Speechless!

Well, I just don’t know where to start, I really don’t......

For those of you who don’t know, I am a member of a horse forum and have been for a few years. Thomas (my horse) died a couple of years ago, but I still belong to the forum as a lot of friendships have been formed there. I also have a Face Book page thingy set up with just forum people on it so I can keep in touch when we don’t post so much on the forum....it’s complicated  if you don’t know what I am talking about!

Anyway, there is a member called Carolyn. We have generally chatted over the years, either on the forum or by mobile phone, she is very nice and we get along well, although we had never met.

She sent me a text a couple of weeks ago saying that she had a plan forming and she would like to come and visit me.

She is well known on the forum for dishing out virtual hot choccie and sprinkles, so I just assumed that she wanted to pop down for the day and bring hot chocolate, sympathy and sprinkles as a gift.

Lesson No1. NEVER assume ANYTHING !

She was travelling nearly 200 miles to visit and we agreed that I would cook a roast dinner.

Now, I’m not embarrassed to admit, but I was hoping for some posh chocolate instead of the supermarkets own brand shite....

She was arriving at 11 am, so I had everything planned and all my cooking timings sorted.  Her car, no, sorry, ‘tank’ rolled up at 10 to 1 in the afternoon. I had told the girls to look out for her through the sitting room window. We had a good giggle watching her park, manoeuvring her tank backwards and forwards to get herself straight, completely oblivious to us watching her. She got out of the car, completely in a world of her own and all in slow motion, went to the other door and fiddled in the car again, while we were saying, “Is that Carolyn?” ..”Yes it must be her...she looks horsey”....”It can’t be her cos she is walking down the road”...well, the daft bat had gone down the road and across and was knocking on a completely different door!

We could still see her from the window, so I rang her. Still completely oblivious, she answered, eventually. By this time, the girls were wetting themselves with laughter, and all my earlier lecturing about best behaviour and good manners had completely gone out of the window!

She came in and gave the girls a carrier bag full of Marks & Sparks sweets....bless her, she must have walked through the shop and taken every bag of sweets off the shelves, and then gone to the bit where they sell those tubs of mini chocolate bites and cleared that as well and gave them to me for tea. And she brought Ady a tin of biscuits which he LOVES and is keeping to himself and also some hot chocolate!  Not cheap shite but M&S’ own no less !!

The girls were in their element and went into the sitting room to go through the packets and boxes and share them out.

I was about to turn the veg on and Carolyn told me to come in the dining room, stop talking  and sit down for a minute.

Everything was a bit of a muddle at the time, having just met and the girls with their sweets and lunch on the go, but I sat down anyway.

Carolyn handed me a card. It was a picture of an old fashioned black car with dark clouds above, but it was driving towards clear blue skies. Carolyn said she thought it reflected us coming out of the gloomy times and into the sunshine, which I thought was lovely and very thoughtful. Ady, however, said that it reminded him of a funeral car...miserable chuffer ! ( I will put a pic of the car up along with the other pictures I need to do).

She then handed me an envelope....I don’t know how to say this next bit....in it was over £1000.00 of cash, Sainsburys vouchers with permission to buy me some wine and fags, and Superdrug vouchers too. Well, thank God I was sitting down !!! WOW....just WOW....I really can’t put into words how grateful we are!!

I understand Carolyn has been on a bit of a mission doing a collection for us. THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU, to all of you who contributed. You have no idea what this means for us !!

How you all managed to keep quiet about it, I will never know!

Christmas can happen again this year !

I had been telling the girls that Christmas would be very short this year (the same as I had told them last year), and presents would be just from aunties, uncles and friends who usually give to them. I was planning on just doing table presents at lunch time and hopefully a snowman at tea (a family tradition thing).

Ady and I had agreed to not get each other anything this year. If we had anything spare then we would spend in the January sales.

Your kindness has made Christmas happen for us. It will also allow us to pay the garage for Ady’s car repairs which we owe and get my car serviced and M O Td. It hasn’t had a service for three years and I need it to get Ady to the hospital every day for 4 weeks in the New Year.

The weight that has been lifted from my shoulders is huge. The financial burden of cancer is hardly ever spoken about because people don’t like to talk about their fiscal embarrassment.

Me, well, I’m not proud and I decided when doing this blog, that I would talk about every aspect and that includes the financial side....By the way, the benefits office STILL haven’t sorted our claim out....bloody shocking, it really is!

I didn’t post about my worries about what we were going to do about Christmas, because it is supposed to be a happy time for people, and who the hell wants to read about someone else’s doom and gloom...it just makes everyone feel horrible doesn’t it, so I didn’t see the point and there is enough doom and gloom in my blog at times.

I will post about it now, because you have all contributed to making our Christmas for us, so Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We are made up...we have logs from Sue, coal from Jennie, our Sainsburys voucher from the school mums and now money to see us through Christmas ! What more could we want!! We are a very very happy family, blessed with some bloody brilliant people in our lives.

Of course, Ady immediately said “Bloody fantastic, I can have some deluxe piss pads now”...I told him to bugger orf!!

And Steph can whistle for the Blackberry she keeps going on about !

We sat down to lunch. The veg was only just cooked cos I forgot to put them on during the shock of it all, but they were edible!

Then Steph started with a sneezing fit. She just sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. “Carolyn?” I said. “Has that fleece you are wearing been near horses at all?” “Well” she thought for a bit and said “It’s been in my car amongst general horse things, but not touching horses I don’t think”

To cut a long story short, she had to take the fleece off and put it in a carrier bag and I had to give Steph some piriton..she is SO allergic to horses that one !

We had crumble and custard which the girls said “No thanks” to so they could rush off and stuff their sweets, and me, Ady and Carolyn had a good natter before she went home.

It was really lovely to meet Carolyn finally, and just SO lovely of her to think of and organise a very welcome collection for us. Thank you Carolyn, so much. J I also understand that Jade and Dubs had some organisational input too, so thank you as well J

And thank you everyone for your contribution. Carolyn has told me that some people want to remain anonymous  and some people didn’t leave their names when donating, so bugger it all, I am going to have to be nice to everyone just in case now !!

Only joking guys !  but I really mean it when I say Thank you J

Oh yeah, and last week, I managed to wash one of Ady’s piss pads in with his washing...bloody globules of that gel stuff you get in nappies everywhere I tell you!

We are Emma. Ady, Charlotte and Stephanie and we live at:

DeluxePissPadStreet,

SantaHasBeenAlready,

HappyHouse.