My job and I are going through a (another) difficult stage. As I drag myself out of bed in the dark of morning I’m saying inside my head “I’m soooo tired”. But, although it would be nice to continue sleeping, I don’t really think I’m tired. Most nights I try to get at least seven hours sleep, sometimes more. But  my own tired thoughts keep working on me as I progress through the closet, the kitchen and into the car, past all the things I’d rather be doing. I think of my friends who are already retired – that certainly doesn’t help.

Today I thought I might look for a different thing to tell myself and came up with “I’m bored”. I’m not sure that’s a lot better but rings truer than a bell. Being bored masquerades as being tired, but now that I recognize it, I’m encouraged. There’s a whole range of things I can do about being bored, from finding a new job (way too extreme) to doing something unexpected but simple like wearing a dress and heels to work (bad example and not likely to happen.) I am closing in on my third year working for Scottie and have repeated the same five hour routine a bazillion times. There are a few variations but I’ve also gotten those memorized, painfully memorized. I can actually tell you every word that we will speak during our regular procedures.

Scottie is dangerously addicted to routine. It’s not that I don’t understand how this happens – I do. When you are a quadriplegic you are vulnerable to so many things that “routine” means safety and security.  Even when it’s a bad routine that is inefficient or awkward, at least you know what is going to happen, so the routine lives on. I am even required to teach the routines to new nurses. When they ask for the sense of them, I just have to remind them that in this job they are not necessarily paid to think creatively, but to do what reassures the employer.

It’s not all about boredom. I am a little tired of doing things that hurt and being in pain does make me more tired than usual. But I think mixing things up and being a little “out of the box” might help that too. It’s called distraction.

Fortunately, my birthday is coming up. I try to make my birthday a remedy for boredom by planning something new, adventurous, interesting, something to look forward to for weeks prior. I am getting excited just thinking about figuring out what to do. I have some thoughts already but would like to hear what other people suggest if anyone has ideas for me. Last year I took a kayak trip in alligatorville and got a little excited. It was good. This year it needs to be something that doesn’t involve using my arms much. Help me out here, we have about three weeks…

Gently raining, which is a very calming, soothing weather event to me.  I live in an awesome forest of old growth live oak trees – and the word awesome really does apply here, unlike many instances where it’s used.  A whole year’s worth of energy from the sun, rain and atmosphere, put into leaf growth, has fallen down. See, we do have “fall” only it’s in the spring. And now the canopy is that light green, almost glowing shade of freshness with huge, dark limbs supporting it. It is even more apparent how awesome this all is when you start to rake and find if there is any grass left under the leaves, and when you have to vacuum them out of all the cracks and crevices of your car, when they cover the drive every day and stain the cement brown with their tannin, and when you find them on the floor of every room in your house, and in your shoes, cuffs and pockets. I am not sending any of them to the landfill this year. They are all getting piled around the bases of the trees that produced them, which I think is fair.

My weekend is nearly over – the second half being much more restful than the first half. I was still in the stage of thinking about cleaning the guest room when Scottie called to say that the Saturday nurse had been in the hospital and needed a recovery day. I was the only possible replacement since Cindy would be on her way to the airport. I cleaned until I went to bed and got up early and cleaned some more. Scottie had the night nurse get her started on her day and asked me to come “finish her off” which I think is a poor choice of words because my mind always goes you know where. It was only two and a half hours of work and an hour of driving but it certainly added some stress and busy-ness to life. I had a clean room instead of a clean house but I don’t think our guests noticed.

The girls were nice and their stay was uneventful. The whole group had been at the beach in the afternoon and they were glad to get here, take a shower and go to bed. We went to bed on the new spring time since I had turned all the clocks ahead early. I didn’t hear either of their performances today since I was on the way to my other church after dropping them off. They seemed to think it was odd that I would be going to two churches and I guess it is. I’m so used to it I never think about it anymore.

I’ve heard some thought provoking messages today, done some good reading, some writing, relaxed a bit and am now watching and listening to the rain. A good day overall. And as predicted, Monday morning will be here in the blink of an eye…

First, I have something to clear up. Someone who actually reads my blog and knows how far it is to Gainesville has brought it to my attention that doing the 180 miles in two hours would be going 90 miles an hour. I didn’t do that. I only counted interstate miles in my reckoning which cuts off about 15 miles. I also round it down because I don’t want to type “two and a half hours” or “two and a quarter hours” every time I mention how long it took.  I am not the fastest car on the road by any means but I do go with the traffic and sometimes the fast lane. And I had absolutely no slow downs or traffic hazards this last time too which helped the trip immenseley. Thanks so much for worrying about me (and for reading my stories).

Oh, the weekend. I feel like I’m on the end of a diving board about ready to jump off and hit the water. When I come up for air, it will be Monday. This weekend will be remarkable, I’m sure, because we are having house guests.  A high school musical group called Metro East is coming to the Lutheran church to give a couple concerts on Sunday. They were actually brought in by some other church that backed out at the last minute for unknown reasons and BSLC accepted the challenge to take over. And I guess it was a challenge to find houses for all 40+ people to stay in Saturday night. It sounded like fun to me so I volunteered to take 2 girls. They arrive at the church Saturday night – I am at church anyway – and are having a pizza supper there and then coming home with us. The only slightly inconvenient thing is that they have to be back at the church at 7 am Sunday and we also have the time change to contend with. But I don’t care because I’m used to getting up at 5:30 am every morning anyway.

Our guest room is not really the guest room when we don’t have guests. It is inhabited by Dennis and Zoe (a cat, not his second wife).  This is a good opportunity to dust, vacuum, shake and scrub. I probably don’t do this often enough because we hardly ever have guests and because no one spends any time in there when the lights are on. Both Dennis and Zoe are invited to spend Saturday night in my special room with me, which is really no problem since I won’t be getting much sleep anyway.

Zoe is a pretty quiet cat at night. She gets fed right before lights out, which gives her about six hours until she starts wanting more food. Crying (meowing) doesn’t usually work so she has several tricks like charging the bed and rebounding off before anyone can hit her, playing with loud toys that she never plays with during the day, and knocking her head against the filing cabinet (did I mention the guest room is also the office?). We try not to give in and reinforce her bad habits but sometimes it’s the only way to obtain peace and an extra hour of sleep.

Dennis, the dreamer, is sometimes not quiet at night.  His dreams are occassionally productive, like last night when he told me he solved a problem from work and it really was a solution which he was able to remember. Other times he’s doing normal things like fighting off attackers and telling hilarious jokes, both of which can get a little loud and boisterous. But for one night I can handle it, especially since I still have Sunday night in which to recover. We’ll be fine and it’s for a good cause.

The scary part about this weekend is that Cindy, who has been Scottie’s helper for nearly three months now, will be leaving tomorrow morning to go back to Myrtle Beach. What will we do without her? I don’t like to think about it. She has been such a help to us and Scottie is rightfully nervous about being alone once she is gone. I may once again be getting some extra hours (that I’d rather not have) but I guess it’s a chance to pad the bank account a little. The Lord knows there are a lot of things I’d like to throw some money at….

So with that little preview, I will leave off and clean a room (or two, or three) and get back to writing on Sunday night when I can tell you what really happened.

Two hours… slightly longer than the average church service, roughly equivalent to two TV shows or one feature length movie, a generous naptime, the time it takes to mow the lawn. None of these things seem difficult to endure but put me in the car for the trip to Gainesville and two hours becomes mind numbing and an insurmountable length of time. I only made one batch of popcorn to take along because otherwise I would have eaten the whole way, just to stay alert enough to stay in my lane. When the popcorn was gone I had to resort to the radio.

My favorite station,, which is the only one I can listen to along the whole route, was fundraising. That was only slightly less aenesthetizing and in my crazed state I was actually thinking “yes, yes, come on, one more caller, you can do it!!” So I switched to country music which is usually very entertaining. And it was that, mostly because of the variety. I was first brought to tears by “Jesus, Take the Wheel” (I can’t do it justice in an explanation so you’ll just have to listen for it yourself) and then taught how to escape from prison, the warden and his dog “Red”. Oh, and there was also the little four year old who learned to pray AND say four letter words by watching his daddy. I am always amazed that I make the trip without dying from road hypnosis, an MVA or overeating.

So I am on the couch now, watching the “lady vet” do some homework for tomorrow. I have already done my ritual poop shoveling down in the barn, petted the cats, dogs and horses, cooked dinner and eaten it with Julie and roommate Jen.  Tomorrow I will reacquaint myself with the yard and gardens and pastures that need cleaning up.  I view this as motherly morale boosting and a bit of my own escapism. My life seems kind of overwhelming lately. So many of my close contacts are having problems that have no easy solutions and although they are not directly my problems, I am involved.  There are just way too many things to pray about and too many answers to be waiting on. So, to come here is refreshing in that there is a whole new set of problems that are fresh and unfamiliar to me. It seems that having problems is one of the requirements of human life, and that even in good times there are still those situations that are not so good. 

I am preparing to learn new things about persevering and staying the course.

Day 2 at the farm: What a gorgeous day in central Florida! The dog and I woke up about the same time and I got to let her out. She is a good dog (only snored a little last night). Good coffee and my favorite cranberry walnut bread for breakfast. I got to let the horses out and put out a bale of hay for their day’s ration. The pastures are very short on grass but horses still have to eat something all day long – that’s just what a horse does. Julie and Jen are off to school by 8. I decide my first task will be picking up sticks in the yard and pastures so the lawnmower doesn’t have to eat them.

Picking up sticks is a simple description but the job involves a lot more – listening to the birds, playing with the dogs, watching out for snakes, pretty much the whole nature experience. The horses get curious and walk around me and the wheelbarrow to see what’s happening. As long as I don’t have a halter or rope in my hand they don’t mind getting close.  I forget to close a gate and the next thing I know, three of them are in the yard where the grass is a little longer. They love it and I can’t get them to go back where they belong so I let them graze.

Julie comes back for lunch and eats in front of the computer as she prepares her second presentation of the day. She was feeling overwhelmed earlier in the week and called to vent a little, but I am pleasantly surprised. The house is clean, the refrigerator is well stocked (and nothing appears to be decomposed), the animals are happy, things look really good in the physical.  Good job Julie.

I will spend a little more time outdoors and then… another two hours in the car. Oh well.

Today I am restless and out of sorts (I do not know what a sort is or how it came to mean what it means…). It’s a restless day – windy outside and 20 degrees cooler than yesterday. Things are falling out of the trees every time we get a gust and the lawn that was just “vacuumed” yesterday is getting littered again. Wind always makes me feel like something is coming.

I suppose a restless spirit is a good thing if you know what to do with it. I’ve tried praying about it, talking it out with God, working it to death with laundry and cleaning, eating it out of existence (chocolate) and about all there is left is to wait and listen for something… the wind, maybe. I don’t really know.

Words are pretty powerful when you think about it. To be able to write or speak and describe something you’re feeling is almost like a therapy that sets the feelings free. We write words down to convey our history. Spoken words form a child’s perception of himself. The words we decide to use give others an impression of who we are or aren’t. Words and slogans sell things and make fortunes happen for some. Words can ruin people’s lives. It almost makes me want to quit speaking and writing – except for the fact that lack of words can also ruin people’s lives.  Language and communication is a very serious thing and I think it’s very wise of the Bible to warn that we are going to be held accountable for every word we say. I haven’t always been as careful as I should be and I wish I knew where all my apologies should go. Probably to everyone who reads these posts for starters… I hope to do better.

I have to say that most of the time the words that I hear from others are like the breath of life to me.  Just the fact that someone speaks to me at all means that I am noticed or thought of and worthy of some communication. Words encourage me, reassure me, inform me, make me laugh (and cry) and stir me to love people. The right word at any time can make my day and give me hours of happiness.  I have a theory that lots of the people on facebook are there just looking for a personal word from someone that acknowledges their existence, makes them feel part of a community. Why are we this way? I have my theories about that too.
All for now. I have to go think for a while.

We made an effort to buy a car today. We researched on the internet during the week and today we went to sit in and test drive the vehicles we were interested in. We had several reasons for doing this – the 156,000 miles on the Aztek for one, the earned GM bucks on our credit card that are due to expire next Wednesday for another. It was a very reasonable thing to do and could have been a way to save money on an inevitable purchase.  But we didn’t do it. We were actually to the point of emptying out the Aztek and vacuuming it for the trade when we decided not to complete the process.

I learned a significant thing. There have been times when we’ve made purchases like this without praying about them, trusting that God gives us enough common sense to figure it out, but this time we prayed together. I guess we feel the financial uncertainty of the times more, our ability to earn has been threatened in various ways and we are earning for others besides ourselves and didn’t want to put those commitments in jeopardy. Neither of us enjoys car shopping. There are so many options and decisions to be made and sometimes you don’t even know whether they are important decisions or not! So we did pray that we would know what we should decide about all these options.

We decided that better mileage was one goal, and two cars fit that bill pretty well. We liked the feel of one of them better than another, it drove well, we found it in a color we could live with and the price was manageable. But I could feel a small storm starting – even though I agreed with all these assessments. And what I learned was, that when you pray about something, you pay more attention to the inner storms that you might otherwise dismiss.  That can be a good thing and it could be spiritual direction.

You would think I would be excited about a new car. I would think I’d be excited about a new car, especially one with Bluetooth connectivity, OnStar, remote start, and a computer that tells you when something is wrong and what the something is and even sends you an e-mail about it. But I wasn’t excited – not like I was when we got the Aztek. After we decided not to buy I felt so relieved and content with the decision.  And Dennis was too, I think.  He didn’t agonize over it at all.

So let me tell you all the things I love about my ten year old car that outweigh the irritations of having no working gas gauge or windshield washer, the broken key fobs and dimming dash lights. I love that it is bright yellow instead of one of the other four colors that all the other cars in the world are. That color makes me happy, and visible. I love the cooler between the seats that keeps things cool that would otherwise melt in the Florida heat. I love that I can put my cereal bowl on top of the cooler for easy access at stop lights. I love that all I have to do to get in it is open the door, back up to the seat and slide in (no lowering myself into the cockpit). I love that it’s taken me hiking in the mountains, to the northwoods,  to the horse farm, carrying all manner of unwieldy objects with ease, with never a bad breakdown.  Ten years of living and it’s still an exciting vehicle.  I’m always glad to get in and drive. And one morning this week I started the engine to go to work and the first thing out of the radio was “Shirley”! Well, actually it was “surely” and it was part of a sentence but it was still kind of heartwarming and I took it personally. 

We may still buy another car someday, but it wasn’t right today and I am happy.

I don’t normally give furniture much thought – my house is a decorator’s nightmare – but I love to rearrange what I have. Really, tell me that something is too big and heavy to be moved and I will rise up from my death bed to prove you wrong. And it’s tricky work so you want to wait until you have little to no interference. When I’m in the middle of a complicated move the last thing I want is someone second guessing my strategy, the only exception being someone who is a kindred soul and has a good sense of humor.

 I started young and probably learned furniture rearrangement from my mother. She moved things around a lot to avoid boredom and because it was cheaper than buying new stuff – you just put it in a different place and it looks new, kind of.  I always loved it when things got moved around and required new patterns of sitting, walking, etc…  The only drawback to rearranging is that you have to give people a little time to get used to where things are, and even then, if it’s night and they’re half asleep they might make a mistake and dive into a dresser instead of the bed (sorry Dad, had to tell it).

Yes, Mom was a kindred soul and a mentor to me.  I came home one summer when Mom was “rearranging” and wanted to move an old mahogany dresser out to storage. It was slightly smaller than a compact car and nearly as heavy, and it was on the second floor of our old farmhouse. Many times since I have looked at those 20 steep steps and that narrow stairwell and wondered how we did it without being permanently injured.  My clearest recollection is of being stuck part way down in a very awkward position and having to wait until we stopped laughing to continue.

Carpet and other floor coverings are in much the same category as furniture. Changing what is on your floor can be liberating, and I have been liberated two or three times in my career. The same farmhouse, a downstairs bedroom with old wall to wall carpet with stains and probably at least fifteen years worth of dust mites… I found some decent looking wood floor under a corner of this carpet and decided to get rid of it one day when my husband was out of town. He is not a kindred soul.

Carpet requires as much or more skill to remove as furniture. Think about it. You either have to move all the furniture out of the room, or you have to move it all to one side, roll up the carpet and then move the furniture over the roll. No small matter. I don’t remember which I did because it was so awful, my mind erased all the memory of it in self defense.  Furniture amnesia is what keeps me doing these things. Once rolled, carpet is very stiff and surprisingly heavy. I could barely lift one end of it and there was no way it would bend around a corner and out the doorway. I had to go out the window with it, and it was a serious rival to the “dresser in the stairwell” for being ridiculously funny and somewhat dangerous. Most people probably don’t remove wall to wall carpet until they’re willing to cut it up in small pieces, and that is the way I have done it ever since.

And all this came to mind while I was moving furniture today. Twenty years ago we bought our first really good set of living room furniture – a large, heavy Lane sofa with recliners on each end (still in the living room) and a rocking love seat with reclining function also.  The love seat has been in a rental unit and has seen better days … kids, dogs, garage storage have all taken a heavy toll and I’ve decided at least twice to put it out by the road on it’s way to furniture heaven. But it was still in the garage and recycling is so “in” now that I decided to give it another chance. I pulled two pencils, a TV remote and a dirty sock out of the cracks, vacuumed and scrubbed the fabric with carpet cleaner and cleared the way through the house.

 I use physics principles when I move furniture; levers, friction reduction, and obstacle avoidance. And I have plastic sliders, which my mother never had but I could not live without. When I made it through the first doorway, I knew I could get it all the way into my bedroom on the other side of the house. It was really a pretty piece of work, especially since the recliners kept unfolding and rocking kind of like a ship at sea. I had to stand it on one end to get it through the narrow places.  It’s now sitting at the end of my bed under the ceiling fan, smelling like a dirty dog as it dries from the scrubbing.

All this to say that it may not stay there long.  It makes the room seem more crowded, and my designer friend, Arlette, says I never should have gotten furniture more than 37 inches deep in the first place. Who knew? If I don’t like it I can always get rid of it, and just like carpet, I may have to cut it up in small pieces this time.

I think that’s what we all would like to do – make peace with our questions. Our little questions like “what should I do today?” and our big questions like “what am I supposed to do with my life?”  I have most of this day off still ahead of me and quite a list of things I wish would be accomplished at the end of it. Which things on that list will bring the most peace? Personally, I don’t know that I would make the right choices – I just don’t know enough. There are so many things going on already in nature, in the world, in the lives of my family and friends and many of these things are so complicated I can’t begin to understand them. And yet there is this amazing sense of order underlying it all that gives me confidence in someone who created it all and keeps it going. Outside my window is a beautiful, living plant with outrageous red coloring in its leaves and as the spray from the irrigation hits it, beautiful large drops of clear water pool and drip from the leaf tips – this kind of miracle that existed before any of us were around was invented by a God who cares.

So someone knows what would be the best thing for me to do today and in my brief span of time living on earth, and I see evidence that he’s willing to give me direction. I know things may look a little uncertain and chaotic at times – nature shows me that too – but I eventually have to trust myself or someone clearly smarter than myself. Easy choice. How we ever come to think that we are smarter than whoever created our ability to think is hard to understand.

One of my questions is this: how do people who are very busy, very much in demand, very involved in passionate causes of all kinds, find time to write? Like big government and political people who suddenly come out with a biography or autobiography or a novel – when did they sit down and put in the hours of writing that it takes to produce a book? How do they decide to attach such importance to their writing that it trumps all the other stuff they need to do?

As I looked at my aging self in the mirror last night, I considered how many years I might reasonably have to make sense of all the journals and letters of my life. There’s supposed to be a book in there somewhere that I’m going to write “someday”. Suddenly, there’s not all that much time left, maybe 20 years at best, possibly much less. I should get at it with a sense of urgency if I believe it’s worth doing. I need to ask God for some clarity in the purposefulness of the project. I sense purpose but I don’t know how to express it in words yet.

I’m going out to work in the One Acre Woods for a while, to let my thoughts cook while my hands work. How thankful I am for my gardens.