On The Eighth Day of Christmas, Smudge Number One

Seventeen years ago ...

John 14:1-11 January 2

return from Rocky Mts., Jane Fleming 9601.02

Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 6

Though I have had to stay home from Hospice today (too bad – I really wanted to start the new year off right), I needed to have the Concorde running. And it was in need, too – the rotor, the distributor cap, and the fuel pump were all cracked. It's fixed and I'm running now – it will just take a while to pay for it. This makes me glad that I'll be starting a second job – starting Thursday!

Being in Crescent City [Florida, where I grew up] for the morning, I met some people who I haven't seen in a while, Gerard Buchan, an accountant who I worked for in the summer of '91; Eric Kuleski, who works at Ace Hardware and is a town police officer – his daughter Molly's (CCHS 94) a nursing assistant; Dale Whitman, the pastor at Fellowship Alliance Church is barely holding his congregation together – they need special prayer, between immigration and economics; Bill Rohring with the AARP Tax-Aide program; Charles and Shelby Dean, whom I had a late breakfast with and who share a lot with others. I need to do a better job of that, and of sharing myself.

Tax class has led me to tax season; I begin in DeLand with on-the-job training Thursday. Be with us and our clients as we seek to serve them – and foremost, You.

[Included with this journal entry is a Post-It note from Kim, one of the home health aides at Hospice, the day's “Garfield” comic strip from which I got today's title, and a couple in South Daytona holding their newborn son.]

Today …

Figured I'd start out this year by committing myself to achieve more attainable goals and keep from trivialities, and act to avoid being treated like a kid in my own house. Yesterday culminated with the search for our laptop computer which I believe I heard about eight times in one day (and three times that in the previous weekend) before we found it upstairs at the bottom of a box. Then we needed the cord – though we have WiFi in our house now, we needed to charge it up – and I found that after enduring Martha's criticism “why isn't everything labeled” that I have heard in one form or another since we moved from the FEMA trailer before Thanksgiving. In fact, that's one resolution I have – to not take anyone's criticism personally. I've had enough of that.

But I did get a big hug from Martha when I was in our bedroom and found the cord, and Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey played heavily on the laptop yesterday after our turkey breast dinner over at the in-laws' (Martha's parents Robert and Sharon) with our goddaughter, the kids' cousin Josceline, and fellow family member Donovan. I could handle that, especially since I finally got to catch up on my Civilization II game that I used to play A LOT before we had kids! But I'm trying to get less obsessed with a lot of things, and trying to type this at my office while my fingers are falling off (not really, but the heat is not kicking in this first workday of the year, leaving where I work at a balmy 62 degrees) but not getting online as much as I have been. What's important, who's important to me now?

I don't think I have read Hendrik van Loon's The Story of Mankind beginning to end in a decade. Last time I was in Minot Public Library I checked out their hardcover edition (fifth printing, 1926) and besides some minor textual changes between that and the paperback edition I have updated to 1951 by his son (I used to have the one updated to the mid-1970s), there's also an additional number of van Loon's own illustrations. “Buddha Goes Into The Mountains” among the color plates is my personal favorite, but “How The World Grew Larger” showcasing the difference in the world view between 1250 and 1550 and “The Struggle Between The Cross And The Crescent” – I'll let you figure that one out – are good contenders for the best too. It's still one of my favorite books.

Now I need to FINISH more of what I've started reading, David