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.
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?
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.
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. #simple#lifeisbeautiful#simplethings#beautifulmoments#fy
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, books and not enough time to read them. Recent visit to Kinokuniya in Dubai where I struck up a conversation with a lovely Korean mother and daughter.
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.
As always, the hand of time turns effortlessly and before you finish clinking your champagne glass, a day goes by, the 2, 3, and they all roll along to weeks, months and then its year end again, when we rush to meet deadlines, get to sing Christmas carols, feel warm and fuzzy and hey presto! Happy new year greetings are being exchanged once more and we are caught in the New Year resolution fever.
Armed with good intentions, gratitude for the blessings of the past year and surviving the vagaries that comes with living, we eagerly usher in the New Year completely determined to do our best and to get the best out of the year.
A lot of us say things like: ‘this is my year,’ ‘this year will be magical,’ ‘I will have so many breakthroughs this year,’ etc. and the list goes on.
All well and good. Seeking to be better than we were and doing better than we did is always commendable, but the question remains, how dogged, dedicated and passionate are we to truly arrive at these demanding goals that we set for ourselves at the beginning of each year? Or are we just going forward making a wishful list without the backbone to see them through thereby leading ourselves down the path of breaking of resolutions before they have even taken off and multiple disappointments over time? There is nothing wrong with setting goals, but goals without the right systems put in place will place will most certainly fall apart.
As always, I say, live your best life in the moment, try to stay accountable so that you can be the best version of you each day every day in all ramifications and as the moments roll by, it is far easier accomplishing those aspirations. Of course, life happens and sometimes things outside our control happens. Nonetheless, it is not always about what happened to us that’s the issue, it’s about how we react to what happened. It’s about how we rise from the dust of a situation, dust ourselves off and keep pushing and most times, it is easier to pick up from where you left off when your actions are almost second nature.
Think on these thoughts succinctly whilst attempting to revamp your entire life. What are the deep lessons that you learnt the last 365 days of 2023 and how do you intend to leverage on them?
Happy New Year to you and your beloved ones’. May 2024 be kind to all of us.
So, the summer vacay is almost over, and we will be back to the bustle of school run, fees, homework, projects and what have you in no time. Time is so fleeting. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had made an ambitious list of all the things that I planned to do during the summer break, alas, here I am, nary a thing done except vegetating, creating my posts on TikTok and FB, reading a novel in a lackadaisical manner, entertaining the legion of characters that co-habit my mind space and scrolling the fields of social media.
I had anticipated that the time out will bring solitude and grant me the opportunity to hear myself think, but the solitary moments that I had were barely silent to say the least. I found myself constantly fidgeting with one thing or the other, reaching for my phone ever so often and imbibing in mindless scrolling that magically steals one’s time. Thankfully, I have been disciplined enough to get in my daily walks, improve my form and indulge in much needed self-care which is never enough.
One thing I can tell you freely is that discipline is a daily task. It doesn’t come easy in the least, even when we have our best intentions lined up. I can tell you for free that social media is the thief of time, devised to grab your attention and keep your eyes glued to the screen. I can also tell you that on social platforms, I gained a lot of valuable insight which I may never have had the chance to do otherwise, so, it’s not all downers.
The absolute truth is that we now live in two worlds, the physical and the virtual and we must learn how to navigate both worlds intentionally to our benefits.
Why do we have to wait for someone to die before we let them know how much we appreciate them and how much they mean to us. Why do we have to wait for someone in our lives to die in the midst of their struggles before we realize that maybe there’s something we could have done to make their lives a little bit better, even if what we can do is only in small measures.
A lot of times we shy away from helping others because we are so caught up the quicksand or miry bog of our own issues and life’s challenges that we lose patience with anyone else who comes to us with their problems. We love success stories but never the messy journey that led to the success, and sadly, if someone is not a ‘success’ based on parameters set by society, they often get lost and forgotten in the midst of a crowd.
In this week alone, I have come across posts of people’s passing – known and unknown – some were under very pathetic circumstances and caved under the weight of their struggles.
You don’t have to do so much to make a difference in someone’s life today. Let those you care about know how much you do care about them. Buy them flowers whilst they still live and not a bogus wreath to place on their tombstone or shallow grave when they are no longer there.
a cooking pot and twisted tales 