Hi honey!  We made it through the festive season and we will make it through the next 6 months, and the next!  Wonderful that you made it happen all on your own!  The encouragement you receive is great so you are assured you do not walk alone!  Joy can rise up in your heart, and the smile creeps back!!

I had a hectic season.  All staff on holiday, so I had to learn how to use the vacuum cleaner all over again... the washing machine....  IRONING  -  my worst nightmare.  Did it.  So I am back at work today for a rest from housekeeping, cleaning, sweating up a storm and generally looking like a clean hobo.  I ate well, but lost weight cos of all the water loss working my butt off.  So I am optimistic as I face the new year.  To get fit, I just need to run around the house 24/7, armed with a vacuum cleaner, sucking up non existent dirt... can do moths and spiders too!! Although my doors upstairs remain open permanently, all kinds of insects get trapped in the windows... shame.  Dunno why they can find their way out the window either.  Beats me.  Sold my car.. someone 1400 Kilometers away has bought it.  Now I have to deliver it to Johannesburg.  Going to collect my son-in-law's vehicle from SA Limosine.  They are doing the conversion for his hunting outfit.  So I am in for some tough travelling, and on our roads... even the cops drive like nutters.  Last year on my way home from JHB, in Bloemfontein there is a detour route.  It was 8 pm, dark etc...   arrived at a T-junction - arrows right for me... got through the traffic..  merrily driving along when I check two headlamps coming straight for me on MY side of the road... took evasive action, climbed the kerb and drove off road for a while. It was a SA Police van!!  I kid you not!  This is wild west country at times!  You cannot get mad at someone else... you just gotta smile and laugh pretending you are driving a dodgem car! Sometimes, in 1 kilometer, I nearly have 3 accidents, one after the other!  You have to drive defensively always.  Anyway, so that will be my first stressful moment this year!  and it is gonna last for about 30 hours.  JHB traffic is hectic.  I drove a hired vehicle from Trafalgar Square in London at 10 am on a Saturday morning all the way through to Scotland, and I can assure you, this country's drivers are enough to test anyone's skill just staying alive.  We are all beserk!  So driving like a hooligan to survive is not an option - it is vital!  Hectic balmy sultry weather here today, water running off my face before  7 am this morning... have the air con on, fans going..  once the breeze comes up, things improve.   Regarding my soul - am not isolating myself any longer.  Found I did it with everyone including God.  So I am opening up and letting my "filters" take in instead of clamming shut!  It is hard to even pray at times, coz you want to say the right things to God but at the same time, have a wailing spree asking why WHY WHY?  Yet, self control is a good mechanism..  helps us to maintain our dignity while wanting to have a complete melt down!  At the end of the day, we cannot control destiny... we can have a great ride through life, when times are good.   We live everyday to the fullest!  We have no other option.  Have to stand up again and face Life's challenges!  Send you hugs to encourage you to keep beautifying your home!  Inside and out!  To look after yourself and make her proud of you! To smile at others, even though your heart is fragmented and sore.  To love and reach out to someone, something - and touch it with Love!!

Hi there Norma sweet heart!!  Been wondering over Christmas how you progressed? You did not write, so I have to take that as a positive!!   I managed ok.  Had a few moments where I could not share my thoughts with anyone because I somehow feel that is all I have left of her, is my grief in my heart.  I protect that big time.  Strange huh.  On the whole,  it was a great time... managed to host the dinner, cook it, carve it... serve it... eat some of it.  Then I gave it all away.   I received some strange presents...  took them as messages from above!  One is a stand up Cross with roughly hewn genuine spikey nails like they used in the Roman times....    I am still looking at it wondering where to place it.  My dad gave me a pocket tool kit.  My Bro gave me a chess board he had personally crafted.  My kids gave me shock X speakers so I can make a whopping noise in the bathroom when I bathe....  I gave exercise clothes this year.  Make them all get out there and get healthy.  My Jessie broke her Mickey Mouse talk back toy in ten minutes.   So after all the hype drama and eating wrong foods continuously.. here we are.  More cuddly and lazy.    I have slept enough now and want to go back to work.  Have four days over.  Enjoyed my first 12 hour sleep in ages night before last!!  So proud of myself!!  Hope I can stay awake when I go back to work~  Have dropped caffeine completely - was torture for a week.  But I am still as hyperactive and crazy as before.  Have forced myself to be silent, process and think for long periods at a time.  Have calmed down.  Stopped reacting only, now able to consider, then act.  Before, I would be out exercising, running in front of a hail of bullets... rushing from something.. I could not fathom what!!!  Now I realize, peace in breast first, then go out and exercise etc.    Now dear lady, how are YOU doing?  Drop me a few lines and let me know ok.  Thinking of you, about you and wondering how far your progress has taken you!  Hugs and smiles!

Hello honey bunch.  Sorry have been on holiday for over a week now, and my laptop was too....  catching up now I have a minute.  Going into the new year alone cos my admirer has to work (she is a policewoman)  - my kids gone off inland to the forests for three days.  Went to my friends to upholster some chairs this afternoon, and earned myself early supper.  Going to jump into the pool to cool off just now, make a new hubbly bubbly and vegetate on the couch watching telly.  I miss my Ally, first year in yonks that I am not with her, but I wrote her and got it all off my chest.  I send mail to her facebook site, so I can bleat, wail, laugh and relate whatever is on my mind.  I dont care if her family can read it either.  I also have a group on facebook... Missing Ally group.  I am careful what I post there cos I have clients on my facebook as well as biz associates.  They know I am gay as a coot, but hetero people never mention it... taboo...   My wish and prayer for you, is that your heart is healing, your soul is mending and your mind is filled with the good precious memories of the wonderful times only!  God replace the trauma, pain and anguish with the beautiful times and memories you shared!  Give you optimism and hope that you may be loved by someone in the future.  That the right angels come into your life to bring you this hope and message!  God bless us all.  Happy new year sweet heart!

Norma honey, will be thinking of you today.  My hope is that you have a good day.  Something wonderful happens to encourage you and that your smile returns!  Keep looking forward - be present in the now.  Even the beautiful smile from a stranger can turn your world the right way up!  

Maybe one day you will reveal what the problem was which you think triggered Karen's cancer?  I have my own views on cancer, but topography has a hand in it for sure... once in the chemo room, I used to do all the tests and everything with my Ally - we were chatting to everyone making them laugh and we found out when everyone started to find out who they were, where they lived... over 70% of them came from one town.  Now I don't know if it's the water, or natural minerals... but the realization is frightening that we are inbibing what is literally causing us to fall ill.  At the end of the day, we have to die from something, so being pragmatic helps.I know that we all try to work out how we could have prolonged their lives.. done more... but then we would have prolonged their suffering.  We having an awesome thunderstorm  here.. been building up all day.  Hope there's no hail in the clouds!!  My multiwagon is sold... just waiting for the guy to travel 1000kms to come and collect it.  Don't want to have an accident or dent it now at the final hour.....  Have given NO thought to what I am replacing it with!!  Will cross that bridge soon enough.... force my life to be exciting and live on the edge...  I have been told I create excitement.  

Music.  Can you download music on your pc, or your mobile phone at all?  Then I can let you know bout some new music I found...  like Koop. Charlie Winston. Lira. Sara Bareilles. Lena Meyer.   Good to listen to clever music too, because you cannot just let it flow over you..  the beat is strange, it sounds out of synch, yet it is not etc.   A few modern song writers are using a kind of jazz fusion which is extremely intelligent music, holding your attention like modern art!  Keep smiling honey bunch.  Chat later!

Hi Norma honey bunch.  Hope that you are having a much better day today! Here the sun is shining.. the birds building nests outside in the trees...  crisp breeze coming in through the window.... (my staff all lazy and still tonked since the weekend...)   Performing gets zero results, so I shall wait until lunchtime!! Then go into the workshop and chirp.  If I never had my own biz, I would have been completely lost.  I have to perform.  I have to show up.  I have duties to do...  And if I don't do them 100%, someone else takes up the slack for me.  What do you do with your days honey?  Tell me how you manage, when your worst times are etc.  I picked up you are sorting your garden out, decorating your home.... have NO plans for Christmas cos you think you are a wet blanket.  I think you can cry a blanket wet, but you are NOT a wet blanket, and everyone who knows you wants to have you around.  It is us who say no and isolate ourselves.  We have no self esteem cos no one tells us we are beautiful and loved.  We think we are unworthy of any caring, and we repel it with a vengeance.  I have personally been very horrid to three persons who hit on me and tried their luck.  Something inside me was chuffed and I felt this is not right.  Have I been reduced to a nasty individual who lashes out without any grace whatsoever?  Methinks Yes!  I dunno if you have gotten to this place where you feel you need to protect your solitude because I imagine subconsciously, we think an intruder will rob us of quality time spent alone with our THOUGHTS?  

This cannot be good for us.  So, we have to find somewhere to go for Christmas and new year, and if invitations don't materialize... make lists of any single persons who are in the same boat as we are... buy the ingredients and make THEM a whopping Christmas day.  Little gifts too.  Why not?  Give if you wish to receive.  When we give from our brokenness, something extraordinary happens!  I long for extraordinary.  I am boring in my misery.  How about you honey bunch?

Hi Norma! Amazing that you had an image of Karin before you met her.  My Ally also had a vision of me.  She did not like fair haired white women with green eyes.... When she saw my photo she knew she could relax and trust me.  I think angels bring us messages otherwise we would never move forward and learn the lesson, or help the person we are entrusted to love and care for!!  Life is surely something we have to appreciate while it is in our grasp huh.  I think God gives us time to prepare for eternity too when a prolonged illness is upon us.  I would like to go out in a flash, but that is not my decision!!!  Most of us who have lost partners, friends and loved ones, have taken steps to prepare our own lives for the next realm.  It is an important facet of healing.  It is born out of need not fear.  Music is healing, something to identify our current feelings with - or express without shouting  it from the rooftops.  My poor neighbours hear music all night.  I download songs relevant to my immediate feelings, then playlist them whole night, and while I drive.   My presence is announced before I arrive by sound!  I have found NEW songs as her music makes me melancholy deluxe.  I throw in some of them, but I avoid allowing myself to drift into a deep depressed state.  Besides I think most of us can only wail so much before our breathing becomes a problem.  I get asthma.  So I have to smoke a hubbly bubbly pipe when my chest closes.  (Which I enjoy with relish).   Looking at photographs of our departed precious beloved, forces us to realize the huge difference between sickness and health.  I look worn out in all my pics with Ally, and she looks stricken. Although it was so noticeable, I refused to acknowledge she was that sick... believing in miracles, having faith, being strong for her, encouraging her....  I can look at photos now and see when she got ill.  It is so evident.    I know I can fall apart at the seams.  I know we all feel that inside us.  Yet something tells me it is a choice.  We have that choice.  The other issue to consider is... what would our partners want us to do?  Throw in the towel, or be victorious in all we do?  How we live!  How we interact with others?  In memory of what they gave us, invested IN us, we cannot slip into a place where no one can reach us! I already feel a thousand times better having shared with you.  God bless you, comfort you and heal your aching heart, fill your home with joy somehow and make the rainbow more beautiful than ever before!