Finally, I finished it off! Some tasks that I desperately want done just seem to hang around forever.  I start them and make a big mess and don’t have time to finish.  I end up looking at the mess for days and days.  Sometimes I don’t know how to finish it, or sometimes it’s just so tedious that I can’t stand to spend my precious time on it.  But today the critical pressure built up and I forced myself to clean up and pare down my Mary Kay store.  All those things that will never be sold, never be used by me, never given as gifts – things that take up space and grow old yet are so hard to throw away – they are now sorted, boxed up and on their way to new lives somewhere. I am so relieved and it was worth the hours it took to do it. (By the way, if “anyone” needs some bright blue and gold cream eye shadows for their next face decorating occasion let me know. #freestuff.)

I once heard someone thanking God for the meaningful work that he had that week and I must say, that was a new thought to me. I liked it. I need to have a reason to apply myself to something, hence the importance of being meaningful, and I need it to be work in order for time off to be different and special in contrast. 

This week it became apparent to me how much my employer really does appreciate the care I give her.  It made it so much easier to go to work and I almost didn’t mind going at all. This was a breakthrough for me. Every once in a while I get so tired of my job that I could easily quit if it weren’t for financial necessity. It’s been this way my whole life which is why I have no 25 year history with some good company and a retirement pension. In fact I think I’ve had this job longer than any other I’ve ever had and I’ve only had it three and a half years. Kind of a sorry record. I get so tired of my work for one reason or another that I find a way to leave and do something else.

Here’s the bottom line. I was at this precarious stage of attitude and knew I needed to change my thinking. I was praying for some genuine reason to like going to work again.

So remember last week when I got the flu/cold virus and spent the whole weekend in bed?  Guess who was coughing and miserable when I got to work Monday night? Yes, she got it from one of us in spite of our wearing masks and trying not to breathe on her.  She has been very sick all week. I’ve been extra careful with her in spite of not feeling well yet myself and she has been thankful.  I feel a little like a cross between a nurse and a mother as I work with her.  For the time being that dark, oppressive “anywhere but here” feeling is gone.  Our thinking, our minds, … very spooky places.

My other meaningful work – getting rid of unneeded things in storage – is a bit stalled.  Stacks of paper did not get shredded. Closet is emptied but it’s all on the table in the hall instead and I still don’t know what to do with half of it.  I did organize a potluck dinner for 25 people for tomorrow night.  We are having it for the visiting Cambodian pastor at whose house I stayed last December.  That was mostly email work, but it was meaning ful too. 

And now it’s the weekend and I get to enjoy going out to eat, not cooking, tonight.  And I get to enjoy sleeping without an alarm in the morning, and a cup of coffee NOT in the car, and many other things, none of which would seem too special were it not for my meaningful work.

Day 1
I’ve been very tired today. My throat is unusually dry.  Red flag… this doesn’t feel good and I’m going to take some vitamin C right now.  I can usually head off minor threats this way.  A couple hours and I’ll be done at work and can go home and take a nap. No problem.

Day 1.5
Took nap.  Throat is definitely sore now.  Head hurts too.  I’d better e-mail employer and let her know I’m coming down with something and it’s fast and vicious. Taking ibuprofen, Zicam, more vitamin C and hoping I can get to sleep. Husband has to bring me soup. How pathetic.

Day 2
Employer is sorry I’m not feeling well.  Says to wear a mask. My throat isn’t quite as sore but now the plague has reached the sinuses and I’m feeling very thick headed.  Off to work with my box of masks and my pills.

Day 2.5
I hate masks – as if it isn’t hard enough to breathe already. Head  is exploding.  Just get me through this day at work and I’ll be able to rest and recover over the weekend.

Day 2.75
Feel horrible. Face hurts. Can’t think. Can’t sleep. Must watch TV to keep mind off pain.  Cancelled dinner with friends that I’d been looking forward to all week. Made some soup but it was awful. Did I mention it was awful? Time to bring out the heavy gun – Nyquil cocktail and to bed.

Day 3
I am resolved to just be sick at home and enjoy it! Cancelled all my Saturday stuff. Camped out on recliner surrounded by kleenex, pills, water, and TV remote.  Daughter coming home from school this weekend – hope she doesn’t catch it.

Day 3.5
Weak and shaky, the old “fever feeling”, but head feels better. I can breathe again. This thing really changes fast. Now my chest hurts.

Day 3.75
Have to go out for an hour long procedure at work.  Kind husband and daughter go with me to make sure I stay on the road.  On the way home we stop by the beach and walk down to touch the water. I must be feeling better.

Day 4
What is this thing going to do now that it’s in my chest? I cancel singing at church. It feels good to know things go on without me. Look at all the things I can cancel! Wow. Have breakfast and enjoy the morning with daughter. Try not to cough on her.

Day 4.5
First time out all weekend – daughter wants to shop at Goodwill. I think I can manage that even with my occasional healthy cough. I am kind of surprised that this thing has resolved as much as it has. I appear fairly normal with a somewhat lower voice.

Day 4.75
Daughter leaving for school again. Says her throat feels a little scratchy. Guilt. I am still tired and glad to have tomorrow morning off work. Hoping a good night’s sleep will put an end to one nasty, old virus. No comebacks, please.

I do love security in general but when I see that word online I start to get nervous.  It means I’m going to be asked for a user name and password … are you seeing what I mean?  Things started out simple because hardly anything had a password in the beginning (Genesis chapter 1 had no passwords that I recall) but now EVERYTHING has a password and some things have two plus a picture and six questions.  So when life includes three banks, three airline frequent flyer clubs, utility accounts for 3 residences, cell phones, kindles, amazon and 10 other online stores, password recall becomes a full-time job for a well trained memory. 

I had a favorite word that inspired me and it became my first password.  Then I heard that you really should change it from time to time so I added a prefix, later a suffix, then a variation of the word that had the word in it.  Soon the little test boxes started showing up that told you how secure your password was and mine was not secure because it was, after all, just a word. A computer could run through the whole dictionary and come up with my password in no time at all.  So I had to add a number or a symbol which I did.  That was better but to complicate matters, advice was to choose a DIFFERENT password each time you were asked for one.  What? And it would also be better not to have any real words but just random letters and numbers.  The tip I liked best was to choose a line from a song and take the first letter of each word – so you could remember it easier.

 By this time I was amazed that anyone was at all concerned with making something easier. And it was too late for me. Some of my passwords got changed, some didn’t.  The ones I actually remembered were written down on a precious paper.  I had to keep updating the precious paper and I had to put it somewhere that bad people couldn’t find it. Unfortunately, I also frequently had trouble finding it, so I had to keep it right with my computer (now doesn’t that defeat the purpose, you say? Yes, it does.)  The best thing I’ve heard is not to write these things down at all.  You should store them online, in the cloud. Yeah right, that sounds secure….

It’s probably obvious by now that today I’ve been reinstalling email accounts on my phone and trying to figure out which eight letters/numbers/symbols were in the password that I picked out a zillion years ago when I started the account.  Can you believe I finally guessed what it was?!!!  A bad person surely could have done it quicker though – I’m just sayin’.

I’ve only been home for a little more than a week but already I was feeling that “all work and no play…” disease creeping up on me.  So today my friend and I (I do have a friend, maybe two) went off on an adventure.  Several months ago we took in a movie – Dolphin Tale – about a very intriguing marine rescue of an amazing animal.  It was especially interesting to us because it was filmed in our backyard, so to speak, and the star of the show still resides there at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. We took Karyn’s slightly expired two-for-one coupon and motored up to see for ourselves.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie yet, you really should. The dolphin named Winter did lose her tail as a result of bacterial infection after getting trapped in a net and injured.  With love and attention she survived, and when you visit the aquarium you get to see the place and the people who saved her.  The compnay who volunteered work on a prosthetic tail finally came up with one that would stay on.  We saw the tail applied today and watched as she exercised the muscles that were atrophying and causing her to have scoliosis. 

Did you know that sharks flap their tails sided to side but dolphins wave theirs up and down? So I learned some pretty cool things and also got to see some other rescued animals including sea turtles, and river otters.  The aquarium is located out on one of the keys so there was lots of lovely water scenery.  We got a free boat ride back to the parking lot when we were done. If I had visitors in town I would definitley consider taking them to see Winter since it wasn’t just an interesting trip but also supports a worthy non-profit effort.



Winter with her prosthetic tail



On the down side, I couldn’t take any pictures because I got a “camera failed” message on my phone. This should not be.  So I settled for buying a key chain for a souvenir and am taking a picture of it now at home.  

If the most important time to write is when you really don’t want to do it, then I am where I should be right now.  It’s hard to figure out what the importance of it is except to give me practice for the book, the someday book…

I’ve experienced a miracle this week, definition of miracle being something I’m unable to explain scientifically and will therefore attribute to divine intervention.  A week ago Monday, up in Hayward I did some maneuver that stretched my left shoulder far more than it should have been stretched.  It was immediately sore and got worse as the day wore on.  In fact, it got worse for a couple more days even though I was trying to rest it and taking lots of Ibuprofen.

It was painful to touch. People would hug me around the shoulder and wonder why I would gasp and produce tears. I couldn’t lift my arm away from my side, or do pushing moves with my arm in the air.  The hardest thing was getting dressed! Putting on shirts – agony.  Pulling things up to my waist – sharp pain followed by burning ache that wouldn’t quiet down for a long time.  Medication made things bearable only if I was up and moving around.  That’s how I got through work Thursday and Friday.  At night I found that it’s nearly impossible to turn onesself in bed without moving both arms. And yet when lying still, just the weight of my arm in most any position, would bring on a burning ache that wouldn’t quit.  Honestly, I felt totally worn out from dealing with the pain

By the weekend my stomach was starting to hurt from around the clock doses of antiinflammatories. I had to work the night shift on Sunday and Monday and was worried that I might not be able to do some of the required moves. Driving out to the job, I decided that if there was not some sign of improvement I would look for some medical attention the next day.  I was afraid that it might be getting worse from inattention.

I have to backtrack a little to explain where the part about divine intervention would enter the picture. I’ve thought about the healing miracles recorded in scripture, especially those of Jesus that were witnessed and written about by many.  Intellectually I believe that a being capable of creating life in all its forms, could also restore life, restore function and well being, just as easily as creating it in the first place. I’ve been aware of events in other people’s lives that they called miracles but I don’t remember experiencing a healing of my own, ever.  I did think it was important to ask God for healing, I asked several friends to pray for me, and I went to the elders of my church to ask for prayer and annointing. I saw these actions as being simple things to do in obedience, perhaps a little embarrassing, but simple.  (Evidently they don’t do a lot of annointings in the church I go to now because I had three men looking frantically for some oil for fifteen minutes until they gave up and just prayed.)

I struggled through work that night, laid myself down and somehow fell asleep immediately for four hours before waking to turn my patient. It was odd that my arm didn’t hurt or even feel stiff.  At the end of my shift I went home and slept comfortably for another couple of hours.  It was such a relief to have a normal feeling arm instead of that thing I’d been wishing I could cut off because it hurt so bad. And it has remained so since then, in spite of work and chores at home that I am once again happily doing.  Something that was very bad became very good in so short a time that I see no reason not to thank God for it and I see no reason to think anything else was responsible for the change. There was no electricity or warm healing feeling creeping through my body or what have you – it was just done hurting, on the inside and on the outside.

I didn’t get a message from God that I shouldn’t tell anyone, so I am writing about it.  But I have mixed feelings. I am grateful and excited on the one hand, because I think God wants to heal today more than we let him and I want to cooperate with that.  I also know that when I heard about other people’s miracles I often viewed them skeptically, as some will do with my report.  I don’t really like people to view me and my experience with skepticism but I have to say that when I am pain free after an extended period of misery, it doesn’t matter much how other people view it.

I am once again in my own bedroom spending the morning putting things away and trying to sort out necessary tasks after a two week trip.  I am quite behind schedule in writing about anything that happened, and in danger of forgetting a lot of it. In general, it was a good visit and I am glad to have spent the time the way we did.  I trust that relationships that needed updating or strengthening were attended to, although I didn’t get to have in depth conversations with everyone.  When I visit with the goal of spending time with people, I pretty much neglect having time alone.and that would include time to write. Maybe I should try to list the things I remember. (Placement in the list is not based on importance or chronology – just what popped into my mind randomly)

– the weekend in Bayfield that I’ve already written about
– collecting the eggs and admiring the chicken coop
– garage saling with Mom and actually buying 3 pair of nice shoes that fit
– Denny’s glasses flying off his hat and into the water behind the speeding boat
– the rather odd wedding held out behind the barn
– my new smart phone taking a dip in Round Lake
– me taking a dip in Round Lake with Evan and Claire
– watching Claire play soccer
– anxiously wondering whether Gary would pull his arms out trying to slalom start
– coffee/talk time with Mom before anyone else was awake
– donuts in abundance every Saturday morning
– getting to know and apreciate my Aunt Judy a bit more
– again admiring Judy and John’s log house
– sweet corn and tomatoes on a daily basis (good memory)
– walking in the fields (think nature) and the return view (think Walmart)
– freezing green beans, canning peaches with Mary Pat
– the morning hike at hatchery park
– biking the new path around Hayward with MP, Evan, and Rachel
– Evan bringing me Kleenex and water when I was crying
– Gary and I talking, me crying in front of all (feeling ok about that)
– listening to the crazy conversations between my husband and my Dad
– watching progress of Hurricane Isaac for days
– Mother/Daughter day at the Angry Minnow
– family trip to Garmisch for dinner
– seeing cousin Gloria at family brunch (donuts)
– the pleasant drives from and to Minneapolis in the rented Aveo with my husband
– the NutHouse in Siren, a nice stop
– AirTran flies out of the Humphrey terminal, not the Lindbergh, getting it accidentally right
– shopping trips to Walmart, late season bikini choices
– Mom’s presence in the kitchen and faithful attendance to feeding us all
– Denny’s unhurried attendance to multiple functions, soccer coach, grill master, businessman, dad
– almost surprising visits from Bob and Elizabeth, Gary and Tina and people who can’t keep secrets
– Scruffy
– everyone waving goodbye to us, the tortured frog on the driveway
– visiting my eighth grade teacher in the nursing home
– Theresa’s story about the Tom Farnsworth Christmas tree
– being stranded in the middle of Round Lake when the motor quit
– vacuuming with the new Kenmore
– ice cream at West’s Dairy
– shopping at Kaliko with MP and Elizabeth
– family dinner with Michelle, Judith and Susan, lots of hugs
– riding in the golf cart with Dad and Scruffy

I could go on more I guess but the list is sufficiently long to record that I had a memorable trip.