UNCLE

Today it took me over an hour to change out one duplex electrical outlet.  I rocked the ones I did earlier this week - the success of those bolstered me to try the ones in the kitchen, the ones under the cabinets.  My wrists are simply not strong enough to wrestle with 1950's grade wiring.  I can do the light stuff we use now, but the old stuff, the "real" stuff demands real men wrists.  The 1950s stuff smirks at me and says leave the man work to a man, wax the floors or something with your time.  Ah, silly me.  We do not have a "honey-do" jar at my house.  Earlier in the week, when my air mattress was still adequate, I thought "that private school education is really paying off now, isn't it?!"  Now. I wake up and remind myself that it could be worse.  There are women buried to their waists ... someone is buying and selling baby parts ... someone is wrongfully imprisoned and sleeps on a hard damp floor awaiting a horror far beyond my middle-class prissy foot comprehension.  The thermostat is set on 70 here in the Deep (swelteringly humid) South.  This morning, while I painted the louvered bifold doors that my husband re-hung yesterday, I texted back and forth with a casual acquaintance who lives in Australia.  She, just back from a lovely tour of our country, has a European holiday planned.  She may show up in Austin some day.  Maybe we'll share a meal someday.  She sent a pic her recent trips, seemed to be having a grand time with friends.
So ... I busted it this morning, put on some mascara and went out to lunch with my favorite flying buddy-girl.  We had a trip planned to Houston tomorrow to drop off someone who has an appt. at M. D. Anderson.  I woke up well, grumpy and very stiff, but well.  The Pax woke up with Cancer (again, just like yesterday). What (I ask myself) do I really have to complain about?  It's all relative isn't it?  I am trying to convince myself that I am enjoying a great adventure!  My college roommate thinks I've been brainwashed!  I tell her that my choices are to blame.  I take full responsibility for myself. (God I was really looking forward to flying tomorrow!  It's the only place where I can absolutely stay in the moment.  I think about flying when I fly ... I think about what the airplane is doing and how that compares with what I want it to do.  The airplane is responsive to my "wishes".  Lol ... everyone says flying is about being in control.  I don't think I experience it that way.  I think I see it as a collaboration with a marvelous machine.)  My friend told me about someone very close to her who was raped last week.  Her Pastor Daddy says, we could be preparing for a funeral (two actually, her infant child slept through the assault on the mother).  I say senseless things are senseless, and God is not a thirty minute sort of being ... we may never understand the sense of it.  I affirm that God is good.  I affirm that even in the most horrible of situations, His agenda of restoration may be advanced.  I know that I do not know.  I know that "things" are more complicated then we would like to believe/perceive.

My C has dropped in ... gotta get  hug while the getting is good!  And ... I'm working on not being so grouchy.  Either way, I'm done in a few days with this.  My Dad would say this is exactly the sort of thing that builds character, but not if one let's it leak out by moaning and groaning through the entire process.