End of an Era

Man. Jenny moved out on Saturday. The house feels super weird. She lived with us for almost 2 years, and it worked out better than I think any of us had hoped it would. But...she got a grown up job and her own apartment a few miles away.

The experience of having a friend live with us was great, and we're looking forward to our friend Amanda moving in to the rooms Jen had rented over the next couple of weeks.

In other news, Ben turned 28 today. I made him a pizza with so many toppings that I think it weighed around 8 pounds. He bought himself a snow plow blade for our Cub Cadet riding mower. We watched the movie Eagle vs. Shark. It was great.

We also went to my family reunion on Saturday in the holler, but that's a post just on its own. It was funny and sad and heart warming. More on that later.

Legit.

So, I heard of 2 occurrences over the past few weeks that I think totally qualify as minor miracles. The first is that a woman I work with had a heart attack in her home, by herself. She was too weak to lift her hand and call 911. She was pretty certain she was going to die when she fell asleep (or passed out) that night. She woke up the next day and went to her doctor who confirmed that she'd had a heart attack. He scheduled an EKG & stress test. She went the next day to a church prayer meeting, where her youth group prayed for her. She goes for the EKG, and it perfectly matches EKGs before the heart attack. There was no damage to her heart whatsoever. Awesome.

The next is, my friends are having a baby. They've been trying to have a kid for years and have used fertility meds to help them conceive. But they totally conceived a kid while they were not taking any such meds. Stellar.

In unrelated news, The Happening is one of the all time worst movies I've ever seen. I'm happy to explain in person why you should not spend money seeing this movie.

Sunday, SUNDAY, Sunday!

Yesterday marked one solid week of my husband's failed attempts to contact our beloved, aged, terminally ill friend, Robert. He did not answer the phone, make his doctor's appointments, or come to the door when Ben pounded on it for 7 days. Feeling distressed, with images of Robert fallen down, bruised and bleeding, passed out, or deceased inside his trailer, Ben called the sheriff. He went through the details of why we were so antsy, and the sheriff's office agreed to check things out and call Ben back...but no call came. Around 10pm, I encouraged Ben to call the sheriff's office back. They told him in not-so-nice terms that they were not sending out a deputy, as they had done so many other times and Robert, who is pretty much a gun-toting nut, had threatened them.

We paced around the house for a few minutes, and decided to drop by the sheriff's office and talk in person. The deputy who we met was much more pleasant face to face. We talked for probably 20 minutes and persuaded him (since he wouldn't give us permission to break into Robert's house) to send a couple of other deputies out with us to check things out. We had to wait to meet the deputies in the AEP parking lot off of Rt. 682, by the railroad tracks so they could follow us out to his house.

That's where I had one of the weirdest, is-this-for-real style moments of my life.

While we were waiting at midnight in the Electric company's parking lot for the sheriff's deputies to take us out to our friend's house to make sure he wasn't dead, I watched a train approach the crossing right next to us at full speed. At first, I didn't think the crossing bars and lights were going to activate, but then they did, right at the last second. The conductor was caught off guard, I think, and "slammed on the breaks" of the train right in front of the intersection. Right at that second, an ambulance pulled up, lights flashing, to the far side of the crossing and had to wait for the train to go by. At the same time, some guy on a bicycle, smoking a cigarette, pedaled up to the crossing right in front of us. He pulled up beside this crappy white car and started giving the passenger directions somewhere. All this while a train is screeching, trying to slow down. And then, as quickly as it formed, the scene dissolved.

The deputies arrived a few minutes later and followed us to our friend's house. A TV was on in his trailer that hadn't been on earlier, and they had Ben pound and pound on the door. I pounded on the side of building, too. Eventually, we hear rustling near the room with the TV glow. Robert managed to hobble, shirtless and disoriented, to the front door. I thanked the deputies and sent them on their way. Ben talked with Robert and discovered that his phone was broken. We're pretty sure that Robert was unconscious for a lot of the past week, but he's the kind of stubborn SOB who doesn't accept things like ambulance rides, so we promised to help him sort out his phone problem and went home to bed.

Family in law

The inlaws visited this weekend from Maryland. It was good. My mother-in-law is writing a children's book about how she got her cat, Simon (ridiculous, I know). We had schemes of sitting down and doing some pen & water color illustrations on Sunday afternoon, but it didn't happen...because I was puking. Jenny had just been through the plague the day before, so I knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any more fun. I barfed so hard my nose bled. I deserve a medal.

The next day we went to my mom & dad's to eat grilled meats and check out their pictures of the grand canyon. The grilling was good, but the digital photos of Arizona all looked the same. And they took each picture 5 times. Then, they took it 5 more times, because they went with my mom's 4 brothers and sisters and everyone needed a shot of everyone else. So there were lots of pictures of the bleak desert, then a picture of each couple in front of each not-so-different desert landscape. And my mom and her siblings all look alike, so it really looks like the same person wearing different clothes in front of a brown blob. There were over 200 pictures. It was a marathon.

Any way, the in-laws are back in MD. I think I'm still going to draw some cat cartoons. It should be fun. Corney, but fun.

Faithfulness

I've been thinking a lot this weekend about keeping commitments to people you love, and caring for people when it's painful. We sang this song together this morning, and it reminded me of why followers of Christ will always follow him into sad places, but carry hope with them while they do.

You are the God of the broken
The friend of the weak
You wash the feet of the weary
Embrace the ones in need
And I want to be like You Jesus
To have this heart in me
You are the God of the humble
You are the humble King

Neighborhood

I did this drawing of our neighbor Robert this week. Robert does interesting things like grow habanero peppers, fire guns, and tell stories about hookers. Robert is also frequently shockingly sincere. The guy lives in the middle of dueling hells of chronic pain and severe mental illness, but still has the perspective to be grateful about so much. I like Robert.

Bad day, eh?

I felt crappy when I got up yesterday, so I called in sick, as I had felt crappy all weekend and needed an extra day of rest. Turned out to be a pretty good day. I took naps. I took pseudophed. I watched TV. I washed clothes and dishes. Good day.

Today started off way better--I felt better when I woke up, and gladly went to work, where my coworkers are dropping like flies. Anne was clearly sicker than me, but because she has a sense of obligation, came to work anyway, and by afternoon, another one of our coworkers had gone home sick. Before I left work, the lady who's kid spread her cold germs to everyone in the house asked me why everyone was edgy. I not too graciously explained that it's hard not to be when everyone has the cold that her kid passed around. (This was far from my proudest moment and I think I owe her an apology.)

Got home, at tacos, hugged Ben. The day is getting better.

Went out with friends to see the movie: Constantine's Sword. This film was excellent. I highly recommend it for 1. any Christian who feels remorseful about the history of the violence of the church, 2. any Christian who is down with just war, or 3. any non-Christian who is pissed about killing in the name of God. It was just great. I would be happy to offer all of my thoughts, but they're mostly super sad, and I have more to report on.

We were recovering from the terrible sins of the Church we love by eating eating ice cream at Coldstone when my dear, good, alcoholic friend called me drunk, asking for a ride home. I'm more than happy to let many people suffer consequences for their actions, but we were moved to give my friend a ride, so we did. I can't express how sad it is to see friends at their worst and most pathetic.

So we dropped off my friend, came home, told sick, tired Anne that she should sleep on our couch, and thought about settling in for the night, when I found a wet spot on our carpet. No leak from above...and it's really, really wet...I tried sopping it up with a towel, but the wetness was coming up from the poured slab floor, though the padding and carpet. Crap. The sump pump. Yesterday, I discovered that the sump pump had not been running, maybe all day, and had, in fact, filled to brim and begun overflowing just slightly into Jenny's office/guest room. The plug had been loose, and when I plugged it back in, it seemed to work normally. Today, I reached my hand in to see if the little floaty switch was working, and got shocked. Not super badly, but my hand was tingly for a while. The switch was not working right. I finally got it to switch on and drain the well, but it doesn't switch off any more, which means that it could easily overheat, kick off, and leave the downstairs to get even more soggy.


In short, we need to replace our sump pump in the morning if we don't want our downstairs carpet to get all ruined. Also? I think I might be staying up most of the night to plug in the sump pump and run it from time to time. I'm really, really, really hoping that the steady stream will slow to a drip and I will be able to just sleep and sleep and sleep. Yes. Sleep.

And then a brand new day which would surely be better, right?