a cooking pot and twisted tales
Thoughts and Tales…A Lifestyle Blog with a Zing.
He whispers.
planting ugly seeds
of despair,
a cacophony
from the messenger
seeking to take refuge
in my head.
I whisper back,
not today, Satan!
never ever!
My whisper, more like a roar,
reverberates in my soul,
leaving shivers running from my tippy toes.
to my head.
© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha
In no way am I an ‘Expert On Life Matters’ and I am doubtful if anyone with such a befitting title exists. We all have our life’s lessons that we’ve learnt on our paths, but the essence of interacting with each other as we go along, is to learn from our experiences.
Enlightenment comes from learning. Learning comes from communicating and communicating is the most essential back bone of all relationships.
Like I always believe, each person has something to bring to the table and in my place, we have a funny proverb that says that ‘when we gather together to piss in the same spot, it foams.’
There are a thousand and one things that I have personally learnt from others just by reading their thoughts and perspectives and each day, it simply gets better. There are lots of free resources and wise counsel that others have put together which you can avail yourself to, but also be willing to add something to the pissing pot.
Don’t just be a sponge that soaks in without adding value. Your value could be from sharing, encouraging remarks, appreciation etc. We all can do it together, because life is definitely not a journey that you can walk all by yourself. As my people will also say, if you want to go fast you go alone, but if you want to go far, you go with others.
©Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha – From my archives.
If you live in a society where your health care system works, you simply have no idea how that is such a wonderful blessing. I have been opportune to experience different societies and their health services, and I must tell you that some places simply take the piss. In such places, the only way that you can get a decent attention is if you are a money bag who can afford the expensive private hospitals or if you’ve robbed the government coffers – as our darling Nigerian politicians tend to do – thus, can afford the luxury of travelling overseas for medical care; a situation which can easily be enabled within the country if the leaders did the right thing to get the sector running as it should.
How do you explain having to take a biopsy twice with 10 days waiting interval for the results and each time during your scheduled appointment, the hospital comes up with a sorry excuse that the result is not yet ready? In essence, leaving the patient on tenterhooks, stressed and depressed and wasted a month of their valuable time and money. 2 days ago, I had made a post about my dear one who is waiting for her second biopsy result as the 1st result was inconclusive. As if she’s not having a challenging time at present, the hospital which is meant to be a national hospital; with the best consultants and well-equipped with the necessary systems in place, have been dilly-dallying with no cogent reason for their lackadaisical attitude.
Knowing that time is of essence with health-related matters especially if it is a suspected case of the ‘Big C’, I feel so mad about this ineptitude, lack of concern, and failed Nigerian leadership that seeps into every aspect of the society. I truly wonder when such scenarios will become a thing of the past and the Nigerian populace will begin to enjoy the benefits of being citizens of a richly endowed Nation.
It is not a surprise that the level of brain-drain in the sector keeps rising. The system is broken and can be so frustrating. Nigeria has some of the brightest and most hardworking medical personnel globally and they are recruited in large numbers by Western countries, that it seems like it’s quickly becoming a case of raised and trained in Nigeria for foreign use to the detriment of the local populace.
We keep waiting and trusting God.
For the sake of privacy, I chose not to divulge her precise connection to me until she permits, but I needed space to let my thoughts out a bit. She discovered a lump, kept quiet about it a bit hoping that it was period related and would go away. Rather than going away, it seems to have gotten bigger and warrants further investigation. The first biopsy came back inconclusive, and another sample had to be taken. Now we wait for the result and the doctor’s appointment. The wait is a chokehold of many feelings melded together and going up and down my mind, especially the frightening thoughts and these thoughts simply make my stomach churn. I am pleading with God to please let this cup pass her by. I don’t even want to envisage any alternative.
We wait. May Gods’ mercy prevail.
Life has been doing what it does best and though I planned to write every day, somehow, due to mental fatigue and challenging changes in my work life, my work life balance has not been balancing at all. Thus, it has been a struggle to keep up with my blogging alongside all the other social media platforms that I am trying to juggle.
Yet each day, I went to bed, ridden with guilty about not writing and couldn’t simply shake it off.
So, I decided to shake the dust away and get on my dear faithful blog to say howdy, only to my horror, I couldn’t access my site. I tried my password multiple times and my backup codes from the 2-step verification, zilch. I downloaded the verification app to my phone, did all the required rigmarole but to no avail. I got stressed and quit trying.
After another two weeks or thereabouts, I decided to give it a go again, still the same tedious experience going back and forth and unable to access my blog. As a last resort, I wrote an urgent SOS to helpdesk and oh la la, they responded faster than I had anticipated. The initial directions that they gave me didn’t work – guess whose fault it is? Mine of course. ‘Cos, sometimes these techie things can stump the best of us, and I am not even in the ‘best of us category.’ I shamefacedly went back begging for help, and they handheld me and bailed me out with another set of instructions which I followed carefully, whilst holding my breath and voila, here I am back on the blog. Thank you so much, Happiness Engineers.
Phew! It’s been a minute with life’s ups and downs. Enough of me for now. How are you doing? Hope that life is treating you kindly?
Bisous – Jacqueline
It’s the simple things that we often take for granted that makes our lives beautiful, and one of the beautiful things about simple things is that they’re available to all of us, no matter our circumstances and who we are. Whether we are rich or poor, young or old… It’s the simple things.
Have a lovely day today. 🙂
Champions league is always an exciting time for hard-core football fans. I can’t lay claims to being one. I am wishy-washy football person at the best.
My hubby and boys are more Arsenal inclined and my role is to cheer or moan along in solidarity with them.
However, I’ve got an ardent MAN CITY colleague whose enthusiasm is quite palpable and she ordered in a huge cake to celebrate their winning.
Who am I to say no to a sinfully sweet slice of chocolate cake in celebration of the Champion?
I am sure my hubby and boys will understand and not think me a traitor 😅
I know that in so many places the arrival of Summer is welcomed with pomp and pageantry whilst the opposite is the case over here. Having lived in the Middle East for over 6 years, we prefer the Winter months when we get to indulge in so many outdoor activities and the electric/power bill is at its lowest.
During Summer in the UAE, the heat can literally get so oppressive that you feel like your brain has melted. You can practically fry an egg on the tarmac, you sweat buckets once you are outside the comfort of an AC, bills triple, people get irritable and tempers fly at the drop of a hat, spike in people falling sick, vehicles overheat and breakdown, outdoorsy events die down to nil, a certain fatigue and malaise sets in, and the list goes on.
Like is commonly said, too much of everything is not the best. I love mild wintry weather and not the deep freeze bitter Winter experienced in some parts of the World. I equally do not fancy this blazing heat that leaves me parched, tired and wistfully wondering at how long we are away from the breezy cool days of UAE Winter.
Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it in-between. We do complain about the weather, don’t we? 😉
Books, books, book. So many books and so little time. My love for books goes back as far as my earliest memory can recall if not further and this love was greatly nurtured by my parents back in the days.
I can still remember how much of a treat it was when my dad would drive us to Leventis in Enugu and would ask me and my siblings to select a storybook or two per person. I would quickly scour the array of books and make my choices then find another one that was a quick read and curl up in a corner of the book nook and quickly devoured it.
Oftentimes, my dad seeing my interest would indulge me with an additional storybook.
I honestly can’t count how many Enid Blytons, Archie comics, pacesetter, Asterix, Tintin, Grimms brothers etc that I devoured.
As I grew older my reading interests grew to accommodate Mills & Boons, Harlequin, Denise Robbins, Barbara Cartland, Silhouette, James Hadley Chase and more erotic/lurid books that are best left in the annals of memory.
These books shaped and still shape my world. I have an eclectic taste in my literary interests just like in music. At some point several years back before leaving Naija, I dabbled into selling books and that’s a story for another day.
Any time I move somewhere, one of the first thing I try to locate is the library and the bookstore. Sometimes, other exigencies get in the way of my buying a book of interest but my prayer is that my love for books will never wane as we never stop acquiring knowledge till ad infinitum.
Advise to self. If you don’t use it, you most certainly lose it. Writing is like your muscles, when left to idle, they become flabby, weak, tired… I sit in front of my laptop with the little imps on my left and right shoulder squabbling to gain my attention. Arrgh! Said the imp on the left, ‘You no longer have the words. You can’t seem to think of what to write. Why not wait till early tomorrow morning when you feel perkier and up to the task of tasking your brain? Sounded like a very good and friendly idea to me.
Wait a minute! Squeaked the imp on my right. This same dumb reasoning is what has kept you in this rut all these days. Many early morning plans set for tomorrow have come and gone and we have lost count of the tomorrows. I don’t truly care if you’ve got nothing to say now, but say something, anything. JUST SAY SOMETHING. Each day say something, ‘cos I am tired of how I am compelled to listen to those nagging, guilt-ridden inner voices of yours complaining and reminding you that you have simply sat of your wide butt and done nothing about the thoughts dancing in your head. I have heard their whispered threats and witnessed your sad countenance. I am fed up lady. Say something, he or is it she urged.
So, this is me saying something; a befuddled attempt to get back to my daily blogging. Hope you are doing well? Happy Easter to you and your family.
a cooking pot and twisted tales 