Well done, world

Not that I have any right in the wide wonderful world to congratulate it, but I do think we should at least pat ourselves on the back. We're still here, still surviving physically, emotionally, spiritually. That may be by the skin of our teeth, like here, but thus far, fine blogging friends, thus far.

I'm spending a day of self-isolation in my bedroom so I am going to spend the afternoon reading all your Christmas adventures and perspectives. Perspective is the first casuality in many of my crises. It's a good thing to have such a range of life lenses here in Blogland. 

My view on 2020 is that we did our best, we did what we were told, and we helped where we could. The difficulties that we encountered were not directly covid-related, but the circumstances did perhaps exacerbate the situation.  I found it even harder than usual to say truthfully that the joy of the Lord was my strength, but I did try to hold on. I love it when friends remind me that none of this is news to God and that He is still on the throne. Maybe my holding on isn't the important thing in this.

I do have two "resolutions" for 2021. The first one is slightly random: I am going to stop (mostly) using biros and switch to sharpened pencils. Ages ago I saw a school in France who had banned bics, which seemed potentially treasonable given that Bic is French. They used the old plastic casings to plant seeds, and just used pencils to write, putting the sharpenings in the compost. Zero waste!

And as I read to the end of the Psalms at the end of the year, I got to this: Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. Psalm 143:10. Not really a resolution, more a prayer. Maybe that's the lesson. It's always very basic here with me.

So, well done, Blogworld. May God's good Spirit lead you on level ground in 2021, and if it does get bumpy - God go with you still.

What I'm reading: a friend from church bought me this daily devotional which I am finding challenging but timely. It takes Bible prayers and arranges them as a guide for daily prayer times. It certainly helps with the perspective question. I finished Ali Smith's Winter last night, and think I got a bit closer to understanding the head of stone. Next up is the hilarious Richard Osman's first, and so far best, novel (his words) "The Thursday Murder Club". Let me know if you'd like to read it too, and I'll send you it when I'm done. 

What I'm making: I am now just over half way through Cushla's Comfort blanket! Hooray! So all other projects are on hold. Full steam ahead.

What I'm doing: Well, I hope you'll not be disappointed when I say that the sea swimming is also on hold. Our tight Lockdown means that group exercise is out of bounds for a while. We can meet outside (not in a private garden) in groups of up to 15, but not exercise, and I'm too chicken to break the guidelines. Ah, but Mags, you might say, you could swim with PC on coastguard patrol. I could. But I haven't! Bit too scared to get in the water by myself. 

I'm sure it might be the same near you, but a quiet walk out is pretty impossible round here with all the footpaths and parks completely bunged with folk. So I don't even want to walk along to the slipway.

I am about to submit my second assignment for my course as well, which feels miraculous after the last month.

And here's a doing and reading thing: MK posted about a reading challenge for the New Year. I'm far too aware of my limitations to commit to joining in properly, but there are some really interesting suggestions in there. So, I'm going to get my hands on a copy of Cymbeline. One of MK's genres is a Shakespeare play. This one is quoted in "Winter" so it's in my head, I've never read it before, and why not?

MK also talked about having one "reading day" a week where you have no screen activity, just reading. Today is not turning out to be that day, but maybe tomorrow...

I'll leave you with what turned out to be the only occurrence of Christmas baking in our house, except for the Christmas cake back in November. I made jammy stars for New Year's Eve. Prince Charming was most delighted. We had them with jelly and ice-cream for our dinner party dessert. Prince Charming had decreed that we get all dressed up for New Year. It was all as fancy as Bridgerton and significantly more wholesome. If you're thinking of watching Netflix's new Downton, don't. It's not Downton. It starts interestingly enough and it is certainly gorgeous to the eye. But the script is just a bit too cringe-worthy as episodes progress and once you've seen Episode 5 you can't unsee. We are feeling a bit bereft on the watching front now that we've got to the end of The Crown's fourth series. And it was a bleak enough thing to relive.

The dinner party was not quite as fancy as planned because I had made an absolute howler of a mistake with my grocery delivery. All the lovely New Year's Eve fare was put into tomorrow's order. Last week's driver left three loaves of bread on the doorstep. Not even any proverbial fish. So yes, the week where I am self-isolating has been spent making do with what we had in the fridge and freezer, in true Pandemic Style, and all has been well. As mad, old Julian said, all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Except that sometimes they're not well at all, and in that case we'll just have to keep going anyway. 

None of this is new to God, and He is still on the throne x

 

Advent's second week

These first two Sundays in Advent, hope and peace, I know that they should lead on to each other, the first enabling the second. But these last weeks have been difficult where we are, and I spend a lot of time trying to still myself at all. There is such beauty in the November skies, such colour some evenings this week. There is such stark loveliness in the seed heads in the garden. There is such comfort in home and the lights and the warmth. There is such startling vitality in the skin's reaction to the Lough's now burningly cold waters! But hope and peace? I'm finding the word "faith" to be my focus this year.

Our church has folk reading a sort of advent calendar every day. (Not at all like The Christmas Mystery though!) A major character from the narrative of the Bible from Adam all the way to Christmas. Prince Charming read on 2nd December: Noah and his big boat. It was such a comforting account of the story. Noah gathering his family safely aboard and out of the way of the mean people around. If only we could do exactly that. Sail forty days and forty nights on dark waters, and send out our hope to the skies at the end. Maybe that's what this time will be this year. Battening our doors against the dangers outside, a microcosm of all we are and all we have. (A noisy and smelly microcosm - with two teenage boys this is probably accurate enough.)

Here's PC and Noah, if you need a bedtime story! And the link to all the rest is here, if you'd like to catch up x

OWS

So apparently OWS doesn't stand for the little noises I have started making when I walk down the slipway over the last week. It stands for open-water swimming and it is a huge phenomenon here since Lockdown. I like swimming, with my feeble breast stroke, and I do prefer swimming in the sea, though I have only ever done that in summer and have usually had a wetsuit on in Irish waters.
 

Swimming was the only thing I started to miss a lot in Lockdown, so as soon as we were allowed to travel beyond our locality I would always take my swimming stuff. I had a few swims in the sea up on our north coast and one in the spectacular Blue Lough in our Mourne Mountains, but in August as lady from church invited me along to her swimming group, and I have been swimming with them as much as work allows ever since.

The main group is actually huge, and they swim in all sorts of places in our county, but I just swim with the local ladies who swim from an old slipway just beyond the park at the bottom of our hill. I park there and walk along with my little rucksack, my insulated mug of tea, and my very reassuring float. 

Everyone has asked from the start if it's cold. Honestly, the water has only started to feel cold this last week. Up until now, even if it wasn't a beautifully sunny day like this one at the start of the month, the water was very comfortable. This is Belfast Lough, on the east coast of Northern Ireland, at the end of a gloriously sunny Spring and Summer. I had swim shoes already, because I hate the feel of silt and plant life, but the recommended gloves help too. I suppose you're protecting the extremities. Since October folk are swimming with their hats on as well, but not wetsuits. This group swims in skins! So yes, now it's cold!

If it's not too rough, and if I know the tide is coming in, I'm confident to swim out to the big metal pole. When the tide is high the water gets deep quite quickly, but on low days we can mostly walk out to here. I'm a very careful swimmer, always needing to know I have the strength to get back!

And that's it. There is only one hard part - the getting out of bed for the early swims to catch the tide. After that, when you're all booked in to check that the number is below social distancing requirements for space available on the slipway to get changed, it becomes automatic. When people visit and we go to the beach I've always said that once you start walking towards the water you don't stop. So that's what I do, I just walk in until the water comes to my waist and then I swim. No hesitation, no thinking, just swimming. If the Lough is very calm, and again if I know the tide is coming in, I will swim back along the wall with the stronger swimmers. I've only braved it to the end and back once!

I have lived along this shoreline my whole life. I bussed along it to school. I walked this park with an aunt who lived in the area long before I moved here from the city. I ambled through it with two boyfriends, and with the one I married. I have beach-combed here with small sons, cycled here with bigger sons, and sat here often when I was getting over the very little very successful cancer procedure I had last year. It is a wonderful thing to me that at a time when the world seems so constrained and constricted I can do something new, meet people new and get a wholly new physical perspective on a landscape I thought I knew intimately. I know that these are difficult times with unprecedented challenges for our lifetimes, but I do firmly believe that we can make the most of them for ourselves and our families. This may well have the potential to be a terrible winter of our discontent, but I am thankful that God can still come in to our houses and our lives, and stay with us with no distance, no sanitising, no mask. Thus far has the Lord helped us x

(Thanks to PC for coming with me one afternoon when the sun was shining and there were no organised after-school swims! He took the photos and kept an eye on me - cold water swimming is not one of his many, many, many interests!)

First weekend in October

 Hello, and Happy October to all the northern hemisphere bloggers for whom this is the happiest time of the year! The Hurricane Tree is resplendently golden (in the right light, though that was not today), and mostly bare on its north facing side. It's still quite green on the south side though. 

It's not particularly cold here yet. I did see the temperature below 10 degrees on the car display one morning last weekend. Otherwise it's still comfortable enough to be going to school in my raincoat, which I do leave in the car if I think the day will stay dry. However tights are most uncomfortably back after a blissful six month absence. 

The pears are still on the tree: please advise! We have discovered that there are in fact four of the wonderful things. One is much smaller and hides shyly above its three big siblings - I hesitated there on the gender of pears. Are all plants androgynous? Do I go out and pop them greedily from the branch, or wait for them to fall (there's a wee American pun for you) into the thick vegetation weeds below, risking never to be seen again by human eye?

I do get a thrill out of free food at this time of the year. It's like any time of the year when you can stand in the sunlight to warm up: free central heating. Our grocery delivery man brought four jars of jam this week. I should point out that he brought the rest for the order as well. 

I told him to take back three of the jars, thinking I'd ordered them by mistake. But he re-appeared at the door ten minutes later. It turned out that I had only ordered one jar, so because it was easier he told me to keep all four. That was more free food, albeit much less Godly!

I can more honestly claim the blackberries in the garden. We're not supposed to pick them after 1st October, according to folklore. A friend told me this morning that after 1st October the berries start to be eaten, from the inside, by little insects. I took the risk after lunch today.

I was at the same time able to be still picking strawberries, which seems utterly incredible in Northern Ireland in October! That mess of a broccoli bed has been cleared out and filled up with new strawberry plants that I had put in pots over the summer. They are long strawberries, with a strength about them. The flowers are pink rather than white. They must be a very hardy breed. Hopefully they'll do well in our rough environment!

There weren't as many ripe blackberries as I'd hoped for, so I just brought lots of branches inside to stick in a pot. The pumpkins are coming out too! I never quite know when it's the right time to be putting up "Hallowe'en" decorations. That only ever equates to pumpkins here anyway! Our half-term holiday is still three weeks away, so I will most definitely need the cheering up of much orange around the house before that! Our health minister is talking about a circuit breaker Lockdown when the schools would be off anyway, as seems to be the plan for the rest of the UK. The big question is will he give us more than one week off to make the circuit break more effective? You can guess which answer I'm hoping for!

And so, fine Blogland folk. blessings on your October! Here's what I'll be at:

What I'm reading: Psalms (up to 107 just now and isn't that refrain structure wonderful?); more of Lilies for Gretchen (I know, Gretchen, I'm nearly ready to talk about this!); the end of this William Morris collection (if you haven't read News from Nowhere, these Covid times are the ideal times).

What I'm making: Cushla's Comfort, and I'm back past the heartbreaking point at which I ripped it all out last month to work with a more comfortable hook; my Hookery Shawl which might get into its orange wool at some point this month, which is unbelievably exciting; two zipped pouches with gorgeous Harris Tweed remnants that a friend gave me and that are currently cut out and waiting for the Elves to come round from the Shoemakers.

What I'm doing: just about getting through the school days - I was so tired on Friday that Prince Charming made my porridge and then drove me to and fro; I signed up for that online course and now need to show up at some online tutorials, and probably even do some work; at the weekends I am still outdoor swimming in Belfast Lough with the wonderful women who have been doing it every day for years, and now that I've made it into October I find myself wondering if I can keep going to the end of the month when I too could swim every day for the week I'll be off...

Stay well, lovely bloggers, and prayers for the President; be blessed x

Stables and trees

 

I've been thinking about books this morning. This is a fairly common diversionary tactic for me, but now more than ever is there need for good books! I was listing in my head, as I ate my porridge, the books that were precious to me. I was thinking about Wendy Erskine's Sweet Home with all its illustrations of East Belfast life that manage to be illustrations of lots of life. She signed my copy at the book launch. And she used to be my head of department when I worked in her school. So lots of precious between the covers of that one.

And then I thought of Jostein Gaardner's not quite yet seasonal A Christmas Mystery. Definitely a book I'd want to throw in a bag of books to be saved in the event of a house disaster but obviously after my children (and Prince Charming) were safely out! I was trying to remember the end, and don't read on if it will be a spoiler, but Elisabet wonders what she'll do when all the others' roles are fulfilled and she decides that she'll bow her head under the lintel of the stable door, and she goes in to meet the Christ-child for herself. (Doesn't she?)

It strikes me today how very easy it was for Elisabet and the shepherds and the kings and the everybody to meet Jesus. They didn't have to book their place in advance, worry about how many of them would be inside or about how many households they represented, make sure everybody had a mask, that all hands were sanitised, and that there was enough ventilation. I'm very confident there was enough ventilation.

And what I think about all that is that today it is still very easy to meet Jesus. In fact, God is all over the Internet in these days of online church. Our local church is taking a return to the building very slowly and carefully, but my goodness, what an array of creativity has emerged. From services to a reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and amazing resources for all age groups. Prince Charming's Live Worship is there too from our mostly tidy book room! Have a look here, if you have any more time in the day!

We are less than two weeks from the return of schools here in Northern Ireland, and plans are still coming through from our Department of Education. One leading city school has this just this morning announced that face masks will be mandatory to protect staff. We'll all have different opinions of this, but I'll confess this house reassured by any strategies that acknowledge the need to manage fear as much as the virus.

I'm so grateful in These Strange Times that it is still easy to meet God. Easy to lift up His Name. Easy to call on His Name. And so worthwhile, since I do fully believe that history, even covid history, hinges exactly there.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 

But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

Happy Mole Day!

I had no idea that 23rd October was Mole Day, until last year. Hitherto I had presumed that moles were found in annoying mounds under your camp bed or somewhere on your person. Having been diplomatically advised against Chemistry as an O-Level choice however, I can still not give you a coherent explanation of this third type of mole. I understand only that it involves atoms and cake-baking competitions in school science departments! A key element (see what I did there?) seems to be remembering the cake-baking competition the night before.


This is one of the reasons why I'm struggling to offer up particularly heart-felt thanks this week. So, with a conscious effort and despite the fact that Jo only started baking (and decorating) his entry at 9pm last night, I am nonetheless grateful for two boys who show such enthusiasm for such things. Mattman came up with this year's idea on this very date last year when Jo didn't get ranked at all!


So, yes, I'm very glad for two boys who like school and moles and taking part enough to weigh and mix and wash and cut until really far too late into the night! I'm grateful for schools who still give our children opportunities to do things other than tests and assessments and target-setting. I'm grateful too for Prince Charming who, despite a ridiculously stressful day at work, could throw off that level of responsibility and get down on the floor with scissors and glue. And I am most extremely grateful, after all that effort and very sore feet at midnight, that the child did get joint second place. Thankfully plans for next year are already afoot/apaw, and thankfully we seem to have agreed that some forward thinking could be useful...


The rest is harder. I seem to have put my own paws into It. When I put my foot in It, It does usually happen for all the same reasons and It does usually come from all the same faults, but this doesn't ever appear to make me wiser or better or just quieter really. So, I am trying to be thankful for people, for opinions, for decisions made for all the right reasons. For faith and trust and the authority of good men.


I'm not succeeding at that level of gratitude though, if I'm honest. I am genuinely grateful for folk who have said nice things about me and made me feel better about myself, but that isn't necessarily where growth lies, is it? Back to the preceding paragraph then! Maybe I should try to be grateful for opportunities to do something different, a bit like the Mole in the Wall. Maybe I should be grateful for an opportunity to practise respect and tolerance and patience and submission. And be very, very grateful for a God in whom I can place my doubts and fears and know that He at least is smiling over me hard.

The Lord your God is with you,

    the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;

    in his love he will no longer rebuke you,

    but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Zephaniah 3:17 (918!)

Life with boys

 This is the book I bought for Prince Charming for Father's Day on Sunday. I got it in Glasgow the week before, hoping to blog about that soon too! It obviously forms part of this wave of nostalgia we have for the pictures of our childhood, overlaid with the cynicism of our adulthood. Poor Bruno Vincent doesn't even get a mention on the front cover, though he seems to be embracing his role as "Enid Blyton's comedy representative" with great magnanimity.

 PC and I will laugh until we cry over anything that takes personal experience and turns it into communal shared fact. This used to be my favourite definition of poetry, paraphrased from T. S. Eliot, but now it just sums up how any book full of tales of exhaustion is going to work for us! I think this is why we crawl outside like good pagans every Summer Solstice night and sit up until the last trace of light is gone from the sky- just to prove to ourselves that we can. Not that we will necessarily function well the next day!

 When I started blogging it was all artful scenes of kitchen table and lots of small feet, and tales of wry domesticity. Yesterday I got a letter mug from the new M&S range, all fancy and gilt, to set me apart from the bold monochrome of men mugs. Now they drink tea from full-sized cups. Now they have broad shoulders that look sharp enough to slice the bread things they eat continually. Now I am often taken aback at how outrageously funny they are, or right, or wise.

 And then other times it still feels like this! Which is why I think the Enid Blyton spin-offs are so successful just now. Personal pain made public! The book about The Meeting makes you realise that you are not the only person dealing with inanity at work. The Mindfulness one makes you take yourself just a little bit less seriously, and allows you to chuckle at excess. And that's just three out of the four titles I've bought this year- you'll have to ask Niqi about The Dog one!

Depending on how the Queen's speech goes today, I might think about putting this one on my Amazon wishlist. Presumably it's our jolly, old DUP who are holding up the proceedings on Mrs May's new government. See apology below! With politics, much like parenting, do we need someone to help us laugh as well as cry?

Raising Ebenezers

I have blogged about this little sculpture before. It is "Community" by Sonja Landweer, and it is my very favourite piece in the whole of the wonderfully wonderful Ulster Museum. I have always loved the diverse mounds and pillars and surfaces, all of us in all our shapes and sizes, how we look and how we feel.

 We spent an evening in the Museum one Friday night last month. Such a hoot. It was open for one of Belfast's Real Sketchy events, where you roll in and wander, with a drink in your hand, live music in your ears, and sketching any of their treasures as you go!

 It was planned to coincide with the Museum's hosting of the Lines of Thought exhibition- sketches of masters from Michaelangelo (in whose fat belly this middle-aged and spreading woman found much solace) to Picasso. The Barbara Hepworth is all ours, but it was gorgeously intimate to be there after hours, able to look and consider, though still not touch!

 Some people took it very seriously. This is Colin Murphy, a Northern Irish comedian we laugh over when we watch the Blame Game on BBC1. He really didn't want to be disturbed. I'm afraid I did. Couldn't resist. I don't get out much.

This is our friend, the prof, who doesn't wear shoes inside. Ever. Anywhere. When we first met him, and his fabulous wife, in church, we presumed it was a standing on holy ground thing. It's not. He just doesn't do shoes unless absolutely necessary. Darlings! It was just his sort of night.

Other people didn't take it quite so seriously. However, what I have since appreciated about Prince Charming's artistic output has become something very significant. PC downloaded an app that allows you to photograph something, and then turn it into your own piece of art. Very David Hockney. Very now. Darlings.

And so here is Landweer's community re-imagined a la PC. (That's a very PC word- apparently re-imagined is an old hymn given a modern twist.) And what I keep thinking about now, is how perfectly it illustrates what is increasingly for me a very, very fundamental truth. I Samuel 7:12. "Thus far has the Lord helped us." It's the story of Samuel experiencing the loud thunder of the Lord's deliverance, and setting up a stone, raising an Ebenezer, as a visual reminder that time and time again God deals with the details of our lives, the fights, the struggles, the worries, the times. I know that we know this, but I am not good at remembering this. I love the notion of having visual reminders in the landscape that say to this generation and the next- thus far has the Lord helped us.

So, until I can get some big rocks into the garden, I'm sticking with PC's Landweer!

Outside Tea in Lent

 Well, there's the end of another Lent. I hope yours was full of insight, and warmer than ours here in the Frozen North! I think I did learn a few things along the way...

  If you drink tea outside every most days in Lent, you may catch cold. This cold could last forty days and forty nights plus their associated Sundays. You may well end up on a very strong antibiotic! Falling asleep outside, see below, will not bode well! If you do all this in the Frozen North, be not deceived by short moments of sunshine. And most of all, climbing Northern Ireland's third highest mountain with said levels of congestion will not be a happy experience, at least on the way up!

 Secondly, there is a distinct contrast between the earlier and the later days. At the start it was all about taking time out, literally, to be more disciplined about listening to God. Then the idea took over, to the exclusion of the reflection. This has happened to me before, and is for me, I think, quite linked to the whole social media thing. So in the days before Pentecost I am going to be much less on farcebook, and much more locked in the metaphorical upper room, before the invention of WiFi! Waiting for the Spirit, rather than the likes. This is a shameful admission for a woman of nearly fifty! I do have a greater desire to seek God now than I did forty pictures ago.

What strikes me very much about the pictures is that the vast majority of them are taken in our garden. The meadowplace is predominantly where I live and move and have my being, but there needs to be a bit of an effort now to have open doors, an open life as our sermon encouraged today. There are a few opportunities that I have ignored for weeks, but I am saying yes to them now. Very scary in all three instances, but small steps!

 And lastly the Cross. My main intention was to appreciate, not just understand, the importance of the cross. This has been a very humbling journey. Right through the denial of Judas, and predicted denials of Peter, in John 13. It was my sin, my daily denial, that held him there. And yet, immediately after John 13, in 14:1-4, Jesus promises a room for me, prepared, with safe passage guaranteed.You know the way to the place where I am going!

 It does tickle me that I ended up with forty pictures- admittedly they are not all outside! I thought I would be able to pick a favourite, but now I'm not so sure. My top four might be mountain tea, soon-moving-to-Glasgow-Catherine tea and the silly black and white ones: there's a trend among the wittiest of folk-from-church-on-farcebook to be witty in grayscale. I don't quite cut it, but it was fun to have a go!

So, cheers! A kind, and incidentally hilarious, colleague of Prince Charming's sent me at one point an envelope full of delicious tea sachets to help me along the way, and I have two left. Leave a comment and I'll pull a name out of the hat, and send them on. But if you're going to be drinking outside tea- do wrap up well!

And this was half-term!

We started in the wilds of County Down for two days. Jo has reached that part of Year 8 History where he learns about the Norman conquest of Ireland, and then looks at Norman castles. Well, we are not short of Norman castles here in Ulster, or indeed of the clear remains of original motte and bailey structures, so there was lots of mound scrambling! Then we had swimming, and climbing, and more hill-walking, and friends sleeping over, and going off to friends' houses, and walking down to church tonight with friends- by themselves, in the dark! I am reeling from it all. Although there was shelter for me in mounds of my own, of the laundry variety!

After church this morning I laughed in horror at the words of the father of two of our boys' friends. A colleague of his is, like us, the parent of a teenage boy. His take on the whole experience is that teenage boys are like dogs. You need to feed them regularly, exercise them with sticks and balls, and clean them out every now and then. I did laugh at the sticks bit. My two are obsessed with sticks and still have not forgiven me for not bringing their long-won and much prized collection from our last house. (We moved nearly exactly three years ago...) So this week they have remedied this lamentable situation. Prince Charming drew the line only at sticks that were clearly not going to fit in the boot of the car. The rest of the colleague's philosophy does also ring true for me at this stage of strawberry development!

And so back to routine tomorrow for another blast of school term. The boys' routine is well-established. Mine is not at all! I have done two weeks in my new spot, and am decided after a week's reflection to be very disciplined about how I use my time for the next few months. I'm teaching on Thursdays and Fridays until the end of May, and need to use lots of time revising my Latin, and sorting lessons that I want to teach! That and housework should keep me far, far away from on-line time-wasting, surely?

I do also need too to be more disciplined spiritually. I'm thinking of starting Lent early. Tomorrow, in fact! Have a great week, Blogland. Expect a timorous knock on the porch for a cup of tea and a quick moment between Concentrated Efforts!