And The Winner Is..And Matt!!...

Yay!!  Matt is here!!!  Matt is here!!!  Matt is here!!!  I am so happy and excited that Matt is here!!  He got here at 11 o'clock this morning!!  He will be here for twelve days!!  I may be away a bit from journals, but not totally.  So don't be worried :-)

The picture for "Up Close With Val" yesterday was my Baby's paw!!!  See...

   It is easier to see that it is a paw when it is smaller, right?  It kind of looks like a paw now, huh?  I think so.  Anyway, I got it from a larger picture of Baby.  I was taking pictures of him yesterday.  It's funny...Baby is like a toddler when I pull out my camera - he gets so excited! LOL  He meows and purrs and runs to it and then he poses!  It is the funniest thing...    

 

Here he is posing!  See his tail wagging?  Up and down, up and down!  And he is kneading his paws!!  See how they are curling?  Too funny!  The paw you see there is the one I zoomed in on and cropped for the guessing game.

Oh, the correct guesser?!  It was Krissy.  Here is your blue ribbon, Krissy!:

             

Amy, who has a brand new journal, also guessed the cat's paw correctly.  Go check out her journal and support her!  Oh, and one more, Sara!!  She guessed correctly on her third guess...LOL  So, thanks everyone for playing!  It was fun!

Now I am off to go find Matt and have some dinner.  Yep, did I tell you he likes to cook :-)   Oh, and he cleans the dishes as he goes!  Aren't I lucky!!  Toodles, all!! xox

         

"Up Close With Val"!...

Howdy and happy Wednesday!!  I have an "Up Close With Val" for you today!  I haven't done one for awhile!  I've been so preoccupied!  What do you think this picture is??  Put your guess in the comment's section or send your guess to valphish@aol.com 

                    

Have a super day everyone and enjoy!!! xox

Okay...

So, I just posted an entry and it RAN ALL TOGETHER and now it won't let me press the EDIT button, WHAT IS UP??  Sorry if you guys can't read my entry...

Odds and Ends...

Dear God, so far today, I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, and I haven't lost my temper.

I haven't been grumpy, nasty or selfish, and I'm really glad of that!

But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed, and from then on, I'm probably going to need a lot of help.

Thank you! Amen.  

 ____ 

Do you ever feel like this when you get up?  It sure was hard for me to get up today!  I tried to stay up all night last night.  It felt so, so strange without Chelsea here.  I finally heard from here around 2:30am.  They cancelled her flight yesterday and she and her friends (she went home with two friends) had to spend hours scrambling for a flight.  To top it off, their luggage was mis-placed!  I hope it is returned today!  Yes, it IS mighty quiet here today!  I miss you, Chels!!  It really hasn't sunk in that she is gone.  I imagine it will in a few days.   I have a couple of interesting photos to show you.  I want to warn you that they have rats in them.  We had two rats here this week.  Not in the house, but in a cage.  Chelsea was watching them for a friend who is on vacation.  Now they are on my charge.  I DON'T like rats, but I won't neglect them.  The pics I have for you are of my kitties playing with the rats.  One of the rats look astonishingly like my Baby.  Now, I didn't like that!  I was picturing Baby all week as a 12 pound rat!!! LOL  So, here are the pics...   

           

See, THEY DO look alike!!  The rat is to the left...See! 
           

             

Look how BIG Honey's eyes are! LOL  She looks transfixed! LOL  Baby is playing with the one that looks like him.  His name is Tito.  Mona, the other rat was not very social.  It was very interesting to see how the cats reacted to them.  Baby rolled on the floor and purred and purred and meowed.  Honey just stared! LOL  That is the last you will see of the rats.  I promise.   Are you all still here?  No one has fainted, right?  Sorry if that bothered anyone.  Rats aren't, like I said, my favorite either.  I hope everyone is having a good weekend!  It has been so, so hot in my neck of the woods.  No one is really venturing out very much.  It has peaked near 100 degrees.  And it is so muggy!  It is 93 degrees right now.  Yuck.  

I wanted to share with you all a couple of journals and journalers that I have recently met and think are very special.   

 Kellen is in high-school and is so inspirational.  He shares his Roman Catholic faith so eloquently in his journal at this address:  

Faith In Roman Catholicism  

He is a MUST read for any Catholic and is inspirational for anyone and has wisdom beyond his years!!  

Mark lives with chronic pain and is a tremendous artist.  He is super-intelligent and is very kind.  He is inspirational for those of us who are living with day-to-day struggles.  His address is here:  

Mark's Daily Journal   Mark also has a separate journal he keeps just for his artwork and photography.  It is incredible!!  Go see!:  

Landscape Artwork   Pay them both a visit if you can, it will bless you, I promise!!  

Hey, did you feed the hungry today?  

Ooops, sorry about all the links...I haven't written in awhile.  I wanted to save up all my time for Chelsea.  I have about ten journal entries stored up in my head!!  I hope to get them down soon!  Have a wonderful Sunday, all!!  Sending out love and joy! xox

One Word...

Please leave a one word comment (with your journal addy) that you think best describes me.  It can only be one word.  No more.

Then copy and paste this into your journal so that I may leave a word about you... (Stolen from Christina at My Journey With Multiple Sclerosis)

Scavenger Hunt...

Happy Monday, everyone!!  I am a day late for the scavenger hunt.  Yikes!  I had my camera confiscated by my friend, Roger, because we had a car show this weekend called The Last Cruise.  It comes once a year to this town and I have some awesome car pictures.  I am not really interested in cars, but I even like the pictures, so I will post some later in the week.  The Cruise was SO LOUD!!  Cars come into town for a day and vroooom around!  There were thousands of people packed into my little town.  Too many people for me!  Oh, back to my camera...then my daughter took it for the weekend to take pictures of her going-away party with her friends.  It came back with dead batteries!  They are recharging right now, so I will do the hunt from pictures I already have.  I do have one new picture I did take to show you at the end of the entry.  It is very special to me!!  This week's hunt, brought to you by Krissy, was to be of something new about ourselves that we never told everyone about.  Let's see...I was going to show you all my frog collection.  Yes, I have many frogs.  I am not sure how many I have right now.  I never even intended to collect them.  I started out with a few and people kept giving them to me!!  I couldn't take a picture of them because I don't have the use of my camera, but, yes, I have a frog collection.  Frogs help me to remember to "F.ully R.ely O.n G.od" !!  I am not squeamish with real frogs and can hold them and play with them.

So, on to the hunt...The first picture I have for you is related to my spiritual life.  I had my First Confession and First Communion in The Catholic Church on June 9.  I have been studying the Catholic Church for several years.  I was baptised Catholic, but was Protestant most of my life, but re-verted back to the Catholic Faith.  It has made me very happy and very joyful.  This is Father George who took my Confession and gave me Communion.  

                

The next picture I have for you is not really about me.  It is about my children, who are about me!!!  They have a brother.  His name is Sammy.  He belongs to their father (my ex) and their step-mom.  Sammy is three and a cutie.  Here is Sammy and Matthew (my son):

              

I have one more special picture for you that has nothing to do with the hunt.  I caught it this weekend while my daughter was getting ready for a sock hop during The Cruise.  She was fooling around with two of her girlfriends and they were having a ball!!  Isn't laughing precious!?!!!

              

Chels and I are going to caverns today and doing some exploring with my dad.  This is Chelsea's last week with us before she moves back to Florida on Saturday.  We have alot planned.  It is going to be so, so hard to say goodbye, but for today I will enjoy her and we will have fun!  Hope you are having a good day today!  Sending out love... xox

An Important Site...

For those of you who asked about bone marrow donation and how to get on the list, here is the website.  More information on John's blood type, etc., will follow.  Your love has been tremendous!  Thank you so much!! xox

Please Visit Here...

Please lend your support to my sister here.  The news is not the best and I love her and her husband with all my heart!!  Please add them to any and every prayer list you can think of!  Thank you J-Land!  You are the best!!! xox

Beautiful...

"The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses.  It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty."

- Remy de Gourmont

This week's Scavenger Hunt's subject is "beautiful".  What a joyful subject!  I think we don't take enough time to stop and see the beauty of things around us.  Most of us don't anyway for a long enough time because our lives have become too busy.  They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I think that most things that are beautiful to me are beautiful to you and vice-versa, because beautiful things have a virtue to them.

I wanted to go out a few times this week with my camera, but we had alot of rain.  I finally got out on Thursday on a trip to my church.  I took these pictures of flowers in my church yard.  I thought they were absolutely beautiful!  I like them because they are smaller and the colors are so vibrant!  What do you think?

      

I was really happy to see white bleeding hearts!  They are one of my favorites!  They had pink ones, too!  This purple flower below was tiny and beautiful.  I think it is a pansy.  Is it?  I just love flowers.  It makes me realize that God is such a wonderful Creator and painter.  How He thought up all the colors and shapes and flowers, birds, trees, etc. of the world, well, it astounds me!..

 

      

"Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them."
- David Hume

I also wanted to share with you two "beauties"...my daughter and her best friend, Cara.  They are having a yard sale today and are hard at work with their other friend, Lucy, who is also beautiful :-)!

            

I can't help but smile when I see the two of them together with the big smiles on their faces.  Cara is a sweetheart!

And lastly, I wanted to share with you something that I noticed in a picture Chelsea took from Krissy's wedding.  It is my favorite shot of all of them.  I think it portrays beauty.  It also portrays joy!  Take a look at the expression on the priest's face after he announced Krissy and John as man and wife!  This is Father George.  He is a wonderful man!  Look at my Uncle Gene.  He is Krissy's Godfather and a Deacon.  He is also my favorite Uncle and he loves Krissy and John very much.  There is alot of beauty in this picture!  See for yourself... 

      

So, I sure hope you had a few moments of fun and relaxation seeing my glimpses of "beauty"!  If you want to participate in Krissy's Scavenger Hunt give it a whirl.  It is lots of fun!  Have a beautiful rest of the day! xox

My Town, My Day...

"If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a does of joy is a spiritual cure."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer                  

                                                         

Happy humpday readers!  How is everyone doing?  I'm hanging in there.  I have been really fatigued, as I obviously mentioned in previous entries.  My doctor's office called two days ago and said that my bloodwork was a bit off.  My blood sugar was borderline for the third time in the last few months (am I becoming pre-diabetic?) and my potassium is very low.  It is supposed to be in the 3.5 - 5.0 range.  Mine was 3.2.  and I take 2 supplements daily with a rather large dose of magnesium citrate to help absorb this potassium.  I also try to eat potassium-rich foods.  Why is my body always so low in potassium?  It has been this way for many years.  It causes extreme fatigue and muscles aches.  Ugh.  So, she added another potassium dose and will re-test in two months.  I guess this explains atleast some of my fatigue.  I was actually hospitalized for low-potassium (hypoaklemia) once.  I was hooked up intravenously for four days.  Weird.

So, on to less cumbersome, tiring news...let's see...I love my mornings!  Two and three years ago I used to get up around 10am.  Granted I was pretty sick back then.  Now I get up around 7am, 8am at the latest.  I love the cool air in the morning.  I love the birds.  I love the stillness.  I love how it is quiet and very slow.  I love the sun coming in at an angle with shadows playing with the trees.  I love going outside and drinking my coffee!  I couldn't sit outside and do this at my old apartment.  There was nowhere to go outside and sit.  I love my new apartment!  It feels like home!  I love my new, little town!  It is a small town nestled in the mountains next to a larger town by Penn State University.  I live in an old governor's mansion that has been made into four apartments.  My neighbors are great!  We have all become friends.  We talk frequently with one another and if one has not been seen for a couple of days then they are checked up on to make sure they are okay.  Now, that is nice!  I never had that before.  I am used to neighbors knocking on doors to complain.  My apartment is very, very large.  The floors are wooden and there is no carpeting so the kitties can slide all over the floor and play.  They are always prancing around and sliding and playing and walking all hours of the night.

                                      

The town I live in is the type of town where you can go to the convenience store in the middle of the night in your pajamas (yes, Chelsea and I both have!).  You know the names of the shopowners and people say hello and smile when they walk by one another.  The drugstore is owned by a family where the father and son are both pharmacists and the grandmother and grandchildren run the store.  When I go in to fill my prescriptions I get all the town news.  It is really nice.  When I go to the jewelry store, Kitty, the jeweler, who makes wonderful jewelry, always gives me a few dollars off a purchase and tells me all about her family.  Often on my walks about town I will stop at the hardware/thrift store.  Riff and Raff the kitty cats live in the store and I like to stop by and brush Raff.  Raff is a sweetie that likes to drool on you when you brush him!  I also stop by and say hello to Melissa (Mel) who owns the pizza shop (and lives in my apartment/house) and I always say hello to her.  When I purchase something she only charges me what it costs her to purchase the food.  I guess I could go on and on....

Oh, I started volunteering yesterday!  It was really nice.  This is why I put the quote up at the top of my entry!!  We have a place in town called The Faith Centre.  It has a food bank, thrift store, coffee corner, and a lot of other programs such as teaching people to read, Christian counseling, Bible studies, and many others in the works!  So, I am working one day a week in the Coffee Corner!  It is slow-paced for me which is very good on my fibro.  I sit and talk to people and lend an ear and hand out free coffee and donuts and other sweets.  We are a refuge when someone needs someone to talk to.  I think I just might have found my niche!  It was really nice yesterday.  I talked to a gentleman who actually is a rambling man.  He travels from Texas to Pennsylvania twice a year and lives in a tent.  He is very articulate.  He is a minimalist.  We talked for about an hour and he was very fascinating.  I met a few others as well.  I am a people-person so I think this will work out.  I tried volunteering in the thrift store part of the centre, but it was too demanding on my muscles...too much lifting and bending.

I must run now...got lots to do...have a good day!  Hey, did you click for the hungry today? xox

Odds and Ends...

"If you can't feed one hundred people, then feed just one."
  - Mother Teresa

Good saturday to everyone!  I wanted to say that you all left hysterical comments to my last post!  I was laughing for a couple of days!  How witty you all are!  I never underestimate the humor of those out in J-Land!  So, about the quote....I go to hungersite.com every day!  It is really worth a look-see and a bookmark!  You really feel good about yourself when you build up a routine of doing this daily!  One click, one tiny, little click that takes one second gives 1.1 cups of staple food to a hungry person!  You just fed a hungry person by clicking on a link!  I can't imagine being hungry on a daily basis.  I once heard that HALF of all the world's children go to bed hungry!!!  Wow, makes you want to do something!  That is such a sad fact!!!  This site is linked up to a few others where you can feed animals, fund mammograms, help children, fund for books, even save land!  If you do it every day can  you imagine how much good you have done in a year!?!  So, give the site a look-see!  It is always on the side-bar on my journal.  Okay, I will step down from my soapbox now, thanks for listening :-)...

I want to wish my sister, Grace a very, very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!  Happy birthday, Gracie, have a wonderful year!!!!!  You are the best!!  Grace is one year and five months older than I am.  She is married to Will (yes, they are the original Will and Grace!) and has two beautiful daugthers, Elizabeth and Sarah.  Have a good one, love!!

So, you all are getting confused because I keep mentioning sisters? LOL  Yes, there are five of us!  One brother, Carl.  There are ten nieces and nephews.  See, that isn't too confusing, but it makes for lots and lots of birthdays.

Therese wanted me to tell everyone that she chose "Yang Tze" as the winning submission for her yellow iris.  That came from my Daddeoo, Donald.  She also wanted me to let all of you guys know that she would be happy to send anyone seeds of her "rainbow" of 60 different colors if you would provide her with an address.  So, this is what I will do - Leave me your wish to have any seeds in the comments section or send me an email, I will send it off to her and she will communicate with you re: colors and amounts and such.  Oh, I hope that made sense!

Well, the day is still young, I still need to find a picture for Krissy's Scavenger Hunt.  It was harder than I thought it would be :-o!  Oh no!  I better get dressed and get my camera and get outside before it decides to rain!  Have a good day everyone! xox

Procrastination...

I am a terrible, terrible procrastinator.  I don't know why I do this.  It gets me into alot of trouble.  I need alot of help with this!  Oh, the curse of procrastination!  I decided to make a list of ten reasons why I procrastinate.  Perhaps it will give me some insight into why I do this insidious, terrible thing!

     10 Reasons Why I Procrastinate

         1.