Life, Injuries, Homeschooling and what ever…

When you are right handed, you do not realize how much you do with your left hand until you can’t use it.

I have gotten to where I can do some light typing….that is about it. My thumb and index finger can meet. My middle finger and ring finger do not work well. No pressure can be applied, no weight, no twisting lids off of jars, no picking anything up, no buckling of seat belt if you are a passenger, no closing of car door if you are the driver and no swimming stroke with that hand.

Life has become a challenge with the limitations of the left hand. Monday I will be back at the Doctor’s getting the left fore arm, wrist, hand and fingers xrayed. My husband who is all wise thinks it is definitely a ligament problem. He said it would be better for me to have broken the hand.

Two fingers stay swollen and I cannot make a fist at all. I almost dropped a pan of french fries on the floor the other night. It was a close call and they were the good seasoned fries. That would have been bad….

On Monday I will have 11 kids to over see. Three of which are mine….

Life here has slowed down a little. Hubby is reviewing the kids in math for me. He likes math and it gives him time with the kids.

We will also be taking out tests next week. I know, we are running that one close to the wire. Seaton is great. They will email me the results as soon as the tests are graded.

Click on the read more (I had to put this because some one didn’t realize you needed to click on the read more to see the rest of the post….. 🙂 )

I Cried……

I cried…..now to some that is not such a big ordeal, for me, it is enough to get marked on the calendar. Why? I trained myself to not cry. I had years of training and discipline. It was simply a matter of not allowing the person beating me to also have the satisfaction of knowing they made me cry. I did an excellent job of it if I might say so……I did such a good job that when I cry….everyone is alarmed.

It was something that was said to me today…..I may have read more into the comment or hesitation then was meant….I started to dwell on the conversation. I tried to remember each nuance, each pause and thought to myself that maybe the other person was just being kind.

I started to cry. It was in those few brief moments that I felt so alone. This is not the type of loneliness one feels just because there is no one present to talk with or in my case in the correct time zone that I felt comfortable calling and bawling on their shoulder through the phone. This was a soul deep aloneness. The type of aloneness that one feels in total abandonment.

God’s Protection….(cont’d)

(continued)

We had all gotten ready for bed. My sister went through turning off the lights. She won’t turn the tv off though. Maria was in the daybed. I was in the lazyboy, my mother on the couch with George the black lab and my sister was stretched out on another chair.

It wasn’t long before my sister and mother were sound asleep. I could tell this from the snoring. Maria and I stayed awake most of the night. I dozed off for about an hour. We kept up a vigil of praying off and on the whole night. There were two times that I felt like I had butterflies in my stomach. Apparently those times coincided with the times my sister felt the hair on her arms and neck stand up. It was very brief. When I felt like that I simply prayed. I knew we were protected and thanked God for His protection.

The night slipped into morning and my sister woke up. We went out and sat on the porch drinking coffee. It was 7am. It had rained all night and was still raining. We sat there and watched a cat stalk a squirrel. I was surprised that the cat actually caught the squirrel. It went off with some of its friends and they had their breakfast.

Forgiveness……I guess this is Part I

There are times in our lives, at least in mine, that it is difficult to forgive. I have been battling this issue of forgiveness. I have been asking myself many questions regarding forgiveness and done some extensive Bible reading on forgiveness. It has taken me down several different paths and been very enlightening. I have struggled with trying to write this down. I thought I would finally attempt to share some of what I have learned.

I learned that it is easier to forgive when I am the only target. It is also easier to forgive when not being daily inundated with malicious hurtful behavior. There are times that I just didn’t have the forgiveness in my heart and I had to have God put the forgiveness there for me. If you want to know more about the ability to forgive and what God can do then read the ABOUT ME page.

Forgiveness is usually accompanied by repentance. Not everyone you may have to forgive is going to repent and accept the forgiveness you are offering. In fact, don’t be surprised if your forgiveness is thrown back in your face with another bout of vile malicious diatribe. You still need to forgive.

What can make forgiveness so difficult to dish out? When you are not the target but those that you love dearly. I am the target 99% of the time. My beloved ones have become the target and that makes me angry. Raging angry not just upset. Grab your Roget’s Thesaurus and search for anger. You can come up with quite a list of synonyms that would describe how I have been feeling over the past year. It has been building and building. When we allow the anger to build up inside, it is like the wooden block game of Jenga. When the wrong block is pulled the tower comes tumbling down. Anger has a way of doing that to a person….allowing the anger to fester and build will cause a massive explosion or a crumbling tower.

Tonights Dinner…..(Edited to add missing ingredient)

I tried a new recipe for dinner. We were having chicken and even though I own the “365 Ways to Prepare Chicken” cookbook, chicken gets old. I went to my friend the internet and did a search on chicken and honey. I found a recipe that was tweeked a little. It was so yummy. The next time I make this I will take pictures.

3.5 lbs chicken (I used the chicken breast tenderloin pieces.) I doubled the recipe so here is what I used.

• 1 cup of honey

• 1/2 cup of pineapple juice

• 2 tablespoons of dijon mustard* (missing ingredient)

• 1 teaspoon of salt

• 3/4 teaspoon of curry (original calls for 1 teaspoon but my kids are not great fans of curry.)

• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

• 1/4 red pepper flakes

• I placed the salt, curry, cinnamon and red pepper flakes in my morter and pestle to break up the red flakes a little more and really blend the spices.

• Mix everything together.

• In a baking dish add 4-5 tablespoons of butter and put dish in the oven to melt. I pre-baked the chicken for about 20 minutes in order to pull of the excess water from the chicken so it wouldn’t thin out the honey mixture.

• I poured off the excess liquid then poured the honey mixture over the chicken and baked for another 30 minutes. I also added the pineapple chunks. I would wait to add the pineapple until about the last 15 minutes. I added the pineapple when I poured the honey over the chicken and it absorbed a lot of the curry. It was still quite delicious. I could even smell it cooking from outside.

• Depending on the type of chicken you use (bone in) cook for an hour at 375-400.

I served our chicken with basmati rice and a cauliflower/broccoli mix. It was a hit with everyone.

Well…..with the minor exception of the broccoli mix……….

My son’s plate minus the rice……..