Just when things couldn't get worse...

You know the saying, “just when you think things can’t get worse, they do”? Or something like that.

Well, so here we go again – or still – things continuing to get worse.

After two beautiful days over the Memorial Day weekend, I fell on Monday going down my basement stairs and broke a bone in my right foot. 

 Not really much more I can say about that. 

I’m back in the boot which I wore for six weeks last year due to a painful bone spur on my left heel. This time, however, I’m supposed to be non-weight bearing on the injured foot.

Which is where my mom’s walker comes in. Let me tell you, it was a huge blow to this fifty-something-year-old to be hobbling around my house pushing this thing. The only bonus is all the stuff I can carry in it. I didn’t get a picture of the storage hatch beneath the seat. I still need to load it up with treats though.

I didn’t get a picture of the shower chair that Hubby brought into the bathroom. That was another blow to my ego, sitting on that disgusting thing so I could wash my hair in the shower. No picture of the crutches Hubby bought me yesterday, either. I’m pretty excited to be able to get out of the house and tole around the yard on them. Seems like these things always happen to me in the spring, when I have so much to do outside, and then I’m laid up with a bad back, a heel spur or a broken hoof.

At least the swelling is going down, even if the bruising is more colorful. 

Wish me luck with this!

When life hands you lemons

   A week ago today, at three am, our power went out. During the previous month, we burned up two sump pumps, as well as losing power for a few hours, so on three occasions this spring I had already been holding the water at bay in my basement.

Last Wednesday morning, however, with the wind blowing and electricity out in most of our area, I didn’t hold out much hope that we could stay on top of the water flow until Public Service got to us.

 After bailing water and hauling it up the stairs and outside for three and a half hours, we realized that this was a battle we couldn’t win. Hubby and I had to get to work and the basement would just have to be on its own. 

 

But not before I heated up several kettles of water. Thank God for a gas stove.

 

Coz, when life throws us lemons, we make lemonade. Or take a bath by candlelight.  

The basement was a mess when I got home from work, but we had already pulled up anything which would get wrecked, so it was just a matter of getting the water out. 

But then Hubby brought home a new addition to the family. I’ll call her Miracle. She only ran for two hours – but she was pumping out that water with all her heart – before the power came back on at 9:30 that night.

I nearly forgot to mention there was another causality from the storm. Not sure when we’ll be able to get that taken care of.

And my life continues to be a barrel of laughs. Check back in on Friday. 

More a Martha than a Mary

While Jesus and his followers were traveling, Jesus went into a town. A woman named Martha let Jesus stay at her house. Martha had a sister named Mary. Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him teach. Martha became angry because she had so much work to do. She went in and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me alone to do all the work? Tell her to help me!”

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are getting worried and upset about too many things. Only one thing is important. Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will never be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42 (International Children’s Bible)

For the month of May, I’ve been sharing Bible passages of interactions Jesus had with various women.

I think that most of us have heard these lines, and many of us women think to ourselves, “well, someone has to do the work! I guess it’s gonna have to be and I’m not gonna get any help.” And in the case of Mary and Martha, Jesus isn’t even any help.

I think it’s a good lesson for us with type A personalities or obsessive-compulsive tendencies.  I know that would be me for sure.

But then I read this Bible verse. “The poor will always be with you, but you will not always have me.” John 12:8 (ICB)

Does the house have to be clean? Does the table have to be set with a myriad of different delicacies? Does the grass have to be mowed? Can’t the laundry wait one more day? Where should our priorities be?

With Memorial Day coming up tomorrow, we are reminded that our loved ones aren’t always going to be with us. Spending time with them always needs to be our priority. The only higher priority is spending time with Jesus. 

The Rest of the Story

 Over the last month, I’ve shared the quick, down-and-dirty of our vacation in April to Virginia. I’ve just been throwing random pictures at you, with the minimum of description. I don’t even think I told you the whole Virginia game plan. I was going to give you a complete explanation of some of the places we visited, but maybe I should start with the who and why first.

My mom’s uncle, his wife and their three children lived in southeastern Virginia when I was a kid. Three times over the years, Mom and Dad packed my sister and me up in the truck camper and drove out there for a visit. We’d visited Jamestown, Williamsburg, Monticello, the mountains and the beach on all those trips. Then, when my daughter was a senior in high school, my mom and I took her there for spring break.

After sharing all the pictures and stories of those times with my husband, I most of all wanted to take him to Virginia. Before I could get him there, my niece’s daughter got stationed at the Navy base in nearby Norfolk. I also reconnected with a friend from high school who was living in north-central Virginia.

With all of that going on, how did I think I could get this all done in one week!

These are some of the accommodations we had during that week.

Our room in Mom’s cousin’s guest house for two nights. 

Our hotel room in Williamsburg for the next two nights.

It even had a complete kitchen. The idea was to cut down on our meal expenses by cooking our own food. You can imagine how well that worked.

Hubby got in just a tiny bit of golf.

. 

I probably shouldn’t share this picture. I went down to the laundry one night to wash clothes. Instead of running up and down to our room, I wanted to park myself in the little laundry room and work on my laptop while the clothes washed. But there was no chair. I looked across the hall and two doors down and noticed a door ajar. Beyond which, this mess lay. I ventured inside, found a chair for myself and dragged it in by the washing machine. Probably not my smartest move. I don’t even want to tell you about the dryer eating my coins and having to tromp back up to the room for more money, then back to the front desk for more coins, which the nice young desk clerk gave me due to the dryer’s failure. Not my best night.

And then there was the next morning. As I was getting dressed, I heard a crash in the hallway. I could also hear kids laughing so I didn’t think much of it until I saw water streaming under our door and into our kitchen floor. Apparently, this pan full of water fell out of the ceiling. I know, what? But really, the hotel was an okay place to stay. 

 Our last night in Virginia we drove north to my friend’s. We had such a nice visit with her and her husband. It was good to reminisce about high school and junior high, wonder how we ever survived.

  And how we all turned out pretty darn good

The woman who wouldn't be stoned

At dawn Jesus appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

            “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

(John 8:2-11, New International Version)

Sundays this month I have been posting stories of the encounters which Jesus had with women in the Bible. I think all of them are the most fascinating stories. In this one, I can picture the look on Jesus’ face when He’s talking to this woman’s accusers and then when He talks to her. He’s so calm and cool. So very on the edge of almost being sarcastic. Almost close to being smug, while being humble at the same time.

But here’s the big question – what is He writing on the ground? 

Spring Vacation 2019, Day 8 and 9

   Finally, the last two days of Spring Vacation and the long drive home. Drove twelve straight hours, from just south of Charlottesville, Virginia, to Danville, Illinois on Thursday. Then from there home on Friday, where we were met with a flooded basement. But let’s finish vacation first.

I don’t know where they got their slogan from. You would think with all the history in Virginia they could do better than this. But who am I to judge. 

Our last night in Virginia we spent at the ranch of one of my friends from high school. Maybe the Virginia slogan should be Virginia is for cow lovers. (Where do I come up with this stuff?)

Into West Virginia and the beautiful mountains, where we once again didn’t spend enough time.

I did talk Hubby into stopping at the shop owned by the Barnyard Builder’s from DIY network.

 In the quaint little town of White Sulphur Springs.

Past the West Virginia state capital in Charleston.

 Into Ohio.

 

 And out of Ohio.

 Into Indiana.

 

And, well, into Illinois.

Funny how we traveled 2,858 miles in nine days, and a mile from our house, one of my deer is waiting for me.

 I know we just got home, but Honey, I’m ready to go again!

Spring Vacation 2019, Day 7

I hate that life has so gotten in the way of – well – my life. Chaos continues to ensue. Perhaps if I would just write about it and get it out of the way, I could go on with it. But instead, I’m sticking to the chronological order of things and telling you about our April vacation first.

Hard to believe it has taken me this long to get up to Day 7, Wednesday, and time to ever so slowly begin heading home. I have a friend from high school who lives between Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia. Way back when I started planning this trip, I knew I had to figure out how to work a visit into the itinerary. It was sometime after that when I realized that Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, wasn’t that far out of the way.

We headed out from Williamsburg that Wednesday morning and went straight to Charlottesville. After spending hours touring Monticello (and feeling as if we’d only scratched the surface), we back-tracked the forty or so miles to my friend’s house. We had a wonderful visit.

I hope to go back again someday when we have enough time to do everything in Virginia that we really need to do.

Happy Mother's Day

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

“Woman, [a] why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

(Footnote a: The Greek for Woman does not denote any disrespect.)

John 2:1-10 New International Version

It’s Mother’s Day and who would be the number one mother of all time other than Mary. There were so many Bible verses I could have chosen to portray her the best; it was tough to pick just one. Someday I need to write a whole series of blog posts about her.

This passage, however, says so much. For starters, you hopefully noticed the footnote that I included. By calling His mother “woman”, Jesus met no disrespect, as we would take it to mean today. Instead, He probably used the term to mean the complete opposite. And then notice how He does the complete opposite, clearly stating that this is not His problem, yet He takes care of it anyway, by doing exactly as His mother has asked.

The second thing is how much we can relate to the dilemma of running out of alcohol at a wedding. Whether you drink or not, you’ve surely been to a wedding where the beer just kept flowing from the half-barrel. If there hadn’t been a couple more half-barrels waiting to be taped, the entire reception would have been viewed as a disaster.

Same thing would have happened in Bible times. Jesus (and Mary) saved the day for this family.

In thinking about writing this post all week, I’d had these two thoughts in mind. Then late yesterday afternoon, our electricity went out. Not usually a big deal; we lose power for a couple hours a couple times a year.

This time of year, however, we have water running into our basement. (I see that I haven’t written about the huge problem it’s been this year; I’ll have to write about that one day.) The sump pump has been doing its job the last few weeks, so it has been no worry. Without electricity, however, I had to spend two hours last night bailing water.

For some reason, I was reminded of that when I pictured those big water jars, picturing myself filling them. And being reminded that us mothers do what we have to do, not only for our families, but for our houses as well. It’s just what we do.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you hard-working and dedicated moms.   

(Another footnote: our power came back on after two hours and the sump pump kicked right back in. I’m no worse for the wear and should thank my husband and my brother-in-law for dragging those “jars” of water up the basement stairs the whole time.)

Spring Vacation 2019, Day 6

Yesterday afternoon, our internet at home was restored. Yeah! I still feel guilty that I see life without it as a problem. What is wrong with me? I still have a roof over my head, clean running water, plenty of food to eat, too many clothes in my closet. Which of those would I rather give up?

But moving on. Or at least moving back to our April vacation to Virginia.

Tuesday of that week, we visited historic Williamsburg. Just like with Jamestown, I had been there before, but I remember very little, mostly that there were no motorized vehicles on the cobbled streets. The streets had seemed much narrower also. I don’t know why I would have thought that as a little kid, when everything usually felt so big.

So here are some of the pictures from our day. Even though I have the internet back and could look up each of these places to give you a play by play (or look up the information in the travel guide like in the old days), I’ll save that for another time. 

And there you have it, folks. Next stop will be the home of Thomas Jefferson.