Happy New Year everyone!

2011…who could believe it?! For the first time in my life, I don’t have a rough plan for the year and I’s pretty weird! I am trying to learn more and more each day to trust God! It proves harder than many people make it look! This is the first Christmas in a long time where I havent had o do coursework or revise! It has been weird – that is all I’ve known Christmas holidays to be! Even though I only had 2 days off work, I felt I didnt make the most of them! I also spend one of the nights in casualty with my granny! 10 hours later she was admitted! That brings me to another rant!

I dont understand why a breathless and agonised 86 year old lady would be kept waiting for 10 hours over night to be at least given a bed! There were plenty of beds when we finally got her to the ward and there is no way that all those beds became free in the middle of the night at exactly the same time! I very much doubt patients would be discharged at 4am to go home…! I understand that the health service is under pressure with staff cuts and all the rest of it but I can’t understand why, especially at a time of year when A&E departments are renowned for being extremely busy that they dont take that advanced knowledge to be better prepared! It took 5 hours for her to be even taken in to triage to be seen, it took a further hour for her xray to be done and a further half hour for a doctor to come and tell her the problem and then inform her that she had to see the surgical team who were in the City Hospital that night and that an ambulance could transfer her but it would be a few hours! From the Royal to the City approximately 5 mins in a car at 1:30am…a lot faster in an ambulance because they can drive faster…! Anyway… my mum and I just took her over! To find 3 ambulances parked outside! 3! How could once of them not done that fast little trip?! Anyway…long story short, she is in hospital now and just remaining the same! Being monitored and it is just a matter of waiting to see what teyre gonna go! Not the most satisfactory service but what can ya do?! Pray I guess!! My prayer is that she is kept as comfortable as possible and looked after! She is much happier knowing that there are people around her keeping an eye on her!

Prayers are very much appreciated!

Greensleeves!

beechams…

…what did we ever do without it?!

So I don’t think I have the full blown flu…but definitely loaded with the cold! 10:30pm…the earliest ive been in bed for quite a long time! I just hope I fall asleep…and I hope the dogs down stairs fall asleep too…and sleep all night and don’t start barking at 2am and scare the crap out of me!

I think I have a tablet logged in my chest :/ … ugh!

I’m currently downloading twilight from itunes onto my ipod! I started reading the first book…but I stopped as I always do with books and never went back to it! I want to see what all the hype is about…so, once its ready…Ill watch it and let ya know what I think!

anyways…I have nothing overly profound to say tonight. I’m just happy to be in bed ready to sleep! so goodnight bloggers!

greensleeves

x

dancing through life

This song has just come on my ipod as I sit in the library working away…for a change and it made me think…up until now I guess I could say I have pretty much ‘danced through life’ when if comes to school and uni work! Yeah at the time I didn’t really realise how easy I had it until this week. I have been sitting in the library pretty much all day trying to get my head around an essay question and work out where even to start going about putting together a respectable and substantial answer to it!

But then I think to myself, I love music! and at the end of the day I should look upon this assignment and all the assignments  have to do this year as an opportunity to learn and indulge in the beauty of music! How it is thought up and put together. Let’s face it, it is amazing! The complexity of different genres is immense! Let’s take Jazz for a little example! Take a minute to think about what you actually know about jazz music! Personally the first thing that springs to my mind is improvisation…but that is an incredibly naive view of it! It consists of many sub-genres and various styles, which in itself is fascinating! Maybe I should be writing about this in my 365 for today…but maybe I have other things to be thankful for!

But I guess as much as I have complained and moaned and all the rest of it this week, I do still think of it as a privilege to be able to study music in such depth…even if this is the first year I’m actually taking it seriously!

It is also becoming increasingly more difficult to get rid of my cold because now, 2 of my housemates have it! So the house is completely and utterly contaminated with germies!!

Aw well…I just needed a wee chance to write some stuff here…now its back to Ted Gioia and ‘The History of Jazz’

peace out!x

ps…I hope you watched the little video and enjoyed a little bt of wicked!

final year blues…/stresses…

Ok, so final year hasn’t even started and I’m already stressed! I know I’m stressed because I get a little stress mark thing on the side of my right eye hen im stressed and what started to appear this evening…yes yes thats right! I think I might give it a little name as it never seems to be away these days…please leave your suggestions as comments below…!

So, I had a ‘the joys of final year’ induction today and yeah I know it’s gonna be a hard and stressful year but I hate being told that! 200 hours of work n each 20 credit module…BOKE!! i dont have 200 hours of flute playing or reading in me!! aaaah!!!

I guess this is me saying, if you don’t see much of me (except when I scrape to final my ’365′ positivity for the day) on the blogosphere…its because im up to my eyes in the art of conducting and the civil rights movement with regards to New Jazz!!and learning a thousand pieces on the flute…oh how my excitement is just oozing out of me right now!! (sense the tone….GUESS the tone!!!!)

exciting as it sounds…hmmm…we shall see!!

I also just went to see Sorority Row….WASTE OF 2 HOURS!!! like it started of like almost pornographic…then turned sick and murderous!! but a great twist at the end…but still…and there was a freakin fire in it so i’ll probs have nightmares tonight because we also set the fire alarm off in our house today when we were trying out the fire to see if the chimney was blocked and the room filled with smoke…however we are pretty sure the smoke was also going up the chimney…aahh well…but yeah my biggest fear in life is fire…so…sweet dreams!!

hmmm…

oh…and i still have the cold!!BOKE

Lemsip is CRAP!

I have had the cold for about 5 days now! It evolves…goes in stages ya no…firstly I had an ear infection last weekend..which turned into the cold!

a sore throat

a blocked nose

a runny nose

a sneezing fit

a blocked nose

a constant headache

a runny nose

a cough

a chesty cough

HORRIBLE!!!!!!

And so here we are…!

So Ive decided Lemsip is CRAP! The only thing that sorta settles it for a while is actual honey and actual lemon…mixed with hot water and a little covonia added for the cough!! At least enough time for me to fall asleep! And so here goes another night of my little concoction in my brother’s gorge ‘House’ mug before hitting the hay!!

night all!! *cough, sneeze, cough*

God’s faithfulness

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this summer! Part of me cannot believe how fast it has gone and yet another huge part of me can’t believe I’m not back to uni yet! It has been a summer of meeting new people and spending time reflecting on life and how God is working and changing me!

At the start of the summer I went on a discipleship team called Encounter in Greystones Co Wicklow. This is one of the most memorable and life changing teams and experiences I’ve ever been part of. I met so many people and was able to share experiences with them and let them into my life and talk and pray about challenges that I have faced and am going to face in the future. This taught me a lot about community. I know I’ve talked a lot about community recently but that is because I have learnt so much about the importance of it in my life, in anyone’s life! To have a community of people who you can open up to and share with is such a blessing, even if you don’t see them very often, knowing that they are just an email or phone call away is so special!

I was away on this team for a month and I truly believe that God put me there so that I could meet new people and be able to chat to them and learn so much more about how God wants to move me forward in my faith and how he challenges me in ways that I could never really imagine. Also I think I was in a place in my life where I just wasn’t feeling connected to anything, I was just floating along in life and somehow that needed to change and God obviously knew that and encounter did change me…not that I am a new person or anything, it just made me realise so much about how I’d been acting, how I’d not been taking my life seriously or literally, just sorta watching it go by! It was weird, for the first 2 weeks of encounter I’m pretty sure I cried nearly everyday! Sometimes happy tears, sometimes sad and painful tears, but all because God was breaking and softening my heart and I am SO thankful that he did! I think it’s an important thing to always pray about, that God would show us our hearts, like really open us up to ourselves so we know how to deal with things!

Anyway so I came home from that in the middle of July and was house sitting for 2 weeks. I was feeling pretty weird! I’d just come from an amazing month of community to find myself alone in a big house for 2 weeks! It had its pros and cons I guess! Yeah it was lonely and I missed everyone BUT it was a perfect opportunity for reflection and prayer and stillness! And having a free house meant plenty of time and space for little small reunions!

So I just sorta floated a long, always in the back of my mind thinking about how I needed a job…crap! But here we are…2 months later and I still don’t have one! But God is good and he’s gotta plan! I had applied for one job but didn’t get it! It sucks that after four years of having a job and having some money go into my bank every month it no longer happens! Aw well…just have to cut down my diet coke addiction! Which I think I’m managing to do quite well really…one 2x330mls today! AND I didnt have a single drop yesterday!! woop!!

Anyway…so not a lot else really happened all summer! A lot of babysitting and house sitting and dog sitting and all the rest of it! The odd little trip to portstewart and a LOT of catching up and hanging out with friends…drinking coffee and diet coke! If I had gotten a job straight away there would not have been as much time for these chats and catch ups and so I feel that God wanted me to be free to chat to people because He knows that’s what I needed…the job will come in time! I have faith that God will provide…yeah maybe I need to seek a little more…be more practical…I will someday!HA!

Now it’s time to get ready for uni…for final year! EEEK!!! Like…in the past few years God has taken me waaaay outta my comfort zone! Firstly with the whole going away to uni thing…I never in a million years thought I could but I did…not knowing a single person going to Magee when I applied…but through the summer I met people who are now my housemates and 2 of my best friends! God provides! Then a trip to Japan and even that was with people I knew…to a month away in Dublin where I only knew 2 people out of 35ish! But every single time God has been faithful and I have benefited from it…I haven’t always seen these benefits and good things at the time, but looking back I can see that God’s ways are perfect!

He never fails us.

He loves us too much to let us hurt for too long!

He reveals Himself in ways that sometimes we just have to seek!

I’m getting excited to see what He has in store for me next! Where else He’s going to take me, in or out of my comfort zone, I don’t care because I know He is faithful!

But for now…I just need to get rid of this horrible cold that is causing my face to be slightly puffy and extremely unattractive! Made worse by the constant flow of snot coming from my nose and my highly unattractive breathing technique I’ve got going n! BOKE!

I love blogging!

Good night!
x

sleepless-ness

So the whole ear ache thing…turns out I have an ear infection! Boke!! And with most infections brings tiredness and acheyness which I have been experiencing all day resulting in sleeping most of the day away and now I am unable to sleep! Going from not being able to stay awake to not being able to fall asleep is annoying…it would have been so much more convenient if it have have happened at the right time of day…unable to stay awake at night, unable to sleep during the day! Anyway, where would the fun in life be if it happened the way we wanted it to!?

So…I’ve been lying on my bed for well hours and have now developed this very strange, very annoying eye twitch…a twitch like I’ve never really experience, yeah I get the odd lazy eye when I’m very tired, but never a twitch that has lasted a good hour or so! It’s very weird! But during this eye twitching experience…I’ve been thinking about how amazing the body actually is…that’s a lie I haven’t really but now I am thinking about it! Like do we even consciously think about our next breath?! Or every heart beat? or a sniff? I mean wow! The body does it all for us…God does it all for us! And whats more, how often do we take it for granted!? Personally…everyday of my life! I very rarely think about how i breathe, how my heart beats, how my body digests my food, supplies me with the right energy levels…like the list is endless!

Which leads me to just the general little things in life that I take for granted and go unnoticed…being able to get up in the morning, have a shower, eat breakfast, hop into my car and go wherever I need to go…again the list goes on…but these are things that, if remembered, could make my day so much more positive and so much more pleasant..and oh how the world would be a better place if I was more thankful for the little, unnoticed things in life!

So in the blogworld there is a thing going round called 365…basically the idea behind it is to set up a blog for exactly one year and faithfully (or as faithfully as possible) take time everyday to write about the details of your day that have been positive! The thing that have made you smile and in doing it makes us more thankful for the little (and large) blessings that God sends our way! Of course some days will be harder than others, but thats part of the challenge!So starting 21st September 2009…I will set up such a blog! Hopefully linking it to foreveringreensleeves…because I’ll likely not write in this as often…occasionally but not everyday! I am going into final year after all!

So that is what I’ve been thinking about! I’m looking forward to starting it actually…who knows if i’ll be able to stick it out but it will be something to think about every day! Things I am thankful to God for!

So, watch this space my little blog followers

much love and good night!

ear ache!

It been a busy (in a non-busy sort of way) few days! I’ve been up in portstewart for a few days with my mum which was lovely then home and now I just keep finding things to do before I start back to uni which is rather annoying because I dunno wen I’m gonna get them done! But anyways…

Ive been thinking a lot about life (as ever!) and about how there is so much pressure to get a job straight after uni, settle down and I guess start living life! But what does that make the past 20 years of my so-called ‘life’ out to be? Have I not already been living my life? Is life not about the ‘here and now!’?? Yes I think it is…I’ve decided that I need to constantly be reminding myself that I am in my life right now, all the flute practicing, all the essays, all the reading that are part of my degree…that’s my life! All the driving about, all the catching up with friends, all the drinking coffee and diet coke…that’s my life…that’s my life right now! Yeah when I grow up (now i remember ive written about a similar subject before) I will maybe get a job, but right now my life consists of other things…which are essentially in preparation for my job, and the next chapter in my life…but its all part of my life!

cue the cheesey (but extremely ture) cliche….’life’s to short!’ so dont waste it…live every single day to the full!!

John 10:10b – I have come so they may have life, life in all it’s fullness!

I need to start living in the here and now..and no anticapting so much of whats to come..because at the end of the day…its outta my control! and that excites (scares!) me!

I didnt get the job in xtra-vision….awww welll!!!

oh and in relation to the title of this blog…I have a seriously seriously painful left inner ear ache NOT pleasant!

headache and sore throat…SWINE FLU??!!

you mention that you have a sore throat and a headache and all of a sudden…it blows out of proportion and people think you’ve swine flu and tell you to stay away!! I admit I am guilty of the same accusation but now…I’m seeing the non-funny side!!

It is amazing how one develops a common cold…so quickly!! or just develops such symptoms that will not evolve into something too sinister…she hopes!

right now I’m sitting in bed with a busting headache, a sore throat, a hot water bottle and some lemsip…this doesn’t bode well for the next few days! But…here’s hopin its just a bita tiredness mixed with the sniffles/bunged-uples!!