First, the Facts…
Part of the reason I’m keeping up with this diary again is to have a written record of some of the things going on with us so that I have something to refer back to when somebody wonders when we did something or another. I had occassion to read some old entries the other day and was really enjoying remembering things and seeing them from my past perspective. There were days that seem kind of momentous now that didn’t seem so at the time, like when we got our wonderful little doggy! I read that I wasn’t sure if we were going to keep her or not, we were fostering her. I had forgotten that. We are all so totally in love with her now, it’s hard to imagine not being attached to her back then. It’s just so weird. Anyway, before I meander with my thoughts, I want to put down what’s been going on — the boring stuff — Saturday morning was the men’s catfish dinner fund-raiser. It looked like it was probably successful. I was exhausted when I awakened and I called my daughter to wake her up so we could go to our religious retreat planning meeting. Both of us were so tired and we tried to figure any way to get out of it, but we really couldn’t. So we dragged our fatigued butts over to the church only to find out it had been cancelled but nobody had told us! What’s really bad about that is that I’m the church secretary and post all the events for each day and STILL nobody had notified the church!!! Geez… ministry class had already been cancelled for the day so I could have slept in if I had known the other meeting was cancelled. My daughter, however, was due to work the children’s retreat, so we just stuck around.
I played on my computer and helped out the various people who came in with needs while I waited for my husband and son to show up for the catfish “dinner” (which ran from 11am-3pm). My son did his last radio show for the year on Saturday, so was coming to work at the dinner once that was over. When they got there, we had our dinners (fish was too dry and too many bones, but everything else was pretty good) then my son went to work with the other men. I love it when he does that!
My husband and I left him and went home to grab our birthday present for this wife (sort of wife.. common law wife I guess you’d say) of a friend of ours. She was turning 50 and they had planned a small meal out at a local restaurant to celebrate. She is sort of an invalid. She’s on a dialysis machine and has various other ailments so they didn’t plan much in advance for her. My husband’s buddy called us last week and invited us. I was pleased to go.
I used to sort of dislike this woman because she has no social graces whatsoever. She talks and talks and talks about her medical conditions and it’s all pretty graphic and, frankly, disgusting. She also shares very private details about her life that can make you uncomfortable when you don’t know somebody well. But, God is good and He works his “magic.” There was a time a few months ago when this lady needed rides home from her dialysis treatment because she couldn’t do the home treatment during some illness problem. Being a servant of God, I volunteered us (LOL my husband and me, but if he really balked I would have done it myself) to do the driving a few times. During those drives I learned to like her. It’s weird… suddenly her talk didn’t seem so boring (although still somewhat graphic). I had questions for her and I just saw her differently, like through Jesus’ eyes more. Don’t ask me…. things were just different and it wasn’t a chore to be around her!!!! So, of course I was pleased to go to her birthday party and was intent to be there no matter what because I doubted many other people would be going there.
As it turned out, I was right. There was only one other person there when I arrived and she was a friend of the woman’s from their 12-step program. I believe I was the only person who got her a present (another couple arrived about an hour and a half after we got there). I think the birthday “girl” had a good time and I actually had a great time too.