - thanks to a gift from a woman who is a friend of a friend. I’ve never met her that I know of.

I still have some legal documents to process. Until I get the name registration in the mail and my business license I am not to use the name of my business publically. I hope to get these in the mail this week yet. I also need to devise an application form and do up some press releases so that I have a chance of recruiting the four interns I’m hoping to train, starting in January. I’m thinking of having an Open House in my new office suite on Saturday, the 28th. That will be my opportunity to Show and Tell what my business will be about, and what I’ll be teaching my interns.

Believe me, there’s still lots to do!

I will forecast now, that in January I’ll be quite busy too, and may be making excuses here, but once I’ve taught my interns the basics, I will be able to turn some jobs over to them, and focus more on my own writing projects, and things like this RoseBouquet. My ultimate goal is to pass some of my work on to others, and to multiply myself several times over.

If the Lord keeps blessing and guiding and providing as He has this year, then 2008 is going to be somethin’ Great!

Since I spent all morning getting the online version of my Christmas gift/booklet ready for you, I will beg off from the usual weekly article again, and let you spend your reading time on that instead.

Remember that there will be no edition of the RoseBouquet next week Tuesday, as that falls on Christmas Day. I will likely be in church, and then cooking a turkey to take over to my brother Tom’s apartment. I’ve invited Jona to join us, and if his family fails to include him again, he’ll be joining us.

I do trust and pray that your own family gathering for the holiday feasting and celebration of Christ’s birth will be sweet, and warm your heart thoroughly with all the love going around. If you end up being left out and alone, remember to spend some good quality time with the Lover of our souls, the Lord Jesus! His company and presence is easily worth that of dozens of others.

Once again, here’s the link to my Christmas gift/photo story for you! Eventful Year 2007

A Blessed Christmas to You, and a Great New Year in 2008!

Blessings & Thanks for reading with me!
Ruth

This will be a quick, notice of holiday publishing changes, but I do want to tell you about last week.

Shortly after I sent out last week’s issue of the ezine, I had a phone call from my friend Shirley. She said she had just the solution for my cold feet. Later in the afternoon she arrived and brought me - ready? - battery-operated socks! And her second pair of mukluks! I’ve tried various configurations and am grateful for such kind help.

Fortunately, The cold double-digit temperatures have given way to single digit numbers this week. (But of course that means that the skies go overcast, and snow starts to fall).

I had meant to paint my new office rooms at WTM on Saturday, but it was too cold for my car to start, so I did that yesterday. Well, I didn’t get it finished so I’m begging you to excuse me while I head back there today to finish that job. I’m discovering as I did in spring and summer, that such physical jobs always take longer than I had first pictured.

December is flying by so fast, and I still have more legal documents to get, and second hand office furniture to scrounge up, and some more used computers, etc. Plus, I’ve got to devise an application form and start promoting this business so I can hope to have four interns ready to start the first week in January.

I try to be punctual with the publishing of this RoseBouquet and get it out in three formats, as a blog, as an ezine, and as an RSS feed. That usually takes all of Tuesday morning. But this month, December, I’m looking at my schedule and thinking, “This is going to get difficult to juggle.” So this issue will be just this notice. I’ll try to get a regular issue done next week, but I definitely want to cancel the December 25th issue. I’ll be busy with special holiday feasting, and I’m assuming you most likely will do the same.

January 1 is considered a holiday too, but I may get an issue in then. If not, it is because I’m still scrambling to be ready with my new business. That will eat up quite a bit of time in the beginning, but once I can give my interns assignments and leave them to it, I hope to get most of my usual schedule back into shape. January will be an interesting month in that way!

Well, did you notice my absence the last three days? Yes, I had a computer crisis since Saturday. So if you sent me any email - if it was already in my inbox, it will hopefully show up when I get that part set up. If you sent it later, it will download once I have my email addresses set up again in KMail.

Yesterday I was wondering whose computer I could borrow to send out a quick announcement today that I was NOT able to produce the RoseBouquet for this week. However, miracles still happen. (Pretty well weekly for me, right?)

See below under WHAT’S NEW for the details.

Are you in the midst of a winter storm too? I heard yesterday that most of Canada was having winter storms and large sections of Eastern USA too. It doesn’t look too bad right now, but the forecast is for more snow tomorrow.

I guess this is par for the season, but I’m having trouble with cold feet in my house. Also in my boots when I got out. On Sunday morning, after spending half an hour breaking into my car because of the frozen doors, my feet were curling into pretzels in my boots with a rather painful cold. Yesterday I picked up some thinsulate lining material. I want to make booties I can wear in my boots (or at home). I recall once my sister Elsie gave me some and asked me to sew some oven mitts. She said this stuff keeps cold out and heat in.

Last week my friend Shirley got me some “hand warmers’ little packets you can keep in your mitts to keep your hands warm. i tried them in my boots on Friday and found them too lumpy and uncomfortable there. Hence my search for other alternatives for my feet. I’ve already tried some little sockettes made of natural cotton. That tends to stretch out of shape; I think the thinsulate might do better.

Here in my house, the floor is especially cold under my desk, so I’m wearing over my regular socks, those thick black alpaca socks Dad knit for me a year ago. That helps! But then my boots don’t fit me.

Got any other feet-warming ideas? Sugar, but I miss that warm furnace in Dad’s house!

On Saturday I decided to install a brand new 160GB hard drive into my computer. Of course I did a good backup first. But while I was quite sure I’d be done by supper time, I was at it all day Saturday and all evening,

Oh, I had promised to create a Christmas letter for a client and I managed to keep that promise by using a Knoppix LIVE DVD to go online to fetch back some of the photos I had already prepared for them, and he had called about a revised text he’d sent me by email. I fetched that from online too, and did the letter over that I had already done for them on Friday evening. Over the phone we walked through another few edits, and finally he was happy with it, so I could dust my hands of that job - done in time!

Sunday afternoon I was sure I had the right cable configurations at last, and went at it again. No go. BIOS (the bare skeleton part of a computer) would not recognize either of my hard drives. Not the old 40GB one I had been using, nor the new 160GB drive. I knew the jumper cable settings can be tricky, but I tried every possible configuration in the innards of the computer box, booting up again and again, only to find I couldn’t go on to do a fresh install of my operating system. I’m now very familiar with the inside of a computer box and not afraid of it any more.

In the evening I used the Knoppix DVD again to bypass the hard drives and go online to send off an email I do every Sunday night for some missionary friends.

Monday morning I decided this was long enough. I had to take it back to the place where I’d bought the hard drive and see if they could set the cables right. They wouldn’t let me wait for it so I went shopping for thinsulate. Finally I called them after lunch to learn it had been done in half an hour. I could pick it up. Off I hurried to fetch it home again.

Only, now I couldn’t even use the DVD drive to go online to look for more advice! They had taken out the 40GB drive saying it was no good. But I still couldn’t install or anything! Oh-GRRR!!!

I tried phoning some of the computer techies in the yellow pages who promise to come to your home to fix things. One wanted to charge over $100/hour if I had a mac or a linux computer! Whoa! Finally about 3 pm. One man had the patience to let me describe my problem and he observed that if my computer was 8-9 years old, there is no way the motherboard could handle a drive of 160GB size. Now that was something I had not considered. But it was the most sensible thing I’d heard all day.

The conclusion I quickly came to was - I’m sunk! I need a new computer! My livlihood depends on it!

What’s more, I had no time to lose. I took a quick look into my account book to see what I have in the bank. Yikkes, only $339 to spare, and I’d hoped to use that for furniture and computers for my new business. But I needed a computer to do my work. So I bundled up for the third time and headed out to the first computer store just two blocks away that also have second hand computers - sometimes. (By now the snow storm was blowing in earnest). Well, they had one that might do… but it had less capacity than the one I’d been using.

I decided to move on. I found another store downtown I’d heard about; they would build a computer for me over 5-7 days, and their lowest price model was over $400. I shook my head and moved on. Across the city to ComputerTrends. I’ve been reading their ads in the weekly flyers I get. They had two models in my price range. The lower priced one had no DVD burner - which I need to install my operating system. The next one was $325. It came with a new keyboard and mouse and speakers. I checked around in case they had anything else, and seeing the storm outside, decided against trekking to any more stores. I bought it. The sales man carried the box to my car, and I was home by 5 pm.

Then I spent the whole evening setting up. The installation of my new SUSE 10.3 only took about an hour, but then I had to copy all my backed up files into it too, and fine tune some personal settings. I still have more fine-tuning to do, and to install special programs I use, but - hallelujah, I praise God that I’m up and running this morning and able to write this RoseBouquet after all.

And my dear BBN online radio is playing Christmas music for me again. Thank You, Lord!

At this time of year some people come down with severe depression. A few years ago I wrote a series of articles on this, and made an ebook which you can download for free. See more below in RUTHES ROSES, where I have part of the first article for you.

In casting about for foot warming ideas I’ve just done a quick search online and gathered a few tips to start our brainstorming session;

Cold hands and feet can be a result of certain diseases, drinking too little water, etc. Find out the cause.

Buy these hand warmer packets. (Giant Tiger has them 4/$1.49) Play around with them inside your gloves.

Don’t smoke or drink coffee, both impair circulation.

Powder your feet to absorb sweat moisture - that moisture in the cold feels even colder!

Mittens are better than gloves, and polypropylene or polyester blend socks transport moisture away from your skin.

Fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids help, and so do iron-rich foods (or supplements). Eat more fish.

Sprinkle cayenne pepper into your socks, or use an ointment like Zostrix which has cayenne it.

Okay… your turn. What have you tried?

So many talk about having depression, that it’s almost a status symbol now. Of course, those who truly suffer this affliction do not enjoy it much. I KNOW there are spiritual answers.

There are however, certain other emotions that often are mistaken for depression. They should not be treated the same, so it’s important to distinguish which you are dealing with.

DISCOURAGEMENT
This is what you feel when you lose hope. You’re unable to do the work God gave you. You get sadder and sadder, and give up - on yourself, on God, on life.

Put a discouraged person with other depressed and sad people, and it will only get worse. This individual needs to be with encouragers who speak with hope and gladness.

SORROW
This is a deep sadness of the soul, yet it is possible to be very sad about one thing, such as an illness, or death in the family, and joyful on another. A sorrowful person can be encouraged by someone weeping with them, and can still have a sense of purpose, and acknowledge that God can use this time to help him or her grow up spiritually.

GRIEF
This is an anguish of the spirit affecting both soul and body. It drains you of all emotional energy, causes sleeplessness, and can distort perspective. Often it involves a total disinterest in food. Grief that drags on and on can become depression.

Medical professionals use the following criteria for depression, the most common mental disorder in America, and twice as common in women as men.

At least two weeks of any four of these symptoms;

- poor appetite and weight loss, or of eating too much, and gaining weight,

- sleeping problems, either too much or not enough,

- no interest or pleasure in usual activities,

- fatigue, no energy,

- excessive or wrong sense of guilt, feeling worthless, and reproaching self,

- unable to think or concentrate,

- thinking of death or suicide a lot.

The medical people refer to categories and special terms. A Neurotic depression is mild, a Psychotic depression is severe.

[Read the rest of this article. The other five articles are in that same area - check the index to the Inspirational articles. You may also download the e-book for free from this e-book page. Help yourself to any of the others on that page too. To my chagrin I see that they are all .exe books, which means you can only open them on a Windows computer. I must fix that!]

Read about my novel Ruthe’s Secret Roses. 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.

You can order the softcover paperback from Booklocker