Better

If you're a person who believes in some sort of personal Divine Being, do you ever play this little head game? Something disappointing happens, and either someone says, "Well, God must have a better plan," or you think something like, "God is sovereign and things happen for a purpose, so clearly I'm supposed to learn something from this, or He knew something bad was going to happen if my wishes were fulfilled, so it's all for the best." Then you sit around mulling this over for way too long and trying to envision all the scenarios that you might have been spared from, or trying to figure out what it is you're supposed to be learning.

Here's an example:

I was supposed to fly to Brother-Dave and Sister-in-Lu's yesterday. I was going to use up my last week of vacation for the year during the last week of the year playing with TWCN and Smiley-Guy. But I live in a usually-cold, wintery northern state, and Brother-Dave's family lives in a pretty far away cold, wintery northern state. My northern state had been a little tardy as far as snowfall and winter weather, in comparison to Ireland, where my parents live, which isn't even supposed to get snow, and was having a blizzard along with the rest of Europe the day my parents were scheduled to fly over here. Closed European airports notwithstanding, my parents actually got on a plane, which actually left, and actually arrived safely in our cold northern state that hadn't had any snow yet.

You would think if it had waited this long to snow, it could've waited a little longer, until the winter festivities were over or something. But it didn't. We managed not to get a white Christmas (snow on Christmas is, of course, totally irrelevant to the holiday, but it sure makes for a lovely landscape), but the day after, we began to get a blizzard. In this neck of the woods, it doesn't even seem like it was that bad, overall. But the timing was miserable, and the short version of the story is that I am now not going to Minnesota to see my brother and his family, and my parents, who were supposed to leave today, now have to wait to fly out there until Friday, and are still working on extending their stay, re-hiring a rental car, and getting back to the house here in the meantime.

This is when someone comes along and helpfully says, "Well, God has a better plan." This is probably true, but it sure doesn't seem like it from this vantage point. There's no use in pretending that any of this is of earth-shaking importance, but if it's important enough for God to have another plan than it, it must be important enough to get kind of a reaction from the people affected. The reaction, at least from me, is that being stranded at home on vacation with nothing to do (but church history paper research, which I can't do much of anyway, because the seminary offices are closed and it's hard to find info on the Protestant modernist-fundamentalist controversy anywhere else in this heavily Roman Catholic part of the world), as contrasted with playing tea party for a week with TWCN is a weird kind of "better." I'd debate it.

Then today I woke up with a cough, which has now established itself firmly in my lungs. So--maybe it's "better" that I was prevented from going because Brother-Dave's family spent pretty much the entire time at Sister-in-Lu's parents' house over Christmas, sick as dogs. Surely they do not need to get sick again, even if it's a completely different type of ailment. But really? Wouldn't it have been simpler just to keep me from getting sick?

Maybe God's trying to grow my character, and maybe it's even working, because in spite of this rant, I'm not actually angry, as I might have been in the past--just a little put out and kind of cynical/curious about reasons. Or maybe He's trying to grow my brother's character, by giving him surely one of the most miserable Christmas/New Year's seasons he's ever had. Or maybe He's trying to show two-and-a-half-year-old TWCN that life's just not fair and the sooner she learns it the better: apparently she cried when she found out I couldn't come to visit her. I wonder how she'll take the delay in my parents' itinerary.

Well, it isn't fair. None of this is the biggest deal ever, but it's disappointing and frustrating and disrupting and . . . not fair.

On the other hand . . . This is the kind of thing that leads some people to decide there is no God, or He doesn't love us, or He isn't all-powerful, and that, to me, seems like overkill. If there is a God, it makes sense that He might not make sense. I mean, made in the image of God we may be. God Himself, we are not (in spite of worldviews that try to tell us differently). In the first place, who am I to think any of this should matter to Him, really? And if, as I believe, it surprisingly does, does that mean He's going to step in at every moment, insuring that everything about my life is smooth sailing? (Evidently not . . . because it hasn't been!) I'm not writing this to prove anything. (Fortunately, since I'm not succeeding in that.) I'm just mulling this over. And here's what I'm thinking:

Maybe somehow, in some miraculous, sparkly-snowflake, cheesy Serendipity-movie kind of way, I'll meet this amazing guy this week and be married by next Christmas or something crazy like that, or maybe I'll just be stuck here with a chest-cold and no little-girl tea-parties. But either way, I still believe God is good, and God loves me, and God is all-powerful. I just don't think any of that requires Him to wait on me hand-and-foot, or forestall any disappointments, and I don't even think there has to be a "reason," or a "better," honestly. At least, not one that I'll necessarily ever see. The world is broken, and "broken" things happen here.

We celebrate God's coming into the brokenness at this time of year. He came ultimately to fix it--to fix us--but first He submitted to the brokenness and darkness, the disappointment and frustration and disruption (do I think His leaving Heaven to hang out down here with us wasn't a disruption?), and even now we're waiting for the final "fixing." It'll come. I hope I learn something from this, even if I'm not married by next Christmas, but maybe it's all just part of living here, and maybe, with God around, even if He isn't fixing it right now, that's okay.

Duck Tales

Apparently my life is for the birds right now, as that seems to be all I'm writing about (besides Jason). Today I was escorted down my street by an eider duck.

It is more or less pouring this morning. I had just set out for work when I noticed something with what appeared to be considerably more heft than a leaf, flapping about in the puddles in the street. As I approached, I could tell by its silhouette that it was a duck. There are mallards that sometimes live across the street from me; they moved out this summer when their pseudo-pond dried up, but it's probably back now, so maybe they are, too, though I though mallards flew south? Anyway, I assumed this guy was one of them as he spread his wings.

He seemed to be having a little trouble achieving lift-off, and also seemed to have an aversion to the side of the road, and so instead he flapped along, very close to the ground, right in front of my car, as if daring me to exceed the speed limit. As if I would ever exceed . . . oh never mind.

He landed a couple hundred yards down the street, and there the lighting was better and I could see that he was, in fact, an eider duck. I'm not sure I've seen one of those in the wild before. I was afraid, though, that he wasn't going to move and I was going to end up either thwarted in my commute, or seeing a dead eider duck in the wild. Or on the road, to be more precise.

He took off again and led me down the street a little further, and then finally flew a little higher and disappeared over a house. When I got to work, Office-Assistant-MaryAnn said, "Another day of duck-weather!" She had no idea . . .

Happy October!

The wind is blowing, the rain is spattering the exposed part of the air conditioner unit in the window . . . which hasn't been turned on in over a month. The leaves are falling, the acorns are trying their darnedest to smack holes in people's windshields--or heads--and the frogs are committing hari-kari (or something like it) by leaping into cars' undercarriages. Taking Oscar for a walk has become an exercise in dodging frog-guts.

Why do I like this season so much?

Autumn--A Month Early

If you are single with no roommates and there is therefore no one waiting for you at home with a hot meal, the next best thing on a blustery, rainy, chilly day is definitely this:

Get home, slightly damp, and change into sweats or pjs or something. Feed the dog. Feed the birds. (The ones outside, I mean. I don't have indoor birds.) Feed the woodstove. Make a fire in the woodstove which, in itself, is a thing of beauty--starting with the first match, no smoke in the house, no wet wood (on account of Mark-the-Plow-Guy putting some in the garage last winter). Heat up a meal that you made the night before so you don't have to prepare anything else. Curl up on the couch with your meal and a book or a movie and some crocheting (after the meal, naturally), in front of the fire, with your feet on the dog. Finish up with a cup of hot chocolate.

The only thing--and I really do mean the only thing--wrong with this picture is . . . hey, did you notice the date-stamp on this post? August 23rd, people. I do not live in Alaska. Why did using the woodstove seem like the best idea in the world on August 23rd? If I'm writing blogposts from a permanent relocation to Costa Rica come February, you'll know why.

Acts of God

The last time just my mom was here without my dad, there were "acts of God," too. You know. Those things that insurance companies like to hide behind so they don't have to fork out any money.

None of you work for insurance companies, do you?

The last time, I was getting ready to start radiation therapy, and my mother came out earlier than my dad for Christmas, to provide some moral support. This turned out to be a good thing, because worse than the radiation was the Ice Storm that happened while she was here, and the 6 days without electricity. Given everything else that was going on at the time, I probably would've curled up into the fetal position and become incoherent if she hadn't been here.

This time she came here because her mother just had cataract surgery. Her mother only has one eye to begin with (you really can poke someone's eye out, you know), so it was kind of a big deal. The plan was that my mother would stay with Grandma Madeira for a week or so, drive back up and stay with me for the weekend, and fly back to my father and Ireland yesterday. Then that unspellable Icelandic volcano erupted. So . . . she's stuck here indefinitely, and it's starting to stress her out. Fortunately we have electricity over here this time, but all the same, she's here and my dad's not, and she has responsibilities on the other side of the Pond that she can't take care of, and . . . I'm pretty sure she's sick of wearing the same three or four outfits over and over again.

If the Milk Guy and I were interacting regularly anymore (which I wish we were, but we can't be), he would say, "Well, Jenn, Who controls the volcanos?"

My mother says she's been having similar thoughts lately, and I don't blame her. I have similar thoughts pretty often about lesser things. But we both agreed there's something about the Christian perspective that makes things bearable (or get-through-able) no matter how bad they get. First of all, there's the whole world God's taking care of--not just us; in the end it's kind of a relief almost to know that the universe does not revolve around me and my perceived needs. But more than that, it's also a relief to know God does care about us as individuals, and He knows what we need and what we can take and whether He causes the perceived "bad thing" or not, He's in it, to redeem it and us and make us whole.

I still don't think there's a way to talk about this stuff without sounding hopelessly trite, and when I used to talk like this to the Milk Guy, he always thought I was trying to convince myself that there was a bright side to situations where there isn't one. Sometimes I probably do that. But I do think it's true all the same. Maybe God did and maybe God didn't set off that volcano Himself. Either way, though, He is in control of the volcanoes, and He knows our times and our seasons and what we (and those around us) really need. I think it's Him, actually . . .

Swords into Ploughshares

Clearly when God inspired Isaiah to write the fourth verse of his second chapter (in whatever way He did it), the image was meant to be one of reconciliation and peace. Leave it to me to turn gardening into a contact sport.

So we've had a lot of rain lately, but also a lot of sun, and last week it even got kind of warm for a while, so I've been trying my hand at the gardening thing. On Wednesday I decided to go into the bracken at the side of the house and see if I could dig up some ancient compost from when my parents used to live here and tried composting, before the composter self-destructed.

What I should have done:

Gone into the garage, retrieved some shears, hacked myself a path. But no. That would have been both too easy and too much work. Instead, even though I was wearing shorts (on account of not being able to find the jeans I dedicated to gardening last year) and even though most of the previously-mentioned bracken is actually brambles, I decided to forge ahead, pathless.

Keep in mind that not only was the brambly bracken pretty dense, but also, my destination was on a slope, and I had, somehow, to wrest the remainder of composter off the remainder of compost. This was a little tricky, but I managed, and then I came up with the bright idea that the composter lid could be placed on top of the bracken so as to protect my exposed legs and make walking easier.

This might have been a good idea in theory. It was a terrible one in practice. The lid was smooth and therefore slippery, and my sneakers are about six years old and have been walked in pretty consistently, therefore lacking anything resembling traction. I stepped on this lid, set to the compost with my shovel, and suddenly went flying. If I remember correctly, both feet shot into the air (though that might be a later addition in my head). In any case, a nice long blackberry shoot slashed the back of my leg, and the ribs on my right side smashed, as I pitched down the slope, into the side of a tree at the bottom of it.

I didn't bother to get them checked out. They don't do anything for ribs anyway. I did disinfect the scratch. A few days later I was at Camp Selah helping with a clean-up day. Raking is tough on bruised ribs. But at least I managed to stay upright on all those pine needles.

Weather? Or Not. Oh, Definitely Weather.

While the UK and Ireland, as well as Washington DC, have been having levels of snow this year that surprise, baffle and maybe even sometimes terrify them, we in New England have been having what we call "a mild winter." This doesn't mean we're not getting any snow. We are. It just means we can handle it. You can tell it's a mild winter when all the teachers you know complain about not having enough snow days (and when, two days after their February vacation, they're still saying, "I hope we get a snow day this week"). The two weeks before that, it seemed like the meteorologists and school administrators were teaming up to rectify this snow-day-less situation, because twice they cancelled or delayed school in advance for what were supposed to be "major" snowstorms, but which ended up being something that could only be considered major in Alabama.

So this time, when people started saying, "It's going to snow all week," you know, you took notice, but you were a little skeptical. By which I mean I was. Plus it was supposed to start snowing yesterday morning. And it didn't. It's true that last night, by the time I was about to drive over to the Other Jenn's to watch LOST together, I decided what was coming out of the sky might not be that fun to drive in by 10 o'clock at night. (We ended up watching the show from our respective living rooms, with our facebook chats open so we could "chat" things to each other like, "I knew it!" or "Ewwwww!" or "Psycho Claire!" or "Jack just wrecked everything!" or "Maybe he was supposed to do that . . . " Come on, LOST fans. You know what I'm talking about.)

This morning, however, the warnings of a major snowstorm had proved to be true. It's not that I've never seen this much snow before, although there was a lot. It's that every single beauteous flake seems to weigh 16 fluid ounces or something, so when you try to shovel the stuff? Well, let's just say I'm going to wish that professional massage the Other Jenn bought for me for Christmas which I accidentally missed the other night, was scheduled for Friday. The snow is beautiful, though, don't you think?

I suspect I may head out to church/work later in the day, but I'm going to take my time getting out. Mark-the-Plow-Guy says that it took him half an hour to get up Dead Horse Hill (yes, it's called that) with his plow because of all the cars that had slid off the road. Can I just tell you how happy I am that I no longer have a job that requires me to leave my house before 4.30 a.m. to serve coffee to people who don't know how to make it at home . . . or to people who probably won't even come into the store that early that day because of how much it's snowing? Very. Very. Happy. (I did say a quick prayer for whomever it is that had to open today.) Meanwhile, I'm going to sit here in my nice warm house with my nice warm dog and listen to the church history lectures I'm behind on.

Photos: February 2010, taken by jennwith2ns.

Global . . . Snowing

So, I know that Colorado already had snow in September or something. Maybe more than once. But they also had the biggest blizzard I've ever experienced in my life, in 2003, so I might kind of expect it.

Last night, on October 16th, it started snowing here. What.

It was still snowing this morning when Oscar and I took our First-Thing-in-the-Morning walk, and we were both probably still too groggy to do much with it, though it occurred to me to wonder whether Oscar had ever seen snow before, from his kennel in Arkansas.

When I let him out a little later, he was much more fascinated by the stuff, getting thoroughly distracted from his "Business" by the fascination of munching the cold white stuff off the grass. He probably would've tried to eat it off the whole yard, if I had let him. In which case he really would've had some Business to attend to.

The snow was mostly melted by 10 a.m., but it had stuck around enough to accumulate a little before that, and it was weird-looking. I mean, the trees haven't even finished undressing for the winter yet. They've scarcely begun. The effect was kind of like putting a slinky ball-gown on over the flannels and overalls you were just wearing to muck out the barn.

Catching Up With a Tree

Remember this tree?

I stopped taking walks sometime in October, and only started up again the day I talked to Pagan-Jerry, who lives in the opposite direction of the tree. Yesterday I remembered how I had hypothesised about what would happen to it if a really big storm hit. Well. A really big storm did hit over the winter, and trees that were a lot more sheltered got shredded and are never going to be the same. So I decided to walk down and take a look at it and see how it had fared.

I expected damage. I expected the yard still to have branches down in it, because everybody's yard still has branches in it. I expected huge blond gashes in the wood where limbs had been ripped off by the force of wind and ice.

What I saw instead was a beautiful, strong, straight-growing tree. Some of the lower branches were a little more disheveled than they had been, maybe. But I only saw three specks of blonde, at the very top of the uppermost branches, as if a few twigs had let go, nothing more.

Something about the sight made me very happy.

Plus there was a pair of cardinals today. Ever since college, for reasons that probably wouldn't make sense to anyone else, cardinals have seemed like a sign from God to me--that things might get tough, but ultimately they're going to be all right.

The sky is pouring its heart out right now, and it's cold. Spring's arrival is a struggle this year, like so much of everything, and I could do what I usually do and anticipate tragedy and disaster, but the tree survived the Ice Tornado and the cardinals have returned. Maybe I should stop expecting damage, as if to do so would prevent it, deal with it when it comes, and instead focus on the signs of life.

More Tree Mourning

The neighbourhood around New Church is starting to look sunny, which could be a good thing, except that the reason (besides the fact that there have been surprisingly few clouds for a week in January) is that there are a whole lot fewer trees to block the sun out.

I was driving down one of the side-streets the other day, after I had finished writing the article I was assigned about the Asian Longhorned Beetles (I'll link when it's published) and suddenly remembered one of the facts I had gleaned for the article: the ALB feels at home in at least 11 species of Northeastern tree, but its favourite is the maple.

A couple of times last fall I walked from New Church to the Milk Guy's house for a visit, and on the way I would pick up maple leaves that caught my eye to give to him. It suddenly struck me, that day this week, that if I manage to find myself walking from New Church to the Milk Guy's house this autumn? There will be no maple leaves. Not one. It kind of gives me a lump in my throat.

And then I thought: this is New England. The maples are what we're famous for. And if we don't take these trees down now, the whole New England forest could change for years to come. But in the meantime, isn't it sad that even one New England city has to be deprived of its glory? (In the case of this City, some people might argue its only glory . . . )

On the other hand, it reminds me of a City whose glory doesn't fade, and it reminds me to pray for that glory to come and fill my city, too . . .

Don't Stress the Cancer-Girl

When I first met the Nurse Practitioner at the Comprehensive Breast Center, she sat me down and said, "You seem like the type of person who's always thinking of others first, so you need to shift gears a little bit. While you're working through this cancer diagnosis and treatment, you need to just work on taking care of yourself and getting better. This time is about you. You need to have as little stress as possible."

Too bad nobody told the New England climate and global warming that.

Right now I feel like somebody put an alarm clock inside my stomach--that old-fashioned kind that jumps around in cartoons when it rings--and that in a second it's going to go off, and I'm going to go flying around the room like an untied balloon and scream my head off like . . . me when I'm stressed and nobody but God is around to hear me. Right now, I'm so on-the-edge that I might do it even though other people besides God are around to hear me. It will not be pretty.

Yesterday some girl came into Starbucks and said glumly that her power was still out, and I said mine was too, and she said she heard that her neighbourhood wouldn't be up and running until after Christmas.

Christmas is next week, folks. The power went out last Thursday.

And my father and my brother and my sister-in-law and my baby niece and my grandmothers and my uncle will converge on my mother and me and our house, and if we don't have lights? Um, excuse me? This is not okay.

I'm staying in the city for the mid-part of this week, at Pastor Ron and Mrs. Donna's apartment with them, and it's a huge help, but I never seem to have everything I need with me in the same place at any given time, and for example I realised two hours ago that I did not bring enough changes of clothing for the number of days I'm going to be here, and I don't have internet at church, and I don't have church phone numbers at the apartment, and I have two magazine articles to write, and a confirmation class to organize and two youth group events to cancel and the Milk Guy's power came back and then surged and fried some of his appliances and even though that doesn't directly affect me, it kind of stresses me out, too.

I think National Grid should have consulted me. I'm glad they got Old Church street up and running so that Old Church could provide food for those of us less fortunate and so that the nursing home on the same power line would be able to keep running. Hear hear. But didn't anybody tell them that there's a cancer survivor on my street, who's starting radiation today? And if they didn't, why not?

Fed Up

On Friday I was going to write a post that went a little something like this:

"I have decided that I think that auto insurance and health insurance plans should merge. I do not think I should have to pay more money this year for ailing anything."

I figured by this you would know that I was having car trouble.

It turned out, though, that I wasn't having car trouble. I was just stupid. I don't want to tell you what I did, because then the full extent of my idiocy would be on the internet for all to read, and I need to retain at least some self-respect . . .

But anyway, before I found out all that, and before I could whinge about it, we had an ice storm. As the Milk Guy said, "I used to kind of like ice storms. They made things all shiny."

Yeah. Not anymore. I lay in my bed all night on Thursday (after the power had already gone out), listening to tree after after tree losing life and limb. You might know I kind of like trees. I felt like crying for them. I was also scared out of my brains that one of them was going to fall on my house.

It's kind of surprising one didn't. The yard is a wreck. The road is a wreck. I would like to know why I voted to keep our state tax, when so far nothing has been done (except by neighbours) to take care of the trees leaning on power lines and the branches dangling precariously above the road. I'm immensely grateful my mom has been here during this ordeal, or I might actually have lost my mind, being in the house and dealing with this all by myself. (It hasn't been totally by myself, as it turns out, and as I will likely describe later, but it would have felt a lot more like it without Mom.) Still, I feel mighty close to losing my mind anyway. Fortunately there's a woodstove in the house, and people around who do have power, but meanwhile, we're filling up water bottles at friends's houses, flushing our toilets with water from a creek, washing dishes when we have to, showering elsewhere, and stumbling around in the dark. It doesn't look like things will get better any time soon.

I have a whole lot of processing going on in my head, but suffice it to say that right this second? This ordeal is bugging me a whole lot more than the cancer diagnosis ever did.

Plus, yesterday my exhaust system started dragging on the ground. Maybe I do have car trouble after all.

Weird Trends

Since everybody's talking about The Economy, I feel that I should get on the bandwagon (though I don't like bandwagons) and tell you how The Economy is affecting my Starbucks.

Actually, I don't know. I'm only kidding. This is a barista's-eye perspective. All I can do is tell you about The Line these days.

Last week was hot--like the time I went to India--at least, as far as I remember. Only it didn't last as long. I don't think I have ever brewed as much iced coffee consistently in my entire life. The ice machine could scarcely keep up with the need for ice. There were lots of Frappuccinos . . . but not as many as there were iced coffees. Which makes me think that either people are a lot more refined in their tastes than I thought, or they are going crazy for an iced drink to make them feel better, but they can't quite find it in their wallets to fork out for a whole Frappuccino.

Apart from the hour-long iced-coffee-extravaganza each of the hot days, no one came in at all. It could have been that everyone was at the beach or something . . . but most schools didn't get out here until this week, so I find it a little unlikely.

This week, on the other hand? Yesterday, it was as if everybody had just found an extra $20 in their jeans pocket that morning, and all decided that the most fulfilling way they could spend it was to visit Starbucks--all at the same time--and buy three drinks a piece. Today was much of the same, but they were obviously all spending the change of the day before, because we didn't sell a whole lot of lattes, but we went through more hot brewed coffee than I've ever seen.

I'm sure none of this actually interests you, but when you spend six hours of your eight-hour shift "spoodling" coffee, you'd feel the need to comment, too. (I might be exaggerating a little bit about that hourly ratio, but not too much.)

Also, this just in: although most Starbucks stores are still only brewing a "bold" option until noon, our store--yes, ours--is now being permitted, yea verily commanded, to brew it until 5 p.m., along with the usual Pike Place Roast. People will love us even more now . . .

Barrington

I went to Barrington this weekend.

It turns out there are quite a lot of Barringtons out there, but the one I went to is in Rhode Island, and is where my mother grew up. I kind of grew up there, too, because we visited my grandparents a lot, and also I spent eight weeks each of five summers living with them while I worked at a daycamp at the church they helped plant a long time ago. I didn't have a car at the time, so I guess Grandpa must have driven me to camp when it rained, but for some reason I can only remember the sunny days, when I would ride his ancient brown bike (which I still have but haven't ridden since that last summer at camp) to the church, and then in the afternoon take myself on leisurely bike rides around the local neighbourhoods.

Nobody I am related to currently lives in Barrington, but I have some friends there still, so I stayed with them. I thought I was going to feel all nostalgic, and I drove past the house where my grandparents had lived for decades. It is now yellow and not green, but there's a baby-swing hanging from a tree in the front yard, and the house looks cared for but lived in, so I'm going to trust that the people in it are the kind of people who should live in your grandparents' house if your grandparents can't and you can't. I did sort of wish I could park my car in the driveway and go for a walk in Haines Park and then walk back and have tea and danish puff pastry with my grandmother, but other than that I felt more happy than wistful about my memories and the fact that that's all they were.

Unable to park in the driveway, I drove to Haines Park instead, left my car in one of the many intermittent car-spots, and walked down to the water. Then I sat on a picnic bench under a tree, facing the water and the boats and the wind. I journaled until the breeze got too bracing, and then I walked back and drove to my friends' and had a nice time with them, too.

I like weekends like this.

Nudge, Nudge

Here is a story that's hard to tell without sounding like I'm parading my works of righteousness before men. But it does seem somewhat relevant to this post. And if you look closely, you'll see it's not about my works of righteousness at all, but about a woman named Lisa, and about God telling her something. Thing is, I can only tell you the bit I know about.

This afternoon, I had to mail my dad a bundle of papers. By rights, I should have mailed them yesterday. I busied myself with stuffing the priority mail envelope, sort of semiconsciously noticing a harried woman at the counter on the phone. As I turned around to wait my turn, I noticed that she actually had been using the post office phone and also that she was dripping wet. It has been pouring for most of the afternoon and all evening, so I could only assume she had locked herself out of her car or something. This very thing had happened to another woman in the same post office the last time I was there and it was precipitating.

I thought nothing more of this, being innately incapable of picking locks, and so I finished my postal business and drove off to run a few more errands. I had scarcely left the post office environs when I saw a figure walking along the side of the road. I occasionally walk along this particular Side-of-the-Road myself, but only when the sun is shining, and even then it's a little tricky because there's no sidewalk, and in the summer time if you edge off to avoid cars, you might end up in poison ivy. Today there was no poison ivy, but there was sure a lot of mud.

It took me a second, but I suddenly realised this was the woman from the post office. I wondered how far she had to go. I wondered why she was walking. I thought about the above-mentioned blogpost and about the dangers of picking up people I don't know.

Then I thought about how I would feel if for some reason I was stuck walking in the rain for miles, and how I would just about die for someone to have mercy and pick me up and give me a ride somewhere, but how I would know that people are just too afraid or too selfish and they never would. Five more cars passed her in my wake. But she was just a woman walking. I had this sense in my gut that I could drive by as usual but that if I did, I would never be able to stop wishing I had done something else.

So I turned around. And I rolled down my window. And I said, "Do you want a ride somewhere?" She hesitated, but not very long.

It turned out her name was Lisa, and she was headed in the direction I was going in the first place. She admitted to some "troubles," not least of which was the lack of a car, although she didn't divulge why she had already walked through about two other towns that day, in the rain, to get to where I met her.

She also couldn't stop talking about God and her finds. Just before I dropped her off, she said once more, "I was just praying, and wondering if God really hears me, and two seconds later I found this!" It was a little metal cross on a chain which had, apparently, been on the side of the road. She had also found a little trinket for her daughter. "And I thought, 'Maybe God really does listen . . . ' and then you came along, too! And the walk wasn't so bad after all. I mean, I got to spend all this time talking to God, and it was kind of an adventure."

I thought how great it is that God does listen, and how miraculous it is when He gets me to listen, too. I don't know that in the end my giving her a lift was worth as much to her as that little cross, but it didn't matter. I felt indescribably honoured to have gotten a glimpse of God's showing His presence and love to someone else. Probably this happens sometimes, when I actually get around to doing unto others what I would have them do unto me.

Leap Day

Today people were saying "Happy Leap Year." But isn't the whole year technically Leap Year? Should we have been wishing that to people on January first, instead? I prefer to call today Leap Day--although I'm still confused as to what leaping has to do with anything.

I like this day, though, whatever you call it, because you can never say about it, "A year ago today I did thus-and-so." I am going to try again to change my blog template tonight, because it seems like an even better day to do it than 2/22 did. The day itself feels to me like a hidden track on a CD, or the secret compartment in the bottom of the dresser.

I am not doing anything special on this day, really. Staying in because of weather, which has been a little par for the course lately. But still. It's a whole extra day on which to stay in because of weather. Just think of it!

Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Valentine's Day

Me, for one, although my parents sent me a really cute card . . .

But the weather, maybe, for another. Last winter we didn't have a whole lot of snow. Most of what we got came down in one terrifying blast on Valentine's Day, and I had to drive to work through the worst of it; I arrived at the store an hour and a half after leaving for it, in tears and minus a windshield wiper. It was Not My Idea of A Good Time. After my risking life and limb to serve coffee to, oh, maybe three people, District-Dan decided to have us close the store two hours early. I made arrangements to stay overnight with a church-couple in the City, so that I didn't have to haul myself back through the snow, and then back again in the morning. Fortunately the couple didn't seem to have any big Valentine's Day plans that year.

Today is, I realise, not Valentine's Day, and according to AccuWeather, we may actually see some sun tomorrow. Also, this year has been making up for all the snow we may have missed in the last decade. So maybe it's less random that the weather would be stormy right now. But I find it interesting that, just about one year out, I had to spend the night at the same friends' house so that I could get to work in time to open the store this morning. If they have Valentine's plans this year, however, I am happy to think I did not interfere with them.

We are having a "winter storm," which basically means Precipitation of Various Forms On a Rotating Basis For Approximately an Entire Day. It started with snow last night, and has been pouring down ice for most of the day. I think it may have switched to rain by now. I have no intention of actually going outside to find out.

But anyway, it is people like these Valentine's-Day-sacrificing friends who make me wonder why I would want to leave this area. Sometimes church frustrates me, but other times I think that the people I know in it really are doing just what they should be, as Christians in their respective contexts. In December, when we got pummeled with snow just about every other day, men from four different church families came over to help me shovel. It was almost embarrassing--to need the help and to ask for it and to receive it. But it was also overwhelmingly good.

The weather this holiday kind of reflects the way I feel about it (though a little less passively), but it's that same weather that provides opportunities for me to find out that somehow, and for some reason, I still am loved . . .

Upswing

Last week on my first day of work after the New Year's break, I observed that, according to the digital thermometers outside of the banks along my commute, it was 1 degree Fahrenheit. The next day, it was a whole 4. There's something about only one vertical line being lit up in an entire digital read-out that makes me feel like I'm teetering on the verge of maniacal laughter.

The good thing about temperatures like that is that when they finally get back up to freezing (32), it actually feels kind of warm. And when they hit 66, like they did over the weekend, people around here start thinking about shorts and tank tops, and they order Frappuccinos by the bucketful. Yesterday I saw a girl who had gone from thinking about it to actually doing it--and it was only 52.

Everyone knows that winter's not over. It'll come back and sock us with a big one, most likely. But in the meantime, may I leave you with the public service announcement:

No, folks. It is not summer. And we really don't actually enjoy making Frappuccinos. Also if we run out of plastic cups, it's not our fault.

Happy New Year to You, Too

I do not want to start the New Year off whining. It's just that right now the only things I can think of to say might not be viewed as exactly positive. Actually, that's not entirely true, but I feel like if I start off with the happy stuff, and then move on to the immediate stuff-in-my-head, it will sound like I'm saying, "So yeah, some good stuff happened, but . . . "

So I'm just going to go ahead and get these things off my chest:

• No airplane delay should last longer than the flight which is delayed. It certainly should not be four times as long. I don't mind airports, as long as I am planning to hang out in them for over 12 hours. But I do mind if I'm not.
• Although I began my seasoning as a world-traveler when I was two and learned how to say "Tegucigalpa," I have only just come up with the following, empirically well-tested theory: Any sleep gotten or food ingested in the process of traveling is utterly irrelevant to one's overall state of being.
• There really is stuff-in-my-head. This morning when I woke up, it felt like someone had taken Boston's Ted Williams Tunnel during rush hour, and tried to surgically implant it into my sinuses.
  
• I used to like winter. I'm pretty sure it's all past tense at this point.
  

Um. Yeah. I hope your turn of the year has been lovely, too!

Winter Wonderland

The snow began softly falling on schedule today at 1 p.m. I say softly, but there was sure a lot of it softly falling at once. My shift ended right around then, and so did Kiran's; he didn't have his car, so I offered to give him a ride home.

Here's the thing. This part of the world gets snow. Sometimes a lot of it. We scoff at Southerners who shut down entire cities when one flake of the stuff falls from the sky. But if the truth were known, we don't really handle it too well either. Here we have been hearing warnings about this snowstorm (and the one coming up later this weekend) for the last two or three days. So you would think that all these seasoned snow warriors would just hunker down wherever they were for a couple of hours and wait until a few plows had been through, and then head home after that. Leaving the roads clear so those of us who had already worked a full eight hours and had stuff to do in the afternoon could head home among the first couple of flakes. Er, snowdrifts.

But no. Instead, everyone completely freaked out (or took advantage of the situation) and left work/school/the gym early, so that probably the entire county (minus the four people who were still working at Starbucks) decided to converge on Park Ave and Main Street all at the same time.

It was nice having someone to talk to in the car for the first two hours. Unfortunately, I was on my own for the last three. I'm not going to go into the part about how when I finally got home, I had no place to park and got stuck in a drift twice and had to dig myself out both times--and then dig myself in, as it were. And how that was kind of upsetting. (Or at least, I was kind of upset.)

But I do have a theory about why "my people" up here are so silly about snow. This batch of snow really is quite beautiful. It's soft. It actually shovels pretty well, yet it's also not too bad for making snowballs. (The best part of the commute today was when a car-full of college students scraped some snow off their own car and pelted it at mine.) But here we all are--poor us--having spent our childhoods making snowmen and going sledding and having snowball fights in our ill-fitting snowpants. And then we grow up and suddenly all we have time for is shoveling and trying not to skid into somebody else's car on the way to work. It's a let-down. Snow wasn't meant to be so mundane, I don't think. It certainly wasn't meant to take five hours to go ten miles in it. I think we were all just supposed to stay home and enjoy it.