The 'My Church is the ONLY church going to heaven' syndrome

I have my radar permanently on for strange churches. I don’t know if you’ve had the privilege of attending one- it is a privilege because if you come out alive and in your right mind, you can survive just about anything in life.  I’ve been blessed in that manner but I neither hope for nor desire such a blessing again.

I have been in a church where the culture of the nationals superseded the word of God. I have also been in one where the church decided what day of the week you could get married on. When we were looking for a new church some years ago I would type in the name of the church and then the word ‘cult’ right after it. Because there is no smoke without fire, nuff said!

It would appear I have an affinity for such members because as I type this we are currently being stalked by yet another one. I won’t go into details but instead will share with you my freshly brewed experience. A little while ago we met this lovely couple at #2’s football practice. They were a lovely pair, seemed harmless enough and their twin boys both played in our son’s team. We gisted on the field quite often. No wahala. Then one day they told us they had something important to discuss with us, and could they come round to see us? We asked if it could be discussed over the phone, they insisted in person. We offered our time over the weekend, they insisted it couldn’t wait and suggested we meet for coffee that week after work. So we obliged them. The first 2 hours were spent gisting about nothing in particular –you know, the fact that the twins were so identical and how she was once told she’ll never have children, yada, yada, yada. This is called the warm-up.

Finally at a little after 10pm they began ‘the spill’. I knew we had arrived at that point because the woman took on a humble stance as she adjusted herself in her chair, while her husband shifted his coffee aside and put on a grave and sombre countenance. He shared about their dreams and how they were on course to achieving it, but God had stepped in to interrupt it. God wouldn’t let them move forward until they did his will. We agreed that seeking God’s will was very important in all our endeavours. He continued and spent a great  deal of time on how pressing this particular plan of God was, me I held on to the hope that our friend will eventually reveal the great mystery. And he did. The will was that they plant a church in our neighbourhood. By this time my radar had picked up the conclusion of the story aka the koko of the matter.  So on they went, they had prayed about it and God gave them a list of the founding members, we were of course on that list. The founding members were needed so that once the church was established; they themselves could then leave to pursue their dreams, seeing that the church was now in the hands of God’s chosen ones, aka those who had no goals or visions for themselves. At this point I wanted to belt out ‘do you not think I have my own dreams?’ But I didn’t, choosing instead to nod my head repeatedly like an agama lizard. Hubby said “we’ll pray about it and let you know”, even as he said it we both knew there shan’t be any praying about it whatsoever. I guess you could say we lied, Lord forgive us. They even offered and said “ we don’t want you to jump on the bandwagon just yet, pray about it for ‘confirmation’ and let us know”.

On our way home hubby and I ‘discussed’ in detail. The issue wasn’t the fact that they dragged us into the cold night at an ungodly hour, there were several baffling issues on so many levels. While we were together I had responded to each sentence (using my inside voice) and I’ll share some of my raised points:

1) You hardly know us. Just because I say amen in all the right places and I’ve quoted some scriptures does not mean I’m not a cult member.

2) Don’t you think God would have told us too? Reminds me of the story of the brother that went to the sister- ‘God told me you are my wife’ and she replied ‘did God also tell you that I’m a happily married woman?’ Some people take this ‘Fools for Christ’ thing to another level.

3) I have my own church and I have responsibilities there. How can you expect me to dump my beloved church family to enable you pursue YOUR dreams? You don’t even know the name of my church, like I said I could be a very ‘dodgy’ character.

So two weeks later we made our return trip to tell them what we felt. We rehearsed what our ‘official’ reasons were and agreed hubby would do the talking while I took the humble and sombre stance. You wonder why a rehearsal was needed? My friend, I’ve been there done that. Some people don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, plus they may not know where we live but do know that we’re at soccer practice on Saturdays, there’s no telling how far people will go- I don’t want wahala.. Hubby was very polite and explained our reasons for not dumping our church and following them like sheep. He said we’ll support them through prayers and even assist on outreaches when we can. Surprisingly they were very accepting and thanked us for being honest.

We thought that was it, but it was only the beginning of real wahala.

To be continued.

This post is dedicated to Lateefah Olayinka who reminded me to pick up my pen again! Thanks Lateefah!

Warning #1 She told me to ask the hair shop. I should have taken that as a sign that this deal wasn’t going to go down well.

Warning #2 Next I made my way to the hair shop and after a couple of feeble sentences with Mukhtar, left  store with what looked like a close match to what I wanted. My hairdresser suggested I bought 3 packs but knowing my hair I took  4.
Warning #3. Hairdresser takes one glance and declares it isn’t going to be enough. So I suggest cane rowing the front, same effect, no big deal. She finishes the canerow and says it still isn’t enough. So we agree I’ll go and buy the weave version of the hair and weave the back instead. Even better for me as it means I’ll be done sooner.

Warning #4.  The hair only comes in braid format, weave version is not available. I also learn that although there are possibly hundreds of brands, but no two brands are the same. So I purchase the closest weave I could identify and hope for the best.

My preferred braid

Warning #5. It wouldn’t blend. Silky versus kinky. Now I’m gutted. The logical thing was done which was forget my afro style and go with the silky one ( which I completely do not like)

The battle between coming to terms with the turn of events and refusing to be angered by Aunty Catford’s conversation begins. I don’t know why she’s called Aunty Catford, my only theory is that she lives in Catford. The entire time I’m there she doesn’t crack a smile. And as she’s the one doing my hair I dare not ask why she’s called Catford. For all you know they might not even be saying Catford, though I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m hearing.

‘See, you’re lucky. That first hair you got was rubbish.‘ The ‘R’  and the ‘sh‘ are heavily emphasized. Me, I quietly denounce every negative pronunciation over my afro.

‘It would have tangled very badly and you would have just wasted your money’, she continues. Some people just can’t take a hint! You can’t force one to like what one does not like.

‘But I like tangled! Tangled is natural’, I scream with my inside voice!

‘See how nice it looks? It looks like human hair!’

Every single person in the shop agrees with agama lizard style nods. It feels like I’m in a war with everyone in the shop.

Me, I want my face to be admired too, ie ‘your hair suits you‘, or ‘you are beautiful all round, love the hair too’. What I don’t want is to have people admire the hair I purchased from Mukhtar. You might as well go to his shop and admire all the hair he sells.

I don’t usually wear weaves, I prefer braids or my relaxed hair cut in a pretty nifty style. So this is new for me.

Silky Hair

I’ll see how I feel in the morning, If I’m still unhappy I’ll execute plan B.

It is morning.

Thank you for reading, do come back!

I am now in love with history! Poor hubby can’t even enjoy a simple movie or T.V program any longer as I’m constantly pointing out the different eras that the fireplace or staircase bannister came from. I go on to explain how design styles, though limited to nobility and the wealthy, travelled through time and various countries. Rome and France were the trend setters, but because of the limited transportation ( we’re talking 18th and 19th century) a style could be in vogue in France but wouldn’t arrive in Britain for another 100 years or so. The poor Americans had nothing going on for a long time as most travelling was done within Europe. Would you like to know how churches came to be so tastefully designed and decorated? No? Well I’ll tell you anyway.  In a nutshell, during the renaissance period, many wealthy families lived very extravagant lives. The guilt of the way they lived caused them to donate  a lot of their money to the church, and even build elaborate churches. It was seen as their penance especially since some of the wealth was ill-gotten. Did you know Leonardo Da Vinci dissected human bodies to see how the body was created, so he could recreate it, sinews, muscle and all in his art? You knew? I didn’t! Did you know that the mistresses of monarchs were formally recognized as the Royal mistress? She had to have certain qualities and not just anyone could fill that role. She had to be a married woman for example. And her husband would have been very proud to share his wife with the King!

I won’t bore you any longer, oh and the reason I feel sorry for my friends and family (and now you) is that I can’t stop talking about my new found knowledge! It is so fascinating and I’m thankful that I am able to learn, i.e the boys haven’t sucked my mind away with their boisterous activities- like child #3 who is suddenly obsessed with wars. Search me. He is gathering knowledge on all the different wars (including dates!) and watching YouTube clips of Saving private Ryan. He told me about the cold war, why it started and about the Battle of Red Cliffs, fought between Northern and Southern China, what’s worrying is that this particular war was fought in 208 AD. I have no idea why an 8-year-old would be interested in that, he still has us baffled.

Here’s wishing you an awesome week ahead, and may the writer’s block never catch me again, amen!

Thanks so much for reading

It could be because my neighbour across the street still has what appears to be a christmas tree complete with lights on his front porch. Or the fact that Josh’s words keep replaying in my head- ‘mum, see no car has hit me yet’. Uttered moments after I informed him that sticking his head outside the window of the moving car would most certainly get him hit.

It may well be because of my new friend who shall remain nameless. I tried desperately to get her to dicsuss her roots, she’s Nigerian and I was interested in the part of Nigeria she hails from. I love to show off my knowledge of the little-known parts, okay, one little-known part. She seemed rather uncomfortable, choosing instead to stir the conversation from ‘village talk’ to Britico talk.

Truth is I don’t know why I haven’t blogged in so long. I have had errr… ‘writer’s block’. Yes I have. I’ve been short of ideas, actually I have had ideas but they’ve been limited to single lines. That wouldn’t do for Pawpaw and Mango (which I just realized has no tagline, suggestions welcome). The single lines of course being the titles, like: The morning after the night before I took too many Ibuprofen  capsules and panicked while I imagined my stomach digesting itself as I recalled the story my dad told me of the man who reacted badly to Ibuprofen and lost no less than two pints of blood ‘before his very eyes’. Or- I wonder if my neighbour is an ax murderer, I have no reason to believe he is but you can’t trust anyone these days especially since he refers constantly to ‘Marie’ and we have never seen a ‘Marie’ or any semblance of it her.

I stumbled across a Nigerian Singer on Twitter. I’d never heard of her before she was trending that particular day, and like all normal folks I clicked to see what the fuss was all about. Apparently someone had called her ‘ugly’, I have no idea why she chose to respond to this person, but she started calling him names, vacillating between English and Yoruba.. Idiot, Oloshi! Your mouth is dirty! Seriously, on Twitter! That was the funniest tweet conversation I’d come across. But even that did not evoke a decent blog post.

My dear friend and fellow blogger Justjoxy has been writing a mini-series over on her blog. It was supposed to be a short story, at least that’s what she told us. Two parts at the most. Three postings later and we are yet to read the end. Humph! It is a very good read, would make you think before you wear your weave again. No she isn’t one of those activists for natural black afro. She’s an activist for rare species like giant king prawns sauteed in peppers and ginger, and the like. Which is precisely why I haven’t been able to write. I’ve been reading!

Thank you for coming back, I promise not to ever allow Justjoxy and her Sango priestesses stop me again, ever!

I made a U-turn right by the edge of the river which left me feeling unhinged. The whole scenario unnerved me and I couldn’t wait to get us out of there. I came out of the car to ask a lady for directions and she leaned over and whispered urgently “You’re in the village of the blind, the villagers are all blind and the most wicked on earth, you want to get out of here as soon as possible” Strangely enough she didn’t seem perturbed that she was a seeing-woman in a village of violent, blind people. As I turned to go back to the car, the boys had already come out of the car and child #1 was chasing our dog who had managed to get off his leash. I was so angry as I ran after them screaming and asking him why he let go. The dog found a round pipe and ran inside it. We chased after calling him but he seemed to think it was all a game. As we approached the house where the pipe lead into, I noticed an old man sitting inside right by the window, filing his fingernails. I asked him nicely if he wouldn’t mind passing our dog to us and he responded with “no.” He didn’t even look up and he didn’t stop filing his nails. I noticed he had two opaque eyes, each sunken in their own socket. He’s face was tanned and etched with 8 to 10 deep lines. He looked and felt very diabolical and evil seemed to emanate from him. It was as if he was the very embodiment of evil. My heart started to pound as I realized I had come face to face with one of the most wicked people on earth.  Then I saw our dog being humped by the man’s bigger dog, we started begging for our dog and our poor, previously un-humped dog ran upstairs to escape. I stopped child #1 just in time as he made to go in through the pipe. I resigned myself to the very real possibility that we would be leaving without our dear, dear dog whom we love so much and is a member of our family. As I turned to gather my boys, I noticed child #4 had been snatched away  and they were now trying to take child #3. I blacked out, and saw nothing but white light. It was the sun streaming in through my window, it is morning and I’m awake, safe and sound and so are my children. We have no dog.

I can’t help but ponder on the meaning of this dream, not all my dreams have meaning but this one was so poignant. For one I am so thankful for God’s protection over us. That we are safe, the children are free from danger.

I wonder if it has something to do with spiritual blindness. That being blind means being in danger?  What if we could see into our future, what effect will that have on our decisions today? What if we had eyes on both sides of our faces as well as in front and at the back? Besides looking hideous I think that we would do much better in possibly all areas of our lives. What if  like Google earth we had the ability to zoom in and out?

At the moment I feel very overwhelmed, I have a lot on my plate- mostly good stuff but find that I can’t exactly enjoy them yet, as I’m either trying to do all of those things at the same time, or I am paralyzed, wondering where to begin. I know that if I am able to stand all the way back, I’ll have a clearer picture of what needs to be done, and even allocate timelines for each item. I’ll be able to connect the dots to form a nice, chaos-free picture. When you are in a situation that is usually all you can see just like when you zoom in at street level on google maps you only see a few streets. You can’t see the train stations and public buildings unless you move around or better still zoom out.  If you keep zooming out the full picture becomes clearer until you see our beautiful planet earth.

So today I think I’ll put pen to paper and zoom out, start with the finished picture and slowly zoom back in, connecting the dots until I finally find my way around. I’m learning to live by having faith in my vision, i.e the outcome and not getting stuck on how I’ll get there.

I with you a fruitful and productive week, thanks so much for reading!

Okay I know I got carried away. I love the start of the year because it hasn’t been tainted with disappointments or regrets. It hasn’t even been tainted with sin or ill behavior either. Yankee candle do a scent called Clean Cotton, it really smells like a clean white bed sheet. That’s what the start of the year looks like, a clean white sheet.

Last year (I’m ashamed to say) I was honored to have been tagged and awarded a versatile blogger award by the oh-so-consistent-in-her-blogging blogger, Nita. Nita, you are a stylish and sincere writer and I’m glad our paths crossed! Thanks so much for the award! As you have already guessed I gushed and ah-ed about the award but didn’t write the 7 random things about myself, so here it is:

1) I converse with myself- a lot. Sometimes I do it when I’m alone, at other times I do it when others are around. I used to work with a young lady who would have spontaneous bursts of laughter and say “Toks you’re so funny!” in her sing-song voice. When I asked why, she’d say “you’re talking to yourself, again”. I would start to explain I’m not talking to myself, I’m talking my way through a task, but instead say “never mind dear” with my “this-is-too-heavy-for-you-to-understand voice.

2) I don’t like arguments or confrontations. Therefore you won’t catch me starting a conversation with; “I need to have a word, you offended me the other day”. If the offence is so bad that I can’t overlook it, I tend to drift slowly away from the offender.

3) My favourite childhood movie is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, with Sound of Music coming in at a close second. My favourite grown-up movie (I nearly wrote adult!) is Gone with the Wind. I cry when I watch it.

4) I had a happy, flawless childhood, I have no regrets at all about growing up in my household and I owe that to God and Mum and Dad!

5) I hate fish. Okay ‘hate’ is a strong word, but I don’t like the smell, the skin or the bones. My mum had to have surgery to her throat when I was a child to remove a fish bone, maybe that’s where the aversion stems from. I don’t know how people systematically place a pice of flesh embedded with bones in their mouth and somehow manage to swallow just the flesh and spit out the bones in a neat, confident fashion. I don’t care to know either. The skin, I have found to be of an irritatingly sleek and slimy texture, plus the markings resemble that of a snake. As for the smell, I believe there is a part of the fish where all the smell emanates from, it’s that brown part next to the skin. Since I can’t be bothered to extract brown flesh, I just forget the whole thing.

6)  I love to take solo short breaks, no hubby, no child, just me. A the risk of sounding like a Buddhist or new-ageist, getting away helps me get in touch with myself, *insert peaceful, zen-like voice* I would love to go on an all-girls short break soon though, like the ones you find profiled in Essence magazine like The New Orleans Essence Festival or something like that- and short means no less than one week. I do the solo breaks to catch up on work, reading and just to enjoy my own company because I think I make good company

7) I was supposed to be a doctor- but I got, er sidetracked, we’ll blame hubby for this one. I have a super-retentive memory when it comes to anything to do with the human body or medication, but I’m apt to forget my friends birthdays

She said seven random things!  So I can’t tell you my most embarrassing moment-ever! (I would have gone on to tell you how I once walked in on my stark naked, middle-aged distant-relative. I was a teen and trying to act so grown up that seeing a grown man in his bathing suit was normal. It was his birthday and I wanted to be nice and give him a card, after all he and his wife had kindly welcomed me to their home when I arrived in Stratford. So when I knocked and I thought he said come-in, I behaved as though seeing him naked was no big deal. I still walked up to him to give him his birthday card while mumbling an incoherent ‘sorry, I thought you said come in’.  A normal child would have flinched and ran back. ) Argh!!!!

But if I told you I’dmlp+be breaking the award rules.

Thanks for reading and happy new year!!!

Anywho! I didn’t let on to hubby that I had no idea theman was still alive as that would have been a new avenue for him to ‘diss’ me. So he wonders out loud why he is in a hospice;  ”abi he has money problems?”  Trust me to quickly wiki him. So I start from the very begining and learned a lot.

He had a rough childhood. He was raised on a farm in South Carolina during one of the most racially charged times in America. He endured the humiliation of Jim Crow and his family, although owned a farm were not exactly wealthy. After he broke his left arm in a nasty fall from teasing their sizable hog, said arm became permanently crooked as his folks couldn’t afford a doctor, the arm was left to heal by itself. By the age of 15 began to fend for himself. Long story short, he got into boxing and that let arm became a weapon in his career.

His rivals were Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, they were the kings. Ali, who has always had a mouth loved to tease and curse, comes with the territory right? Well Somehow all that teasing and cursing didn’t go down too well with Joe and they became enemies. Later on Joe will refuse to have anything to do with Ali, even appearances and events that would have earned him some money. This carried on after he lost close to $1m on a land deal. The trust that held his money went bust and he lost it all. Funnily enough Ali also went through his own financial hell  due to mismanagement and being surrounded by vultures, some employed by him who did nothing but scavenge his fortune. His salvation came in the form of his current wife who fired everyone in sight and set things straight, charging for the use of his name, etc. I don’t know much about Mr. Frazier’s personal life to see if he also had a good woman behind him after he got divorced following a 20 year marriage. I do know however that he did sue his daughter for holding unto contracts and documents that supposedly would have made him more financially buoyant.  Apparently he was in such dire straits that he chose the one option he had. I have no opinion to air on this since I don’t know why the pikin sef was holding unto her papa’s stuff.

Through it all Joe remained bitter towards Ali, even after Ali apologised and said many of the things he said were wrong and were done to promote the fights. Here’s a quote from Mr Frazier during an interview: “I don’t mind talking about the rivalry I had and have with Muhammad,” Frazier said. “I know it’s what most people remember me for.

Well I beg to differ here. You should not be remembered for negativity of any sort. There is no pride in saying your legacy was being rivals with someone else, or worse remaining angry and unforgiving toward anyone.  Bear in mind that he was a heavyweight champion of the world and beat Ali, actually he had 32 wins, 4 loses and 1 draw and was inducted into the Boxing hall of fame. And when Ali lit the Olympic torch in 1996, he apparently said he’d like to throw him in the fire.

When asked about forgiving his opponent, this is what he said:

“Forgiveness? It’s not up to me to forgive him, only the Lord can do that. There’s no forgiveness.

“Who will be the best guy in the final round, who is the one of us two who is going to heaven and who is going to hell? I know which one it is and I sure ain’t the one who is going to hell.”

Folks, this interview was held last year. He was 68 at the time. To allow hatred to marr your life for so long is a tradgedy. It is as if his own hatred robbed him.

So Sunday had me imagining what he was thinking on his death bed. What do people think about when faced with the unwavering certainty that they will not be walking out of the hospital? Or while the nurses discuss about their shifts next week he knows without a doubt that he wouldn’t even be there? Imagine being told you have 5 days to live. Mentally you are stable enough to understand exactly what that means, you can even transport yourself mentally into the next 3 weeks but your living body will never arrive there. Your mind in fact is healthy but your body is dying and as healthy as your mind is, you cannot will yourself to be made whole again.

For some reason the word regret  has been playing around in my mind, i.e I don’t want to regret a single thing at the end of my life. I don’t want to sit and wish I hadn’t wasted my time and expended my emotional energy hating someone else, acting to please someone else or pretending to be someone else. I want to enjoy every moment of every day and be glad and rejoice in it. I want to see the beauty of God everywhere I go and even recognize that my trials are part of the tools needed to shape me into a beautiful soul, so that when trials come I’m not perturbed but happy that work is still being done on me. I want to be an excellent mum to my children and raise them well, while remaining a true friend and companion to hubby. I want to be a dependable friend, the type that has you confident to turn your back because you know I’ll be watching it not stabbing it. I don’t want to stop cracking jokes or being funny. I want to use up all of the gifts that God placed in me, they are many. I want to inspire people and make sure their lives are better because they met me.

I definitely want to keep blogging, but to do so very regularly and not sporadically. Did I mention I was still being worked on?

Thanks so much for reading!

PS;

If you are unsure about how to live free of fear or regret the one solution I have found so far is salvation through Christ. It doesn’t stop you from making mistakes or even physically dying, but it does give you a hope and a future and a new life after death.

I celebrated my 15th wedding anniversary. It is scary to even type that number, I can’t believe hubby and I have been together for 15 years. Actually lets make that 17.5 since we dated for 2.5 years. Since we’re counting we’ll make that 20.5 years since we were best friends before then. Yes, I stole my best friend, lol! I remember the day I met him, it was at a mutual friend’s house. I had on my glasses and I got up to go to the kitchen. He said, ”take off your glasses let me see you without them” Can you imagine the cheek of him? I of course said no! In my mind thinking you are very bold, you barely know me and you’re making demands. He still thinks I have beautiful eyes but refuses to say they are my best feature, he believes all my features are best, awww!

Back in the day we all used to converge at Alex’s house on a Sunday to eat, gist and chill. There wasn’t much to our lives then, we were students and miles away from our parents or any sort of authority and life was good! It was there I also met Tinuke, along with Tola, Ronke and Tayo. I’m pleased to say that most of the friends I made in that house- which was  filled with Bobby Brown posters and weird haircuts- are still in my life today. And so many more wonderful people have been added over the years, including a certain blogger who will be the subject of my next post!

So Hubby and Alex along with Tinuke became my closest friends. As each dropped off the bandwagon dating their future spouses, hubby and I were increasingly left to go to the movies alone and spend hours on the phone. One day he asked who I saw myself with in the future, I realised then that we clearly had been spending so much time together that all I saw was him with his tiny eyes. Hmmm. Not good. I quickly made an excuse and got off the phone, which was the beginning of a week long of intense worry that I’d fallen in love with my best friend! I summoned reinforcements in the form of dear friends and a pastor’s wife to seek a way out of this dilemma. I couldn’t even speak to him the next day as I felt this was so wrong, plus I was convinced he would be able to see my thoughts through the phone- seeing him face to face was certainly out of the question. I guess I was that flustered as he was the first person I fell in love with, if you don’t count Blair Underwood, Johnny Gill and Babyface. He eventually told me how he felt about me- more than just friends. He told me how he hated the fact that I told everyone we were like brother and sister! The rest as they say is history, a beautiful one. That was all before I became a frazzled mama to 4 boys. Yes they are gorgeous. Yes they are adorable and sweet, but they also have major frazzling power!

Toddler J now talks. We already have a talker in the family- number 3 and we have been praying and confessing that he wouldn’t have a rival. Alas it wasn’t to be. I swear this boy just started talking on Monday. He has always chatted, don’t get me wrong but something happened on Sunday/Monday that turned on a switch in him. Today is Thursday and he hasn’t slowed down. He not only speaks in sentences, he speaks in paragraphs too! Please pray for me.

Number 3 is still as sweet as ever and learning the lesson of tolerance, tolerance that is of number 1, who has suddenly turned teaser-extraordinaire. Number 2, the sporty one decided he no longer wants to play football. One is unsure of whether to force him to carry on as he is very talented, or allow him to choose another sport so that he enjoys his childhood. Suggestions gladly welcome!

He started by telling me he didn’t have all the parts. In my opinion he shouldn’t have bothered to come. But he went on to say that he had to log the call, blah, blah, blah. I permitted him. Next he proceeded to show me drawings of the washing machine, and all the different parts. He showed me the parts he had and the parts he didn’t. He then went on to explain why the missing pieces were essential. Mohammed then carried on, telling me what would happen if I continued to use it. He explained how one customer’s machine drum “was ripped apart like a can of sardines” when they carried on using it in its faulty state. Perhaps it was because I didn’t rant and rave about the wasted time that Mohammed felt the need to educate me on how angry I should be when I called Comet’s customer services to complain. “You really must put your foot down. You cannot afford to wait another 2 weeks for me to come back. Ask them why they are putting you through this. Write a letter to their head office. Don’t say I told you. Call first then write a letter”. I already knew that. But you see I have learnt that you cannot change what has already happened, and God forbid I waste my energy and emotions on ranting about something that cannot be altered. At this point I began to consider feigning disgust and anger, just so I could move on from there. It’s a sunny day and this might well be my last chance to wear my floaty summer dress. I don’t think I did a good job because my feigned irritation only seemed to spur him on. Finally he offered to show me the parts he had in his car “So I could understand the gross incompetence of Comet”. I quickly declined and said I needed to “GET ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW!!!” and “SORT THEM OUT!!”

When you visit the Punkin Patch website, you’ll be greeted by an orange bubble that allows you to chat live with me, or anyone manning the store. I smile when I hear first a ‘knock-knock’ which notifies me someone has landed on the homepage, and then get even more excited when the message notifier comes up for a chat. So that was how I felt some 15 mins ago when Bertha* came up with a chat. I haven’t met her before but she is a retailer in a complementary business, we send each other customers (at least I hope she does). Anyway, she asked if I attended Langley Girls School*. I said I didn’t and asked if I looked familiar (she had gone unto my Facebook page and seen my photo). She explained that she used to know a very sweet, very pretty girl like me called Toks, but she went to Nigeria after graduating from Uni. Her family owned a luxury apartment in Marble Arch (that’s how we roll!) She has been trying to find her for the last 10 years or so. After smiling bashfully at being called sweet (she doesn’t know me) and pretty (even photos can’t be relied on these days), I asked for her friend’s surname and promised to ask all my (Nigerian) contacts. Which is where you come in. Do you know any Toks F that is sweet and pretty? I don’t want to spell out her surname so my cover is not (completely) blown as my friend said she googles her all the time- but if you want to help, do let me know.

Of course the amebo in me couldn’t sit still and I wanted to do my own searching. I google everything!  So I came across a pretty Toks that sadly passed away recently. I start to dig and try to find out more about her, where she schooled, etc. Then of course I get really sucked in and find pictures of her sister, in-laws, etc. No I don’t watch CSI, I simply wanted to update Pawpaw and Mango with my findings. Nothing to report I’m afraid. I decided not to send Bertha the link to the late Toks’ page, just in case. I spread good tidings, not bad ones!

*Bertha- not her real name!

*Langley Park- not the real school either!

Thanks though for reading, I’ll keep you posted. Back to work!

It is 8:43am. I very nearly forgot that I need to pick child #3 up from his sleepover at your house.

You see it has been a blissful week. Child #2 went on a school camping trip on Monday and only returned yesterday, Friday. Five days with 3 children has had hubby and I wondering what life would have been if we stopped at 3. Of course we love all our sons equally and life would have been lacking a ‘certain something’ if we had just 3, but boy!  People ask me how I ‘do it with 4 boys‘, ‘boys’ is always emphasized. They think I’m superwoman. Or suffering from madness. Or both. Those who tend to accord me these laurels usually have one or two children and naturally find things very hectic already. My response is always the same. “When you have 3 children, adding 1, 2 or 3 more really makes no difference, so please leave them, I’ll be more than fine”,  I respond dismissively. The other mum will then look at me in awe, no doubt wishing she had my powers. Or mental condition. Or indeed both.

Well all that has now been proven to be inaccurate.  In the last one week, the scales have had a recalibration. Stress levels, down. Shouting frequency, down. Accidents, greatly reduced. Even whining is on the low.  On occasion hubby and I find ourselves calling one or all of the remaining  3 just to see if they are still in the house. Yes it is that blissful. This serenity isn’t being enjoyed across the board, i.e  in other homes that have one less child I mean. While the parents waited outside the coach seeing their children off, there were tears, lots of them. I didn’t see ours off, hubby did. He saw some mothers crying hysterically. Some trying to console their friends, all were about to suffer the same demise for a week. Hubby was baffled. In our house when one child goes away for a short period, we don’t cry, we laugh.

So Friday came and child #3 was off to his sleepover at your house- as you know right after school. We even had the privilege of a 1 hour window with just 2 children as #2 didn’t get back home until 4:30pm. Consequently we were granted an extra night as parents to 3 boys.

Clearly I am getting used to this. I love my sons and love them being around me. But are you sure you said one night and not two? Just asking. Sometimes I do get my dates muddled up.

Thanks so much for keeping our Zack, I would love to return the favour someday but you’ve pretty much just told me that I’m not superwoman. And that I’m mentally stable. I can’t promise anything, but er, ‘we’ll see’.

Yours most thankfully & worrying-about-life-going-back-to-normal-ly,

Toks

Thank you for reading, do come back.