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Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Every Husband Should Read This!

Every Husband Should Read This!*

April 3, 2013 at 2:37pm
 
“Love her …when she sips on your coffee or tea. She only wants to make sure it tastes just right for you. Love her…when she "pushes" you to pray. She wants to be with you in Jannah (Paradise). Love her…when she asks you to play with the kids. She did not "make" them on her own. Love her...when she is jealous. Out of all the men she can have, she chose you. Love her…when she has annoying little habits that drives you nuts. You have them too. Love her…when her cooking is bad. She tries. Love her…when she looks dishevelled in the morning. She always grooms herself up again. Love her…when she asks to help with the kids homework. She only wants you to be part of the home. Love her...when she asks if she looks fat. Your opinion counts, so tell her she's beautiful. Love her…when she looks beautiful. She's yours so appreciate her. Love her...when she spends hours to get ready. She only wants to look her best for you. Love her…when she buys you gifts you don't like. Smile and tell her it's what you've always wanted. Love her…when she has developed a bad habit. You have many more and with wisdom and politeness you have all the time to help her change. Love her…when she cries for absolutely nothing. Don't ask, tell her it’s going to be okay. Love her…when she suffers from PMS. Buy chocolate, rub her feet and back and just chat to her (this works!). Love her…when whatever you do is not pleasing. It happens and will pass. Love her…when she stains your clothes. You needed a new shirt anyway. Love her…when she tells you how to drive. She only wants you to be safe. Love her…when she argues. She only wants to make things right for both. Love her…she is yours. You don't need any other special reason!!! All this forms part of a Woman's Character. Women are part of your life and should be treated as the Queen. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) advised concerning the woman: • Treat the women well. • The best of you are those who are the best in the treatment of their wives.
 
*This material is not mine originally

Book Nerd Notes

Book Nerd Notes

August 9, 2009 at 10:07pm
Booknerd and ProudShare
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 4:16pm
Book Nerd & Darn Proud ThankYouVeryMuch!Share
_OK, I have to say this list is just not my list! So I've read 58 of these but half the people I've tagged have taught English in one form or another through the years, so if you all don't slaughter this list, we will have to question its validity! All love, Alice____________________________________

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' next to those you have read. Tag other book nerds.


[x] Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[ ] The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
[x ] Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[ x] Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
[X] To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
[X] The Bible (um, the whole thing?)
[X] Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[ ] Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
[ ] His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
[X]Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total:7/10

[X] Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
[ ] Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[] Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[X] Complete Works of Shakespeare
[ ] Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[ ] The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
[ ] Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[ ] Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[ ] The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[ ] Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 2/10

[X] Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[X] The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
[ ] Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[ x] War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[] The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
[x] Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[X] Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[X] Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[ ] The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total:6/10

[x ] Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[x] David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[ ] Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
[ ] Emma - Jane Austen
[ ] Persuasion - Jane Austen
[ ] The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
[ ] The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[ ] Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[ ] Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[X] Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total:3/10

[X] Animal Farm - George Orwell
[X] The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
[ ] One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[X] A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
[ ] The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[] Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[ ] Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[ ] The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[ ] Lord of the Flies - William Golding
[X ] Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total:4/10

[ ] Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[x ] Dune - Frank Herbert
[ ] Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[X] Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[ ] A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[ ] The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[x] A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
[] Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
[ ] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[ ] Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 3/10

[X] Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[X] Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[ ] The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[ ] The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[ ] Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[ ] On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[ ] Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[ ] Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[ ] Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[x ] Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 3/10

[X] Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[x ] Dracula - Bram Stoker
[ ] The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
[] Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[x] Ulysses - James Joyce
[X] The Inferno – Dante
[ ] Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[ ] Germinal - Emile Zola
[ ] Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[] Possession - AS Byatt

Total: 4/10

[x] A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[ ] Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[X] The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[ ] The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[ ] Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[ ] A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[X] Charlotte’s Web - EB White
[ ] The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
[x] Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[ ] The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 4/10

[X] Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
[X] The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[ ] The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[ ] Watership Down - Richard Adams
[ ] A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[ ] A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[x ] The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[X] Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[ ] Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 5/10

Regarding Mother Dear

October 4, 2009 at 12:38am
Dear Uncle Don,

Let me first express my condolences to you on the loss of your Mother, Our "Mother Dear".
This has been a long journey for us all most especially you and Aunt Carol and I want to tell you how grateful I am that you both took such great care of her over the past 16 years since we loss Grandfather. I am sure that he is pleased and proud of what good stewards you have been over his beloved Grell and her affairs.

As is befitting of this occasion, I am hoping that you would consider scheduling Mother Dear's Homegoing Services for the later part of the week( Friday) rather than mid-week (Wednesday). This would give the opportunity for more of her and our friends and family to pay their respects and celebrate her life with us. Gratefully, most of us hold positions in our jobs and community that may dictate that we have a to give a little more of a notice in order to make arrangements to get away. Also, finances being what they are for most of us, delaying the funeral one or two days make go a long way towards facilitating more of an attendance by those who are coming from a distance to pay our respects, and it may be easier for others to get a Friday off from school and work and travel back to our respective homes in time to start a new work week on Monday. Emotionally, it can give us all an opportunity to fellowship together and catch our breaths before going back to work or school on Monday.

I am sure that you recall what a comfort it was to see so many people in attendance at Grandfather's funeral, expressing their love and respect. Mother Dear deserves no less. True, many of those who were with us then have gone on themselves, but Mother Dear had a host of new friends that she made over these years, at church and in her apartment building who I am sure would want to be there with us. Also, we are closing an Era, not just for The Roberts clan, but the members of the Church which no longer identifies itself as "Mount Zion Christian Mission of Panama" but as "Mount Zion Tabernacle", no remembrances of our rich Panamanian/Barbadian heritage. Our Grandmother Louise Hinds help build that church and our family has been part of it throughout the last century into this one. We need to represent in as great a number as we can muster.

Again, I hope that you consider this request, not just for me but from many of us. We would all be very grateful for you to give us an opportunity to spend this time together as a family in as dignified and loving manner as possible and we will always appreciate that you went out of your way to consider us all in our collective time of sorrow.

Be Blessed,
Your Niece,
Patricia

Impressions


October 11, 2009 at 4:25pm
 (This was written when one of my grandmothers,  Grell Ethel Gill Roberts made her transition)
 
Whenever Mother Dear & I would speak about things in my life that were not going that well, she would tell me to “pray that divine order would be established”. She said it always and often and I came to understand that in my life there would be challenges but that through prayer ,God was able to bring me through and it would all work out as it should, for the best of all that were involved.
Families have a story, a history. Our family is no different. Sometimes things seemed to be out of order, but we survived.

Hearts were broken, some hearts healed, some hearts hardened, but we all survived and grew to be a proud family who love one another, regardless of that history. God saw fit to create this family, each of us possessing special gifts and strong personalities.

Mother Dear loved us all, through our flaws and faults, through our strengths and struggles, she tried to look for the good in us all.

I hope that we can all find peace and forgiveness on this day and continue to love one another, as God would have it. He put this beautiful family together the way he did for a reason, not for a season, and although our parents and grandparents are no longer here, we must continue to be that family, and find our happy ending, to establish that divine order

DNA vs ENVIRONMENT

March 31, 2013 at 9:23pm
 
Today My sister gave me the biggest smile EVER! We were speaking about how well the babies read and write. (they are 7 years old). She told me that my grandaughter, loves to read about adventures and fairy tales,and any information on everything she can get her hands on. Then she told me that my grandson watches any sport he can find, in between Meet the Press and all kinds of news programs. I was smiling from ear to ear. All those intrests were mine when I was their age. And they don't live with me or see me that often. Then she said that my grandson took "Moby Dick" out of the library. That was the 1st book I checked of the library. I remember the librarian trying to discourage me from taking that book, and my Mommy telling her "if she wants to read it she should be able to check it out". I did bring it home, and I did read it. I don't remember details of it, but I knew it was an adventure, a battle of wills.

My babies have qualities that I recognize in myself, and it makes me proud. It makes me confident that that which is positive will survive. However, I do know that I must be keenly aware that life will try to steal your dreams, your fantasies, your desire for adventure and knowledge. And negativity will cross your path in many forms. But what a child needs is the security of a loving family and lucky for them, thats what my grandchildren have. I thank God for my siblings, who have gone above and beyond and embraced my children, and now my grands. And My Mommy is still with us, hovering and helping. With all that our family has been through, we never lost touch with each other, and I have to thank our Mother for that. She keeps us together, no matter how much she frustrates and infuriates us. And we LOVE her. And I love her.What is consistent with my grandchildren and myself is my Mother. Our Intellect is hers.

I went to church on Easter for the 1st time in a long time. I went because my grand babies were here, in New York, visiting with their other grandparents and their dad. Whatever this turns out to be, we are all working together to make this thing work. "This Lemonade" is pretty sweet.  They are happy, brilliant little children who still have their innocence in tact. I pray that we can keep it that way.

What Dreams Were Lost

What Dreams Were Lost

February 6, 2014 at 10:09pm
The lines that never made it across
That lay at the bottom of the Oceans
The ones that were lost.
Whose people came to assume
That they made it across to enslavement
But never did.

And those bones that melted down at the
Bottom of the oceans, may be those of Legend
Back home.
 But.
 No.
Trace.

Remains



The Queens and Princes and Kings and Princesses, and Healers and Thinkers.

Of the Middle Passage. Lost.


The Talent
The Genius
The Answers

The loss is Universal
The loss is Unique
The loss is Ours
The loss is Yours

What Does It Take?

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, oh Lord. My faith and my redeemer."

It's okay to thump the Bible and quote The Scripture. But that doesn't make you a Christian or guarantee the salvation of your soul. Our words and our deeds will determine our ultimate fate.

Paying your tithes is a good thing, if you give it cheerfully, but it won't purchase you a place in Heaven. It may get the Pastor's kids a good education and his wife may get that fur she's always wanted. But it won't do a thing for you if your heart is dark and unforgiving.

We all make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes have consequences.
The things we've done and seemingly gotten away with, will confront us at some point, and the Charity and Forgiveness that we've shown to others may weight into the Forgiveness and Grace that we hope for someday.

Some paths are rougher than others. No one's path was rougher than that of the Christ we claim to serve.

We can try to shake it off the things we can. Other things require more introspection. Pray about it, and be open to the possibility that we may need to deal with our secrets and shadows additionally through counseling, and there is no shame to that. It doesn't mean that we are not leaning on the Lord. It means that were you are "not leaning to your own understanding".

*Those of you who are atheists or agnostic, this is not intended for you so please don't feel the need to comment. We know that you think that We are "crazy" for believing in a "mythical, magical God".