...the Wise, the Witty, and the Waste of your time...

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Update or Bust!

Last night I had my usual Saturday night computer marathon. I stay up way too late while Justin sleeps wherever he fell when he could no longer keep his eyes open and I grab my tooth brush and head off the computer "for a few minutes." By the time I've checked my school updates, facebook, hotmail, myspace, blog, gmail, played all my turns at scrabulous, and update on everyone else's blogs; it's the wee hours of the morning, I've swallowed all my toothpaste, and Justin is in a coma. And I wonder why I feel like warmed up leftovers by Monday morning.
Anyway, my point is...as I was browsing the usual blogs I stumbled upon Nini Lettner's... a wonderful person we met at Capernwray. And of course one leads to another and soon I found a host of Capernwray bloggers! I read/snooped for over an hour and found myself getting quite irritated at the blogs that hadn't been updated in weeks or months. Ahem. Sorta like mine. So I resolve to do better. I will henceforth blog...every....um...chance I find! There, thats not to strict a commitment. I think I can follow through on this one. Heck I don't even have kids, I should be able to do this!
By the way, the most serious drawback to this midnight blogging is that our computer is in our entry and our entry doesn't have heat and I am frozen solid by the time the clock strikes 1am. It takes about 30 minutes to thaw my feet on Justin's legs!:) Lucky him!

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Miracle on Main Street

Ok one more car story and then I'm done, finished...no more! Wait!- before you sigh and dump me in cyber space alone to rant about the evils of auto-vehicular-mobiles just give me a chance. I'm not whining this time...this is a GOOD story. It still involved tears but they were happy, humble tears. Come on, I'm a girl, IS there another response?

So, Saturday morning after the second "car dying beside the road" episode, Justin and I dragged ourselves to town in the loaned Tercel by 9ish AM to get the Hondabeast towed. I dropped him off and went to the grocery store, realized he didn't have the note we'd written for the mechanic, and went back. He was gone. I went back to the grocery store.

It was 3 days before Christmas and I was "beating the last minute grocery shopping madness..." so was everyone else. So I resigned myself to a long grocery shopping ordeal and was not at all disappointed. Four hours later, hungry and ready to go home, I came out of my last store and headed to the car. It was snowing and cold and my hands were frozen because I'd left my gloves in the car....right beside....my keys! I was in disbelief! I couldn't believe how unlucky and completely abandoned and unloved I was by God. I even contemplated throwing myself onto the road to be obliterated by the unbelievable number of cars on the road. Heck, in the Christmas frenzy who would have noticed?

Then I realized I'd probably just get my legs run over and be crippled for life so I discarded that plan as potentially making a bad situation worse. Justin had been dropped off at home by the tow truck and he had my phone so I felt especially stranded. I stood there weeping angrily and glaring at God for about 5 minutes and then remembered I had a slew of various work keys in my purse. I pulled them out and promised God (suddenly oh so meek) that if He would make one of them work, I would have a good attitude for a week...or at least until Christmas!

I started painstakingly trying each key in each door, my fingers completely numb so it felt like I was working with prosthetics...nothing. So I tried the hatch....and I kid you not, it opened. Just like that! As if the key was meant for it! (It wasn't even a car key!) I couldn't even respond, I was so shocked! So much for my mustard seed of faith! So I climbed in head first, nearly got wedged in ars-up, and retrieved the real keys. I stayed numb and response-less until I started driving and then I proceeded to blubber all the way home!

I'd just collected myself as I pulled into the driveway and then burst into fresh tears when Justin came out to greet me. My story sounded a bit like this, "and the keys...sob....were locked....sob sob.....and then the keys....sob....and it opened....sob.... and it was the wrong key...." Very articulate!

And there you have it...my Christmas miracle! Despite the attitude, the anger, and the lack of faith, God chose to answer my prayer, reach down, and unlock the Tercel.

And you know what, I've tried the same key since...and it doesn't work.

Wait...just one more....

Oh yes...to finalize the drama of the Honda - two weeks and two....dollars later...we got it back. A very nice mechanic took a day out of his holidays to pull out our crap transmission and put in a new one! (yeah um...two very BIG dollars) And now its as good as new!

And now for real, no more car posts!

Disturbed....

This poem was shown to me by a Mormon fellow I volunteer with. Its quite a brave, perhaps dangerous poem. This is not the attitude I carry with me I'm afraid. I'm far too nearsighted. But it is my prayer that this will change...IS changing in fact.
Read on...

Disturb us lord when
We are too well pleased with ourselves
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore

Disturb us Lord when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life
Having fallen in love with life
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us Lord to dare more boldly
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery
Where losing sight of land
We shall find the stars
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes
And to push into the future
In strength courage hope and love.
-Sir Francis Drake