The Little Things That I Love…The great book of lists.

January 14, 2016January 14, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha51 Comments

I am late for this party, the great book of lists challenge, considering that I re-blogged the post and was all excited. Somehow, I failed to start off last week.

However, I am still going to gate crash and hope that La Duchesse Derat won’t throw me out without as much as a mince pie and a glass of warm drink.

I love waking up early when the entire house is quiet, lying still and just listening to the breathing of my husband beside me as I think through my day and make a mental to do list.

I love my early morning brisk walks especially with crisp cold breeze on my face and my denuded face free from any artifice soaking it all in.

I love those sights of little things that I get to see when I am out and about – like a flock of birds in a feeding frenzy and the naughty Cat that came and made them run away, or a budding pretty flower – such sights are fuel to my mind.

I love the tingly foot massage that my young ones take turns to give me. It is nowhere near professional but it is so soothing. Sometimes they throw in a neck rub.

I love those little moments when my youngest keeps offering to make me his special sandwich; which equals a slathered helping of peanut butter and toast, with a nice cup of beverage and he tells me ‘I love you mummy, enjoy your sandwich.’

I love having a full pantry of food even if I don’t have money in my pocket. It always leaves me with a contented feeling and satisfaction when I do my bulk shopping for the household.

I love having people around me. It always gives me a warm feeling, even though, I occasionally hibernate, which, by the way never lasts long to deserve that lengthy word.

I absolutely love to dance to my long playlist while working out. I steal in a wiggle or two. It’s like working out two things at once; My Body and my Soul.

Devotions · Gratitude · Hope · Inspiration - Motivation · Life · Love

I am grateful and blessed to have you as my friend…

January 13, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha47 Comments

Life brings friends our way who turn out to become our families in almost every sense of the word and I am particularly grateful for such a friend as my dear good friend Mrs. Ekaete Augustine-Edet.

We have journeyed together from our days as single ladies working at the French Embassy, Lagos Nigeria almost two decades ago, to today as mothers and wives and she has remained such a steadfast friend, sister and motivator.

She is one of the driving forces behind my starting my blog, because she believes in me and my writing skills. She kept asking me when I would start my blog, until I got started.

She is there anytime I call with a need or something on my mind. I had reason to make such a call and as usual she selflessly gave of herself, her time and her pocket.

I thank God for a friend like you and really don’t have much words to appreciate your kindness.

On another hand, I have been blessed with running into interesting characters since last week.

Two lovely neighbourhood dogs, Lola and Cookie and Meow, The cat seem to have adopted me for reasons best known to them, though I do stop to say hello to the cute dogs when I am taking my walk and they are out and about.

Meow is a lone ranger, but always appears by the chair where I sit sometimes to watch the World go by and he rubs himself on my pants legs seeking attention.

I am more a dog person and not particularly a cat person but strangely, this would be the third encounter where different neighbourhood felines come up to say hello.

Since I don’t know much about felines, maybe those who do can tell me what this indicates.

I am grateful for little meaningless moments like this. They end up meaning a lot when we appreciate them and each moment that I spend in a state of gratitude, the phrase that the best things in life are for free couldn’t be more true than it is.

There is so much to be thankful for. Just look around and you will see.

You can join Colline’s or Maria Jansson‘s gratitude challenge platforms

Regards and blessings

Creative Writing · Haiku · Hope · Lifestyle · Poetry/Poems · Social Issues

Crystal Meth…

January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha34 Comments

A fascination of the Stars it held,

Purported to pleasure he heard,

Hope he keeps away from the Meth.

PLEASE NOTE! ‘The usage of crystal methamphetamine is dangerous.’

This is my first time participating in ‘Ronovan Writes Weekly Haiku Prompt Challenge‘ with the prompt words, ‘crystal’ and ‘hope.’

Life · Writing

Save Me From Myself…Help! This is torturous.

January 12, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha45 Comments

I am not crazy and I am not exaggerating.

Sometimes, my muse runs off into the wild winds not to be found.

But that sometimes is very, very rare.

As a matter of fact, I am wishing that the muse would run off for some days and let me have peace.

How do you quieten the thousand voices of characters in your head, with ideas racing from pillar to post and vying for your attention.

A lot of times my body is tired but my brain remains supercharged and the voices just won’t keep quiet.

It’s totally driving me mad.

Even when I say that I am not going to think. I STILL THINK.

Hey! Is anybody out there? I need good tips of how to kill a muse and get some sleep.

What do you do to keep the voices in your head shut? Short of hitting my head with a sledgehammer!

Life · Love · Personal story · The Daily Post

All My Crushes…

January 11, 2016January 11, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha31 Comments

The eclectic taste that I have in things stretches to the domain of music as well and I have my late dad to thank for nurturing my mind with the plethora of sounds of music from different artists that floated through our home and seeped into my young veins.

I like music from all the artists enumerated below including the legend, David Bowie, may he rest in peace.

However, my young heart was completely enamoured by the Jackson 5’s and a little later just Michael Jackson. Me and my siblings danced to their beats and attempted all manners of moves that I cannot dare try now, for want of not breaking my legs.

As I got older, Boyz II Men became a teenage crush, though MJ still retained a special place.

Though there is an artist whose songs haunt my life a lot of times and that is the legendary Mama Africa ‘Miriam Makeba.’ There is something in some of her renditions that simply has me curling up and in bitter-sweet tears.

Till today, dancing ‘just because‘ still remains one of my biggest ways of relaxing, of laughing and I am known to lapse into singing – more like warbling tunes, when I am upset too.

It has a way of calming me down and I think my husband recognizes this as well. Once he annoys me and I start singing, he knows that I am deeply pained and my way of riding through it, is either to write it out, sing away the pain or dance to the beats.

You cannot sing or dance and remain angry because Music is simply laughter for the Soul as long as it is not filled with hate and abusive words.

The Daily Post prompt Teen Age Idol.

Who did you idolize as a teenager? Did you go crazy for the Beatles? Ga-ga over Duran Duran? In love with Justin Bieber? Did you think Elvis was the livin’ end?

Humor - Bellyful of laughter · Life · Mundane Monday · Photographs

This Instrument Of Torture….Mundane Monday

January 11, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha23 Comments

Photrablogger says,

This is a challenge created to find beauty in almost everything. The challenge is simple : find beauty in everyday mundane things, capture the beauty and upload the photographs

A harmless and mundane piece of equipment that we all seem to own.

Yet it’s known to make girls happy and sad too.

Makes them happy when the arrow points in the direction of the left and makes them upset, muttering *Oh No!* Oh dear!* What? I shouldn’t have eaten that last slice* when the balance of the scale tilts a bit to the far right.

A link to my neighbours/Community · Inspiration - Motivation · Life · Quotes For You

Why Sweat It?…

January 9, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha31 Comments

Naturally, like every erring human I have had many moments of taking the wrong turn in my life and making the wrong decisions over big and small things, such as eating that extra slice of pie, over spending and buying something that wasn’t really important, saying something that I shouldn’t have said, letting an opportunity pass by etc.

It’s all about choices and at each point in time, good or bad, we made choices that we felt were the best for us at that point in time.

Since some of these are not things that we can rewind the hands of time to change – the way forward would be to assimilate lessons from the experience, leave sweating it and move on.

Change the things that are within your power to change and leave those that you can’t regurgitate back.

Living in the Land of Regrets is truly waste of one’s reserve energy and time.

I leave you with these quotes to ruminate over:

‘Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you cannot build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.’ Katherine Mansfield.
‘You mess up sometimes, don’t regret your mistakes, fix them and you will learn from it.’ Stanisha Wray
‘It’s never too late to be who you might have been.’ George Elliot

For the quotes challenge invitation, I thank Perfect The Days for the invitation, and would like to invite the following awesome bloggers to participate in the 3 days, 3 quotes challenge.

No pressures at all to do so. Just do it if you can.

The rules are:

Post 3 Quotes on 3 consecutive days.
Thank the person who nominated you.
Nominate 3 other bloggers on each day of challenge.

Mandibelle

FT of Hook LIne and Inkwell

Cavelle of Mental break in progress

Regards,

Dubai · Gratitude · Life · Personal story

They All Work Together…

January 6, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha31 Comments

In my native language, we have a saying that ‘if I start to count the goodness of the Lord, night will come and the day will break over and over again.’

They may sound like mundane stuff but in my heart they speak of the abundance of God’s grace.

There were very trying moments of 2015 for me and my family, but one big lesson that I learnt and would continue to carry over is that being thankful and committing my prayers to my Lord and Master eases my burden for sure.

This time last year, I was ensconced in my lovely house back in Houston. No way on my radar did the move to Dubai really feature.

Like the saying that, tomorrow is pregnant and backing a child as well, by the second quarter of 2015, we made a major migratory move across the Continent from US to UAE and I am grateful that it went smoothly.

I am grateful that we have adjusted to our beautiful environment and embracing it as well. It has not been a seamless effort, but since I chose to look at the rickety parts of the bigger picture with positive lens, it has made the journey more interesting and adjusting far easier.

I look at 2016 with expectant eyes. I have no idea what it will bring forth, who knows?

There might be major changes yet again or minor ones but this I know for sure ”that all things work together for my own good.”

Have you taken a look at your big picture lately? What do the lines tell you? You might be surprised to realize that as displaced as some of your lines may be, they fall in perfect places and that is enough reason to be thankful.

You can join Colline’s or Maria Jansson gratitude challenge platforms.

Life · Personal story · The Daily Post

Reading Drivel…personal

January 4, 2016January 5, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha29 Comments

Consistent habits can become defined and after a while forms our characters.

Sometimes in these character mix we find certain habits picked up, which are not only unsavoury, but serve no meaningful purpose whatsoever.

I have my own fair share of habits that I am still trying to let go of, so that I can have room for more positive growth in my life.

Recently, one major challenge has been late night nibbles. Sometimes, I can go for weeks without doing so, then something goes off somewhere and I am back to a frantic bout of the nibbles. A big work in progress here.

However, one of such habits that I have been successful with, was my abrupt decision to stop reading books that I have no better words to describe them other than calling them licentious, x-rated pornography in literature, the only thing they lacked were depicting coloured pictures to match their words.

No, they were not good old fashioned romantic reads, nor what some would describe as soft porn, they were vile, page after page harsh content of lewdness and gross sex, which actually had the reverse effect of offensive for me and I was left wondering how someone could sit down to write a hundred and something pages of utter rubbish.

My curiosity was sated, my conscience was annoyed with me, no particularly worthy knowledge was gained from such dalliance on my part except some vibrant imaginations that were unfortunately painted on some part of my brain cells and it was not a regret to dump reading such drivel by the wayside.

I pencil the past readings down as research, but my money will not go to fund such further waste of my time.

The Daily Post Happy Endings

Tell us about something you’ve tried to quit. Did you go cold turkey, or for gradual change? Did it stick?

Life · Little rants · Parenting · The Daily Post

All Fagged Out…

January 2, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha15 Comments

The days float by a bit too fast! Before we can blink, January will pass.

The holiday excitement and adrenaline rush of weeks is down to zilch and now my body is experiencing fatigue and withdrawal syndrome.

All I want to do is to sleep for days to re-calibrate but alas, no such leisure for this mom.

The children resume school tomorrow and my brain is not yet ready for the frenetic bout. Yes, the week starts on Sunday’s in UAE, just in case you wonder.

Come on! The school break is over already! Boo, Hoo, Hoo. I am wailing loud 😦

Anyway, life continues.

I think I will just get some early shut eye.

Nothing like a wee snooze to set things aright.

Tomorrow let the hustle begin.

The Daily Post Write Here, Write Now.