My lack of blogging is the result of being away on vacation, a death in the family, and my finally securing a job, in that order.
SoCal
I spent the first 10 days of August in California visiting with my SO’s family. Her mom has an aging desktop computer with a slow as molasses Internet connection, so I took a break from blogging and fed my reading addiction instead. 5 books in 10 days, a new record for me. My SO, being valedictorian of the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading School, read something like 50.
It’s amazing how many books they have out there about lesbian vampires who solve crimes in their spare time.
When we weren’t reading we lounged by my mother-in-law’s pool, I went for walks, we saw the Red Sox lose to the Angels (#%*&!), we bought a Nintendo Wii for my SO’s nieces (solidifying my SO as the coolest Aunt in the world) and while we limited the little ones to one hour of Pokemon/Tomagotchi a day we adults took it over at night and golfed/bowled/played-tennis to our hearts content. Props to my mother-in-law who got overly enthusiastic trying to bowl a strike and lobbed the Wii remote across the room. Weeeeeeeee!
Doug
Two days before we were scheduled to fly home, my mother called with the sad news that my brother-in-law had passed away. After suffering through months of chemotherapy to shrink the brain tumor the he had been diagnosed with back in March, the doctors told him that his chances for recovery were slim. Another round of chemo was unlikely to change the outcome; my sister M. was told he would live another 3 months at the most. A week later he was gone.
He was buried on August 13th, nine years to the day that my sister M. lost her son Daniel to leukemia. The question “WHY?” just hangs in the air…..waiting for God to answer it in God’s own way, in God’s own time.
Please keep M. and her children in your prayers.
Job
Yes, that word up there is Job with a short o…as in bringing-home-the-bacon, working-for-the-man Job.
Although it could just as easily be JOB with a long O…as in being smited by Satan, being stripped of all one’s joys and pleasures, being a pawn in God’s battle to make a point.
But no, it is Job with a short o. The two are understandably easy to confuse.
I am now officially a “bookseller” at W*****Books (who shall be so named to skirt around their employee non-blogging policy). The store I’m working in is only 5 minutes up the road but it has yet to open, and won’t be for another month, so I have to trudge over to a city 40 minutes away and work/train in the store there. This was my first week and so far so good. The people are friendly, the pay is not as atrocious as I thought it would be, and I get to fondle and organize books all day (I’ve died and gone to heaven!). Remembering all the steps involved in working the cash register, the computer software (and the bookkeeping if I become a “keyholder”) is typically overwhelming at first, but I like helping the customers and getting books into people’s hands.
The biggest adjustment will be in getting used to the ever-changing work schedule. I won’t know what days/hours I’m working until Sunday of each week making it hard to schedule any church meetings ahead of time. This is my first week and I already missed a Ministry Council meeting and I won’t be able to help at the soup kitchen this Saturday because I have to work (that’s where the JOB “stripping of all one’s joys and pleasures” comes in).
I will do my best to keep up my blogging as I juggle church/job/life…..all I have to say is “self…welcome to the real world!”
