What a Weird Few Days

Well, where do I begin. I guess I'll start by suggesting you check out skatemama's blog. Lot's of great pictures and, my!, what a busy family. I don't know how she does it all. But God bless her soul for being so dedicated to her children. I was too selfish and immature when I had my own boys. Was much better with Jamie and realized children can be a whole lot of fun. I'll never forget when I took Jamie out under the stars and we laid there and watched stars and clouds and things. Her little eyes were as big as saucers and it was the first time she became aware that clouds and things actually move in the sky. That they aren't stationary objects. There's a learning store over in the next county and I used to go in there when I could and pick up projects she and I could work on together. I think that's where I got the finger painting supplies and workbooks we used. It was just so much fun to watch her little mind work. She was so curious about everything.

Our long weekend started off rather strangely with a good downpour and thunder and lightning Friday morning. The lightning struck a power pole down by the high school and knocked out everyone's power for a time. We were just getting around and getting ready to go do our shopping. Michael was going to go pick up the mail to get our checks and then we were going to swing by the bank on the way out of town but when we lost power we knew our plans had been abruptly changed. We'd made arrangements to borrow my daughter-in-law's little car because it's A/C works where ours doesn't. We stood out on the porch and watched it rain and it rained hard enough to pour off the roof. It was a wonderful surprise and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Our power was off for about an hour or so and so we got off to a late start but boy! was I glad we borrowed the car. Once the weather cleared the temperatures soared and the humidity was off the scale. It was like a steam bath everywhere we went. We were late getting home of course because we were late leaving and by the time we finally got home and the car unloaded I had a bad backache. We got everything put away and I returned the borrowed car and came back home totally wasted.

We lost power in one of our circuits Friday afternoon and had to rig up heavy-duty extension cords for the garage door opener and for the freezer and refrigerator in the garage. That was a near disaster because we didn't realize we'd lost power to the freezer and fridge until Saturday morning. Then Sunday morning when I got up early for church and I went into the bathroom to blow dry my hair I discovered the wall sockets in both baths have no power. Neither does the side porch light. Why all these scattered and varied things would all be on the circuit is beyond us! We've done everything we know to do to try and fix the problem and we just can't get any power in that circuit. We started to blame it on the lightning strike but then realized we had used the garage door opener to open the garage when we got home from shopping so that meant we had power after the strike. But it's still pretty odd that they happened about the same time. None of the circuit breakers were tripped and we turned them all off and then back on anyway and we've got power everywhere except for that one circuit. Guess that means we're going to have to call the landlord but we're putting that off until we can get the garage looking a little better which means we'll have to wait for my back to feel good enough to do that kind of work.

Saturday morning my back was so bad I could hardly move so I laid on the couch and brought my knees up, reversing the sway effect I have in my low back. I stayed like that for a couple hours and then, bad back and all, I went out and washed my car. I had to. Friday's rain had totally destroyed my car and it really looked bad. All the dirt and loose leaves had been washed out of the trees by the rain and just deposited on my car. It was a mess. But I managed to get it washed and dried before my back completely gave out. I came back in and reassumed my position on the couch with my knees up and laid there for the rest of the afternoon. I tried to go to sleep but I guess I wasn't sleepy because I never drifted off. I just laid there with the sway out of my back.

Sunday I had to get up early because it was communion Sunday which meant that I needed to be at church by 8:00 to get everything set up. It turned out I was the only one who showed up and I was terrified I'd forget to do something or wouldn't put enough bread on the plates or some other major catastrophe and managed to do everything right and communion when off as planned. After services I cleaned up and got everything put away properly and then came home and got back on the couch again. I laid there all afternoon until it was time to get up and feed the animals. So I didn't get anything accomplished with my house for the entire weekend. And it's a mess. My back is much better after babying it for the better part of two days but my house is a disaster. So today's blog is going to be short so I can get some housework done. Everything needs to be done. One of these days I'm going to have to get in and do some deep cleaning around here. I keep putting it off but I can't do that indefinitely. Eventually I will have to buckle down and really clean things. The animal hair is beginning to build up in the corners and hidden places. If you come in the house, you don't see all the hair but the thing is, I know it's there! And I'm the one I have to please. I'm in the mood to do some deep cleaning today but I want to give my back a little more time to heal before I go and set it off again.

Pastor did a really good job with his sermon yesterday. Wish I had time to tell you all about it but I just don't today. It'll have to be enough to just say that we all died with Christ, we were baptized into His death. Next week's sermon will be the rest of the story in that we were raised to life with Him too. It is His life we live and it is eternal life. We need not fear death because we've already died in Christ and have been given His everlasting life when He was raised on the third day! That is the simple truth of the gospel and we can all praise God for it!!

I have several meetings coming up this week. Prayer meeting has gone back to 7:00 PM again so I can now go again for the winter. Tomorrow afternoon the prayer team meets to discuss our activities and plans for the 40 Days of Purpose campaign. And the deacon's meeting is on Thursday night. So that's a pretty busy week of meetings for me. It will be difficult to remember to go to Tuesday night prayer meeting again since I haven't gone in months now. They always change the time to 6:00 during the spring and summer and that's just the wrong time for me. We usually eat about 6:00. But now that it's gone back to 7:00 I don't have that excuse any longer. It's just a matter of getting in the habit again.

I know this has been a boring blog but it'll have to do for today. I've got to get busy and get some things done before it gets any later. The only thing I have done is my bed. So I'm going to go get busy. [LATER] Well this is really strange. We thought to mention to Ken about the power problem because he had lived here for 5 years before we did and he remembered a special switch somewhere. He couldn't remember exactly where it was but he came over and we started looking for the switch and found it at the plug in the garage. So now we've reset the switch and everything's working again. I just had to climb all around the garage ceiling restringing cords and getting everything plugged back in where they belong but I don't think I set my back off. It's twinging where it hadn't been before I went out and did that but I'm going to think positively and say that I didn't rehurt my back and proceed on with that assumption. I'm glad Ken has as good a memory as he does. Last night while I was in bed I thought I remembered a time when Ken had a weird thing happen with his power and I remembered he found a switch in some weird place but I couldn't think to save my life where it was. I got up and checked the master bedroom closet because I had the feeling there was something in there. But I was wrong about that. But I had remembered correctly in thinking that he'd had the same thing happen and that there was a separate switch in a strange place. So anyway, everything's back to normal here and, sadly, my back is hurting again. But I'm going to go see if I can get a few things done before it goes completely out and I have to spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch again with my knees up. See you all tomorrow!