He was only popping out for a sandwich...

 

Hello all. Hope you are well. We are fine here. HOH has a sore arm but that is self-inflicted so don't waste any sympathy there. As part of his bucket list as he enters his 70th year HOH had expressed a desire to have a tattoo.  (To clarify, it's not like a Morgan Freeman bucket list where everyone decides to do ridiculous things before they pop their clogs). Goodness - this has taken a dark turn. No this is just a loose list of a few things he would like to do. He has ruled out skydiving or bungee jumping - especially with his back. So there had been a bit of muttering about a tattoo that I hadn't taken much notice of and then suddenly - it appeared. HOH volunteers at my place of work once a week and he just popped out for his lunch and then came back a changed man. I like it very much - fortunately. The important thing obviously is that it has my initials on it - it could have just as easily had the Four Tops on it - trust me. So I am now the only member of my family who doesn't have a tattoo. I have never really given it much thought because I have a right arm with no lymph nodes at the top of it. This means that an injury on it could make my arm swell up in a very unflattering way and it might never go down. So obviously, a deliberate injury is not the brightest idea. However, someone who has the same problems that I have has had several tattoos on her left arm because she has been told that the rest of her body is okay and she has never had any comeback from her tattoos. So I probably could - if I wanted to - but I probably won't. 

On a different note, Messy Church was back this week. Yeah, baby! We were doing the Lost Sheep this week and my table was doing sheep car fresheners. This involved taking a bag of lavender and putting a couple of drops of essential oils on it to sort of wake it up. The children were - as usual  - very enthusiastic and a bit heavy-handed with the oil so I was feeling a bit light-headed at one stage. Then the lavender bag was put between two pieces of white felt which were then sewn together. I naively thought that we would be doing most of the sewing but most of them wanted to have a good go at it themselves. Which was nice and I'm sure all the little bloody pinpricks in my thumb will probably heal soon - hopefully without my arm swelling up.

Then all you had to do was pop a little sheep face on the front and Bob's Your Uncle. There was a lot of threads coming out of needles and I am not the most dexterous person in the world. Fortunately, my co-worker was very good at needle threading. She tells me that she is a theatre nurse at the hospital (I'm not sure if the two things are connected). We hadn't met before and, between trying to stop children trying to have a swig of lavender oil "Isn't your Mum supposed to be with you sweetie?" we tried to have a chat. What a nice person. The thing I wanted to tell you was that she was a Compassion Child. For those that don't know Compassion is a charity which enables people to sponsor a child by paying a monthly amount. Also, she remembers getting shoeboxes from Samaritan's Purse at Christmas. For anyone who isn't sure what that is, we would get a shoebox, wrap it in Christmas paper and fill the box with little gifts like felt pens and things like scarves and socks. Then someone would arrange to send all these off to children who might like to receive them. So, for anyone who has signed up for something like this and wondered if it was worth it, this little girl in India would tell us that it definitely was. It's a cheery thought - that this little bit of generous behaviour can impact in such an important way. You in your small corner and I in mine etc. etc. Have a good week.