Fifteen Days To Christmas, And Mah ... Mah ... I Can Drive Again!

I suggested to Martha that my being able to drive starting today would be a great birthday present – my birthday is tomorrow, when I turn 29 again for the twelfth time – and she seemed a little too eager to take my suggestion. Sort of on the same principle that Martha SAYS we're not getting each other anything for Christmas since getting back into our flooded house is present enough (but that's wife code for “you darn well better get ME something”, so I already did).

This weekend was an interesting adventure. I only worked a half-day Friday because I agreed to help a friend with a vendor booth in Granville about twenty minutes east of town at a Christmas sales event held in conjunction with an annual tour of homes in that community of about five hundred people. Even got to wear a Santa hat for the occasion along with Tara and got some interesting information from the twenty-eight or so other vendors there!

Then we were on our way out – did I mention the vendor show was held in Granville's elementary school gym? – and I was on my way up some haphazardly placed steps and lost my footing on one or took two when I thought I took one, it's unclear and fell backward with a water pitcher in my hand and landed over someone as well. Just when you thought nothing could stop the announcer of the silent auction from announcing who had won the items in the silent auction, that fall did.

Praise God no one was hurt in that fall … the only bad thing to happen, and I didn't find out about THIS until after I got home, was the filter broke on our GET CLEAN water pitcher, but I was going to replace that anyway in a few days (actually on my birthday tomorrow). Only pitcher certified to take out lead – and if you've got older pipes like we do, that's essential – and thirty-five or so other impurities, leaving you awesome water! In Granville I used water filtered through the pitcher from the boys' locker room sink.

http://dmsjalvin4.myshaklee.com/us/en/products.php?sku=89099

And it worked great! Saturday morning I got a ride to Breakfast with the Boys (the last time I will have to get one since I can drive now, and there was much rejoicing all around) and the sixteen of us enjoyed French toast, Vienna sausages, scrambled eggs, pheasant and fried onions, kiwi and bananas, juice and coffee. Pastor Gerald was especially glad I arrived because the morning's Bible study includes more words in Scripture he was not confident he'd pronounce right … but let's be fair, I probably screwed up some as I have NO IDEA how seventeenth century English translated from first century Greek was pronounced.

(Trivia: “Shrew” in Shakespeare's day, contemporaneous with the King James Version of the Bible that I use, was pronounced “shroh” which is why some rhymes in The Taming of the Shrew sound off.) But the fifteen of us – Boyd was only missing because he had two funerals to prepare to sing at – enjoyed the discussion and I was impressed that I didn't think of John (the Baptist, Zechariah's son) using “every valley shall be filled, every mountain and hill shall be brought low” to connect with both his Jewish (who'd recognize the words of Isaiah) and Gentile (among them the Romans, whose engineering to make travel easier was recognized throughout the known world) audiences. See Luke 3:1-6

Sunday Martha and I both got to meet our prayer partners after first service where I read. One banner fell down before the service began next to us, and after a brunch of turkey soup and bread pudding made by LYO, Martha and I went to meet, respectively, a sixth grader named Elise and a fifth grader named Tyler and work with them on a mini prayer book and learn a bit about each other in twenty minutes. It was exciting, and our niece Josceline came home with me along with our own kids to play for a while before Sunday afternoon Story Time at Main Street Books where we'd not been in a while.

Heard from great books read by Clare (who in her words, after taking her ACT as a high school senior a second time was sick of Christmas stories – I empathize) and the kids got to make art starting from their thumbprints. All but Sarah who was really tired and when she got home rested the rest of the day on the couch next to Martha and went to bed with a fever of 103.6 and woke this morning with 101.6 and some dizziness. So she's home – that is, staying with her aunt Lesa while Martha and I are at work – today while Jeffrey's excited he can still go to school despite both their coughing and this seeming to have gone around Longfellow their school last week. Pray with me for them, and for me to get better.

I can still drive again, David