thistle epistles

Well, our guests will be arriving in a couple of hours, and I am beyond grateful to say that this house is actually just about suitable for visitors!  My spring cleaning has advanced successfully thanks to the extra measure of strength and perseverance I have been given to get through this week.  I have been praying that the Lord would bring me through and help me accomplish all the things on my to-do list, and He has answered that prayer!  :-)

Wash and air-dry all linens in house: check  (The weather has been beautiful, which really helped my motivation to get through the piles of laundry!)

 Make beds in guest room: check
Finish working my way through the pile of dirty dishes: check  (Yay!  So good to have every dish clean!)
Clean cooker: check
Mop kitchen floor:  check  (This is a huge accomplishment!!  First time my kitchen floor's been properly cleaned in months - shameful!!)
Done major grocery shop for company: check  (That was my exercise for today: I walked to the shop and then took the bus home because the groceries were way too heavy to carry.)
Spaghetti sauce in slow-cooker for dinner tonight: check  (And it is making me soooo hungry - the smell is permeating the house!  Yum. . .)

And so on. . . the list is certainly shrinking, and it feels good!  :-)


Another praise - we were given four nice sturdy dining room chairs today!  A friend no longer needed them, and offered them to us.  I had been trying to arrange to borrow some chairs/stools so that we would have enough seating for all our guests (we only have seating for five, including a folding chair), but the Lord provided in perfect timing - and the chairs weren't borrowed, they were given to us to keep!!  This is such a blessing!  Since we moved in, we have been really limited as to the number of people we can host for meals, etc. because of our lack of seating.

It has been a rough week for my back, but there are two blessings related to that. . . First, I did have a massage on Wednesday which seems to have been really helpful.  It certainly left me feeling more relaxed than I had been previously.  Then I had an appointment with the physiotherapist on Thursday, which I felt was the best appointment I've had with her yet (this is the third time I've seen her).  Since I last saw her, I've had no improvement with the pain and discomfort in my back, and so she was a bit puzzled as to what she should do next.  So she decided to check my back again and see if there was anything she could feel.  Sure enough within just a minute or two she had located the one main spot that has been causing most of my problems (I have tried to explain to her where it is, but this time she actually managed to find it).  So she worked on it three times, "mobilising" the muscle (it's where my spinal muscles meet my rib cage in the middle right of my upper back).  Since I saw her I have certainly noticed a large measure of relief from the horrible pain I've been suffering in that area.  It may be due to the massage, or it may be due to the physio's "hands-on" treatment this week, or both - but either way, I am very thankful and hoping that the relief lasts!

Hubby has sweetly volunteered to do the hoovering of the house for me, because I have found that to be very strenuous on my back.  So that is one more check off my to-do list!  Now I'm off to scrub the bathtub before I call it a day and put my feet up until our guests arrive. . .