Paradise Regained

Hello again, I am fine. Welcome to Mr. Putz; you are welcome to visit my blog and thank you for leaving a comment. To all my friends, I have been reading your blogs, but the lazy way, through Google Reader, so I can’t leave comments; I will try to soon.

I did decide to plant my poinsettias. After a very hot, and I do mean VERY hot fall, we proceeded to break records with our cold stretch (which for us meant temps in the 20s). Before you smugly point out what a wimp I am, may I remind you that we do not have heat in our house, other than one tiny space heater (it's really cute, though, and looks like a little fireplace). I even had to break out my one and only pair of pants! Now, however, the weather is what I call "why I live in Florida weather." Surely you did not expect me to stay in the house blogging about it, did you?

Besides gardening and trying to save what's left of my poor, scorched plants (don't worry, Rosezilla is fine. She's amazing. I mean the rosebush, not me), I have also been painting, since hubby is about to launch another project and the boards needed painting first. He's going to be building a storage closet, of sorts, and he's going to close in my back porch, put lattice up to make it pretty and make a door. Then I can leave my back door open without getting varmints like raccoons, possums, and every stray cat around in my kitchen.

I've been reading "Jane Eyre," which was a Christmas gift, and enjoying it very much. Gonna put the PBS show of it with Ruth Wilson playing the lead on Netflix. I have also been exercising, as promised.

At Bible Study we are in the book of James. I love the book of James. My boys memorized it for school, so since I was their teacher (homeschool), I learned quite a bit of it too. There is so much good stuff in there! A lot of admonition, instruction and comfort. I love James 1:17 "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow" (New American Standard version).

I have been writing some, but mostly for AC; in part because they are donating money to a relief organization (IRC) for the articles I write about Haiti. Living in SW Florida, we have Haitian neighbors and friends, church family and orphans being cared for by other friends; we have, like most of the country, been trying to do what we can to ease the suffering in whatever small way we can find to do it. One young girl, here on a medical visa, was supposed to go back in January. I am so glad she was here and not there. She's such a darling. The young friend who had the recent motorcycle accident, and has EMT training, was asked to go with a small medical team, but she was heartbroken to realize she was not healed enough from her accident yet to stand for very long. (It turned out both ankles were sprained and she had a hairline fracture on her tibia, so it was a little bit worse than I had first been told).

Another friend is adopting a little child from Haiti. I have been told there were over 900 adoptions that were weeks away from completion when the earthquake hit. First they were all thrown into turmoil, but now they are expediting as many as possible. I leave you with a darling picture, from the Joint Council on International Children's Services, of a caregiver from a Haitian orphanage with her young charges while they waited at the airport for their exit visas to be expedited.