“The RoseBouquet”

My hand is healed up, though I think two small scars will remain.

Perhaps today I should talk about the weather. We’ve had a cool, slow spring for about a month now, so the snow drifts have disappeared, but there is less danger of flooding in basements, for which many are grateful. I see that this week we are going to hover around 0 Celsius, (freezing point), but next week things are to pick up and our temperature will creep higher, like to 6 C.

In other parts of Canada, like the greater Vancouver area, I understand they have temperatures in the two-digits above 0 already, and the flowers are blooming, and so forth. No doubt if you live closer to the equator, you only notice whether it is raining or not. Or if the air feels more hot and humid than yesterday. It’s those of us here in the Canadian prairies who really know how to appreciate spring. We’ve borne through 4 to 5 months of winter, and so every little sign of spring is noticed and welcomed here. Some folks count the summer birds as they arrive back from the south.

When I lived on a farm as a young girl I used to go into the pasture to hunt for crocuses as my sign that spring was finally, fully here. (That reminds me of a poem of mine I should share with you today; I’ll put it in the Ruthe’s Roses section).

Naturally, once spring is really here there is more yard work to do again. So I’m pondering how to adjust my schedule to sneak in some outdoor chores. I can’t count on Dad to do them for me this year. Let’s see, my list looks like this;

clean and turn over the rain barrels
vacuum and wash the car
rake the lawn
dig up the garden to bury the compost (unless someone will come with their rotortiller to do it)
sow the early stuff like radishes and spinach, lettuce, etc.

By that time we’ll have inched our way into summer and there will be even more to do! I just don’t know yet whether Snowflake will join me outside, or stay an indoor cat. Some say that’s best. So far she’s too timid to do more than stand just outside the door and sniff the air with trembling and tense body. I have a feeling she’ll get over that though!

I’ve got the web pages up and a press release out to describe my courses. I’m still looking for more places to post it, but am quickly reaching the point where all I can do is place it all in the Lord’s hands, and see what He will bring to pass.

My first student of earlier, wants more private tutoring sessions. Another new friend has indicated interest for a short one-week course. So I think this is going to come together. However, I am asking for God’s help in bringing together the four trainees/interns that I need for May 1st if this plan is to work as planned. I don’t think I can keep the office if I don’t have committed students by then.

Mind you, I enjoy working alone at home and could return to my old schedule and push hard for success on my own sites…. Especially my SBI site. It holds such promise, if only I can put in some serious hours on it.

It it will be interesting to see what God brings to pass in this new month, April.

At a meeting on Friday evening I meet two poets, and got to thinking of my own poetry. It’s a great way to express what’s going on in our hearts, isn’t it? Do you write poetry? Did you know you could publish it on a website of your own?

Perhaps you’ve had your look at SiteBuildIt! (I’ve referred to it often enough, right?) But you weigh your own busy schedule and recognize that there would be a learning curve in doing that, and you simply can’t see yourself fitting that in. Maybe you already have a successful offline business running, and you agree that a website would sure be an advantage, but you’d rather pay someone else to do it for you.

Well, I’ve got good news for you! Ken Evoy, the founder/owner of SiteSell and all those products has announced that now they are offering a new service. They will be your webmaster and build your site for you if you subscribe to this service.

Many small-business people lump “Web sites” in with telephone, business cards and signage. But more and more offline businesses of all kinds are realizing that a Web site should be much more than “just another signpost” for your real-world, brick-and-mortar enterprise. Your Web site must be a powerful business-driver. And it must do that before your competitor’s does.

Let’s get you a Web site that works now.

You have worked hard to grow your own offline business. Now you need a Web site, one that takes your business to a whole new level. Building a site is easy, but building a high-traffic site requires special online business-building expertise that your local Webmaster doesn’t have.

In many cases, local businesses have paid $10-$20,000+ to local webmasters. Sooner or later, these business people start to look for a Return On Investment (”ROI”). And sites without visitors have no business-building ROI. What if instead, you could have a website that builds your business, for under $2000? One where everything is done for you? Do yourself a favour and check it out; http://services.sitesell.com/provision.html

Lord, do show me a crocus, please,
We desperately need a sign of spring.
Five months the snow’s been to our knees;
The land is rested, now let it sing.

Send showers of blessing to refresh,
I need a spiritual sign of spring.
My hopes and confidence are in a mess,
Bruised, in hurt tears to You I cling.

You’ve said season shall follow season,
So where’s a sign of Your promised spring?
I know You always have a good reason,
Perfect timing too, when YOU do anything.

I suppose as long as I can believe that,
My faith in You is my sure sign of spring.
You and a friend gave me a comforting pat;
Soon, like a bell, my life will clearly ring.

(c)1996 - Ruth Marlene Friesen

[Note: this is one poem out of my chapbook, Heart 2 Heart, which was originally published as a limited gift edition. If you check out http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/R/Heart2Heart.shtml you can see how you might get a copy of it today].

Like I said last week, I’d been slowly introducing Snowflake to the halter and leash and tying it to every effort to go outside. Saturday morning she was begging to go out again and I put on the halter and leash, and attached it to the doornob, while I was going to quickly first vacuum the strip of carpet in the kitchen and then the porch. Snowflake has watched me vacuum before and seems fascinated by it, but this time when she tried to back off to a safe distance she found the leash would not let her. She grew frantic - wild! I was afraid she was going to choke herself so I reached down to grab a hold of her - instantly her claws were in my left hand, with a few scratches on the right. I quickly reached for the leash and slipped it off the doornob, knowing deeply that I’d made a huge mistake.

She was away like a flash and I was dripping blood on the floor.

I rinsed my hands under some rubbing alcohol and then managed to get bandages over all my wounds. I took two Advil and decided I might as well finish up the vacuuming and cleaning the back porch. I put on plastic gloves to keep the dirt out of my bandages. As I vacuumed the rest of that kitchen mat I thought I saw several of Snowflakes long curled toenails.

Well, I had an ad hoc meeting at my office in the afternoon; I managed to go there. During the afternoon I noticed that my left hand was really swelling up high. So when I got home and felt feverish while trying to figure out supper I began to think it might be smart to go to emergency. By Easter morning that could be a serious problem, and it would put a crimp into going to church. When I finished dishes I knew I had better go.

It took 3 hours to get finished at St. Paul’s hospital Emergency. Right, I had to have a Tetanus shot too. The doctor also gave me a Rx for a serious double whammy of antibiotics and that I had to have one that same evening. I found an all-night drugstore to get it filled.

Sunday morning I had a headache and felt so dreadfully sluggish that I decided to have my devotions in my recliner and fell asleep, deciding that I couldn’t make it to church.

I had promised my brother Tom a lunch of wild deer steak and baked potatoes, and I managed to get those started in the crock and oven while I had breakfast and another super antibiotic. Then I went back to the recliner and dozed fitfully until 1 pm. The steak smelled good, so I pulled myself together despite the headache, and packed up the food and went to Tom’s. We enjoyed the meal and I stayed long enough to watch one church service on TV and then came home for more napping - with Snowflake on my lap, who was desperate for cuddle time.

Yes, we made up about an hour after the quick little tango on Saturday morning, and we’ve been closer than ever since.

I’ve got some pages up on my business site now describing the courses; http://BouquetofEnterprises.biz/Az/ But I’m still polishing up my press releases and advertising places.

My SBI site is also getting some extra time this week as I’d promised myself. Although I wish it was more. I need to work in some time on a translation job I accepted a few weeks ago.

Birthdays. My brother Ernie is older today, as is a dear friend and former roomie in my London, Ontario days, Elvera.

MyPowerMall had it’s first birthday just last week on the 19th, and guess what, Ginny, the Founder and CEO gave away gifts to all the members. Three or four a day for three days straight! I don’t know if you can still get the free airline tickets if you signed up now, but you could try, as you can access the newsletters in the archives. Mind you, they are offered frequently as prizes for other things too. You really do yourself a big favour when you sign up.

And I’ve got this dream for how I could help all my downline to grow and get a good downline fast too, - only I haven’t got time to work at it yet. This sort of chaffs at me, but what can I do? I feel honour-bound to keep promises made, so I need to deal with those first.

HOT Tip: There’s Plain Tutorials in PEOPLE-SPEAK! available.

(a page from a devotional book in progress)

Ecclesiastes 2:26 To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Wow! I’ve marked this before, but haven’t thought of it lately.

Is this true now though in my life? I do hope I please God, and I like to think He is granting me wisdom, knowledge and much happiness! The monies I’ve received in the last year or so are not really from sinners, but from Christians who wanted to help.

But still, if God wants to turn sinners’ money over to me too, … I’m open to any of His gifts, aren’t you? Can you picture this; you live a life that pleases God, so He gives you wisdom, knowledge and happiness, and He has sinners raise funds or wealth, which they turn over to you?

Once a former neighbour who remembered me from my childhood met me in a public place, and seemed to know all about me. He was watching my life. He insisted he wanted nothing to do with church, but he held out $20 to me and said he wanted me to have it as long as I would spend it on myself and not give it to my church.

About three months ago I heard a young woman raising support for full-time missionary work share how a couple, not believers, had come to her and said, “We’ve been watching your life and we want to help you out. Here’s money to help you buy a house for you and your daughters.” It was a check for $250,000, and she was able to find a house for that price!

PRAYER: How shall I understand this, Lord? The first part I grasp, for You do give wisdom, knowledge and happiness when our lives are obedient and pleasing to You. Do You really give the sinners the task of gathering wealth for those that please You? If so, that is tremendous! Thank You for being so creative in supplying our every need, and the resources to do Your work in Your name. Amen.

Last week the snows of winter disappeared at a good pace. There are still dirty clumps and patches of snow and ice here and there, but we have lost most of it in Saskatoon. That’s good! I’m eager for spring.

Snowflake showed some interest in going outside too, but of course, I don’t want to lose her, so I made her wait until the end of last week when I finished a little halter for her out of some pretty mauve polyester scraps that impossible to tear with your bear hands. I finally found a buckle in a button box that I could sew in at the top to hook in the leash. That was Thursday night.

Snowflake allowed me to put it on as she reclined on my lap. She had no problem with wearing it for a while. I wanted her to get used it as I’d read on the internet.

Friday afternoon when I got back from an a morning at the office, I put on the harness again, and tried to go out the back door into the porch. Whoa! My cat had a panic attack and scrambled out of my arms to race to the other end of the house. She seems to have forgotten that she used to live in a barn on a farm and come and go as she pleased outside.

Saturday I tried several more times, but all she would do is sniff and prowl into back porch with the stomach walls trembling. It was like she was dying to explore, but fears slowed her down. When I tried to open the outer door for her, she fled inside again.

Sunday and yesterday were much colder, and blustery with winds and a light snowfall, so I haven’t pushed it.

In my heart I know that once she gets used to being outside, she’ll be constantly begging to go out. My problem will be to bring her in!

Fortunately, Brandi, the little 7 or 8 year old girl next door has met Snowflake now, and I think will be happy to play with Snowflake for hours on end this summer. Things should work out just fine!

My first student of the week-long course had his 5th lesson yesterday (the earlier week he had to be away on the Friday). This one was about how to set up a website. Although I warned that it usually takes weeks or months to get a site up and running well, I told him I could take him through a fast do-it-yourself process so that by the end of our 3 hour session he would have a one page website up. Even if it was nothing but one large ad for his business. Well, we did it! I’ll probably be mentoring him for a while as he learns how to add more to it and build it into a true site, but we covered three basic steps;

1. We went to GoDaddy, and he registered a domain name to go with his business name, Moen-Advertising-Specialties.com
2. I set up a hosting account for him on my reseller package. It was live in a matter of moments.
3. We spent most of our time, on learning the most basic HTML tags as I built him a web page based on the info he had brought to go on it.
Then I uploaded it for him, and showed him some of the things he has and can now do in his cPanel where he can manage his site.

I would still prefer a few months to get a site up and running, but by trimming out a lot of extras, and with me working programs I’m used to, I found it is possible to do it in three hours flat. He came away a very happy man, and bragged to some friends when leaving the building, “I’ve got a website!” Of course, now he’ll have to order another batch of business cards.

An epiphany came to me last week when I realized that I was going about the marketing of my courses all wrong. Marnie Perhson of IdeaMarketers.com pointed out the value of press releases and articles to promote a business. Duh! I knew that! But in setting aside work on my own sites to get this new business off the ground I’d forgotten to go that route for free marketing. Now my goal for the rest of this week is to get up some decent webpages, maybe even a new site, just to promote what my training courses offer. Then I must get some press releases and articles out.

I am ready to set my business as unique in many respects. It shall honour the Lord.

If I don’t have any students next week I will spend the week cramming some time on my SBI site. Usually I only dare designate Saturday evenings for it, but by then I am so sleepy I can’t get much accomplished. Since that site is suppose to be a good steady stream I need to move it forward.