An Unfavored Day

Our true character is evident when we try to get through our day and only hit the same brick wall over and over and over. Do we keep butting our head up against it, give up, or look for a gate or a ladder? (or, all of those?)

I suppose my day really started last week when my life (and the lives of those in our homeschool group) touched the life of a woman we don't know who was horribly injured and had to be transported to the hospital in a helicopter, which used the field next to the school we were in as a landing area. She has been on my heart very much ever since. Top that off with the fact that the same day in the mail I recieved a letter notifying me that my adopted grandmother had died earlier in the week, not unexpectedly, but still final. And so I have been emotionally exhausted.

G woke me up at the usual o'dark hour and I was tired. I had not slept well, but did not remember why until later in the day. My friend had brought me some fantastic grapes Saturday and I should have made grape juice of them Sunday, but had too much work to do, having taken Saturday off to rest. So I had called L on Sunday to see if she would come help me, and she said she would come Monday afternoon.

So I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen. It took a good portion of the morning, finding all I needed and washing jars... During lunch L called and said she couldn't come until evening, as she had forgotten she had lessons in the afternoon. Oh, well, K would help. I needed sugar and lids, and so was planning to go to Safeway, but K wanted to come, so I found things to do until he was ready. And then there's always the "while I'm there we also need...". I had almost bought some stew meat the other day, thinking that sounded really good on these cool, rainy days, so I found a lesser expensive roast (nothing at Safeway could ever be called cheap these days, especially beef!) and had the butcher cut it into stew meat for me--did you know they would do that? Saved me a lot of time and fingers. But they had no canning lids. So we went over to BiMart...no lids there either, unless you bought jars to go with them. (I have no shortage of jars, some dating back half a century!!)

So I'm standing in the aisle at BiMart, my eyes filling with tears, thinking of those lovely grapes. Then I remember that L probably has lids left over from canning peaches last year. So I go home, call her and ask...I have a key, so I go over and sure enough, lots of lids. While I'm there I nab her canner (which turned out to be MY canner) but it has no basket, and in my cursory scan of her garage, I see no baskets. So I get home and start washing grapes to put in jars...but as I'm getting ready to put the jars in the canner, I realize I don't have any baskets either (you know, the wire frames that keep the jars from 1) sitting on the bottom of the canner where they will get too hot and break and 2) banging together and breaking during the boiling process). So I call and leave L a message that when she comes, she needs to bring the wire baskets, as I left them all at her house when we canned peaches...and wide mouth bands too, please.

So I start the stew, thinking at least I can accomplish SOMETHING. The meat is cooking, but when I look in the fridge, the only onion is inedible...and there is no celery...and, as a last resort I check the garlic, but that also is moldy. WAH! So I go to the office to lament to G, and L calls and says she doesn't know where J put those things when he cleaned the garage. And I ask G if he will get me some onion and celery, as I'm pretty much exhausted and don't want to inadvertantly kill someone (yup, I'm in a fine state of mind--even though this whole time, there is that little thought in the back of my head, 'you really do have it very easy'--yup, when I can cry about not finding canning lids at BiMart, I know I'm absolutely spoiled!). Gary clearly does not want to go get onions and celery. So I just pack it in. There is no way past this brick wall. The grapes will not wait one more day. I have no guarantee that L will be able to find those racks...The way my day is going, if I stood there and washed all the grapes and put them in jars in anticipation, she would not be able to come....and even if I made the grape juice in concentrate form, I would have no way to store it unless I put it in bags and froze it.

So I went to bed. Gave up. Finally, G consented to getting celery and onion, and I got my stew going...And then, as I was nibbling on a roll, I realized why I did not sleep well. I had had nightmares about losing K. And I had had my recurring nightmare of my teeth falling to pieces and me spitting them out in little bits. And I realized that a molar I had broken a third off last spring and had a temporary filling in, about which the dentist's office called last week to ask if I wanted to make an appointment to get that crown--that molar was missing its temporary filling. Either I had spit it out during my nightmare last night, or I just swallowed it with that bite of roll. Fun.

But the ladder over my wall finally came in the form of L, carrying another canner, every rack I owned, more lids and a box of bands.

We got all the grapes processed, no one died, and my precious L once again saved the day, tired as she was as well.

Of course, K did not want to go to sleep last night. He has been having nightmares about who knows what, he won't say. Monsters I suspect, as he won't come down off his bed at times. So I taught him how to change the dreams, and I also gave him my secret sleeping weapon from when I was little. I told him to ask Jesus to come hold him in His arms, and then K could sleep and not worry, becuae Jesus would not let anything bad happen to him. Then I took some of my own advice. I think I slept clear through the night.

(side note: when I went to get that tooth refilled, the dentist said I had broken more of that tooth off as well, which is probably what I was spitting out in the middle of the night, and probably is now buried deep in the carpet.)