God makes beauty from ashes

Honestly, I just want to cry. I have done, but I feel like so much more needs to come out. Do you ever feel like that? I have been carrying the sadness of losing a friend on my heart for the past few days and it puts a fuzzy blur on how I see the world and how I see myself. It is painful and makes me so very unhappy. I think having my ladypains right now is making me feel a lot worse. I decided yesterday that if I somehow won the lotto today, it wouldn't make a difference. I'd just have a bigger house to feel sad in. Isn't that terrible? My friend Monique works across the road from me right now - she's filling in for someone who is recovering from a major operation and it's really nice to have her there because our Departments are linked so we work closely with each other and call each other a lot through the day. Hearing Mon's happy voice on the line is really, really wonderful. Every Thursday, I work until 5pm instead of leaving at lunchtime, so Moni

I've never been to a "Spa" before. The thought of it makes me shiver because my instant thoughts are "I have to be naked" swiftly followed by "I don't want to do that". Friends I know - and my Mom especially - love being massaged and having 'spa treatments' done on them. I've heard about how relaxing and wonderful it is, but remained unconvinced. Relaxing for me is reading or watching a movie - both fully clothed. The thought of having someone touch my naked body who I'm not married to...well, it didn't sit well with me. Mostly because I'm insecure about my body. I'm fat, flabby and generally pretty gross. I don't want anyone to have to touch me - let alone a complete stranger. Also, having sweaty hands/feet and suffering from a lot of hot flashes has made me prefer not being touched if I can avoid it, really. It's just super unpleasant for those who do. So when I opened my birthday card and found Jay and

It must be something about the soothing 'tap tap' of the keys on the keyboard and the delight I have every time I see the words forming on a computer screen...they make blogging to you a rich, wonderful part of my life and I'm sorry I don't do it more often. I had a friend a long time ago who used to say "how is life in your end of the fishbowl?" I would always laugh and think "weirdo" but I guess that's how it feels sometimes - as if we're all in a fishbowl and have our own murky underwater lives encased in glass. Omg. Or am I just getting weirder with age? I got a wonderful surprise in the post yesterday - a book that Marc made for 'us' in 2009 as a leaving gift for me when I left the UK. We would take turns writing diary entries into it and making each other laugh. When I left, I took 'our book' with me and I wrote about my first few months back here in Australia...and posted it to Marc. 4 years later...and he posted