Computer Saga Continues

[There have been many days that I had a great blog to share, but now the second household laptop has gone bonkers, and I have--at best--very unreliable internet on some nights. This does not look to improve anytime soon. So I will just stick to the blog that I would share today, wonky computer or not, and leave the unsaid blogs to the space between my ears.]

I play a game with myself sometimes, when I notice that the traffic signals seem to be working against me on any particular day. At first, I tell myself that certainly they are just like any other day, maybe a 50/50 red/green or so, but I am just annoyed at something extra-traffic or something. Then I say to myself, "Alright, I'll prove it to you." So I start counting the lights and the red/green ratio. I am often amazed by how this exercise turns out: The lights are actually conspiring against me with a tremendously lopsided light count. Somewhere in my counting, of course, I think of Amy Grant's old hit "Angels Watching Over Me" (which I used to sing regularly for special music on Sundays) and the lines that go: "...a reckless car ran out of gas before it ran my way. Near misses all around me, accidents unknown. But we never see with the human eye the hands that lead me home." Then I disregard this thought as superstition and bad statistics, but still wonder underneath it all if God does sometimes--or all the time--invest in how the traffic flows for or against us.

I also play this game with cop cars, but then attribute the results to some local "Go Out and Get 'Em" Seminar which just took place at the precinct last night. It was mandatory.

Kevin and I had a dinner conversation with Girl a few nights ago where we recounted (wisely or not) the day before the day--two years ago--when I had thrown a ginormous, surprise 30th birthday party for Kev. Let's see... It was the third day in a row that I had "snuck" 45 minutes down to Fuquay-Varina to cook furiously in my sister's kitchen while she watched Girl, making appetizers and dinner for 80 people, from scratch: baked ziti, green salads, grape-and-blue cheese canapes, etc. etc. etc. I was 5 months pregnant and totally whipped. It was the hardest I had ever worked in my life, easy. I loaded up the van with all the food for the hour trip to the church (the next day's venue), leaving Girl (at two years old) with her adoring aunt and uncle for the night. My mother was due to arrive on a plane at any moment, but kept meeting delays, and was going to surprise Girl for a sleepover while Kev and I had very rare date night: tickets to a Bulls game, dinner out on the town. During the drive to the church, storm clouds heaped upon storm clouds until the inevitable happened: a whopper of a storm. I still remember pulling over at one point, afraid the puddles would consume me, and crying b/c --well, various things--but ostensibly b/c my van was being pummeled by gargantuan hail that I thought were surely going to shatter the windshield and destroy the body of my van. The racket was unbelievable, for real. Also driving in this storm, I started to receive phone call after phone call, news, after more news. Most of my relatives and one of Kevin's were delayed for various reasons, and my cousin and his wife had been in a car accident in Virginia. Then Dan and Lindsay called: Girl had very suddenly spiked a tremendous fever and vomited all over the floor. They were on the way to urgent care. I hunkered down and kept driving, knowing that weeks of food prep would be ruined if I didn't get food to the church. Kevin--who knew nothing of the party--was called and fed some story and so he started to make his way to poor Girl. Another call: the urgent care refused to take her with only aunt and uncle, they were trying the E.R. and could I come ASAP? Well, Kev would be there... but then he called. There was so much water on the road and in the air that his (older) car was continually stalling out. But the food! After about an hour and 1/2 on the road, I was almost there, if only the weather would let up. And it did. I got to the church to discover that, to my dismay, Grace Church was having its annual "Gracemart," which means giving away loads and loads of household goods for free to people in the community. Sometimes, this can get a little hairy and very busy. I pulled up to a side door with my stuff and opened the van, just as a swarm of people descended on me and started actually reaching in my car, taking things, assuming that it was all donations. I had to verbally fight them off: the saving grace was the church's administrative assistant extraordinaire, who swooped out the back door with a couple men, chased everyone off, and whisked all the food into the church before... before... something. So off to the E.R. Girl looked super-pathetic. Took her home, screwing up a lot of the cover plan for the next day and of course our whole date night. A disheartened Kevin met us at the door, back from his attempts at driving off to save his daughter. But before we could all fall asleep, Girl leaned over to Kevin, and in a whisper, delivered the news that all our relatives were in town. (She thought that a secret was something you whispered, it turns out.) As a second saving grace of the night, Kevin truly thought that Girl was hallucinating from her fever.

That was one of those days.

Yesterday was another one of them.

First thing in the morn I was faced with the fairly common task of feeding the fam and getting everyone clothed and spiffied and out the door. We were on our way to the pediatrician, b/c Boy had fallen about 4 1/2 feet out of a play tower in the yard on Saturday, and had manifested some pain in his arm on Sunday (which the advice line advised us to medicate and see a doc on Monday morn). At 8:01 I was on the phone with them and making an appointment. 1030AM: At the pediatrician and he thinks maybe 50/50 Boy has a hairline fracture in his collar bone. Plenty of toys and patience. 1130AM: at the radiologist to get the xray. Less toys and less patience, and the doctor calls us into his office to show us the buckle fracture on Boy's upper, right arm. Noon: back at the pediatrician so that they can make an appointment for us to go and see a specialist. Still plenty of toys, but patience is dwindling for my 4- and 1-year-old. 1230PM: stopping and dragging the kids into a Kroger to snag random things from the "health food" section which might somehow fit into my restrictive diet (organic jerky, organic veggie juice, raw nut and seed mix, and organic milk and fruit leathers for the kids). 120PM: at the orthopaedist (no toys, no patience left) to hold a sleeping baby and a milk-box and a clipboard full of paperwork I am filling out whilst listening to Windsor play with the only toy in the whole place that happens also to be the loudest and most annoying toy anywhere and all the elderly patients and dare devils that dot the waiting room seem to notice this as well, but what are you going to do? The first doctor says that Boy needs a sling. The second doctor tells us that he is just young enough to strangle himself with a sling. The conclusion of the interview? "Pain" and Mommy and Daddy will be the sling. Come back in two weeks, he should be better by Halloween. I practically beg for them to glue something to him (b/c I understand that his energy, sheer strength, and love of climbing is nothing to trifle with) but nothing comes of that. Afternoon: Kevin calls to say that he has a client emergency and will be spending the evening in the ER. Within a minute of hanging up, the computer that we thought we may have fixed after months of computer issues, crashes. I actually pick it up and start shaking, while simultaneously muttering made-up expletives and explaining to Girl that yes, Mommy is mad, but everything will be alright, and she may want to exit the room for awhile. An hour passes, another call from Kevin saying the his car has broken down, probably due to a bad battery and alternator and he is waiting for the tow truck with his emergent client. Half an hour later, I find myself driving the kids to the corner store, dropping off my car, and walking the kids back to the house in the 88F weather. Up hill. (What? It's true.) It is now way too late to tackle dinner and the house somehow looks like it has been hit with an internal tornado, but I grasp in the fridge: tofu, coconut milk. I get things sauteing and step out the front door to pick some Thai basil and... wait for it... I am stung. Or bit. On the hand. I don't know which b/c I never see the perpetrator but it hurts like hell. I start to panic a little b/c NC does have two common deadly spiders as well as a few snakes, I have no transportation, and a goodly bit of the emergency medication is in Boy's diaper bag, in the car that Kevin now has. I don't want to die like this, today. I ice it. My father-in-law walks me through treating it, as best he can. My mom and step-dad do some internet research and come to the conclusion that it is not a black widow or brown recluse bite. 1130PM: Kevin arrives home much earlier than we expected. Midnight: He is done eating coconut-tofu concoction and fiddling with the now-gutted computer. He takes the canned air that he is holding and jokingly sprays me with it, except he tilts it upside down and the liquid chemicals come spurting out, giving me a chemical burn on the thigh. Thus, I end the night on the side of the tub, running water (as instructed by said can) over the burn and laughing.

There is another game that I play, but this one I play with my husband. We lamely call it the Thankful Game. We usually play it on days like the one we had yesterday (and indeed, we did play it last night between the sting and the burn). It is simple. We takes turns saying aloud things that we are thankful for. It's very cheesy, no getting around that. But it really works to draw some of the poison from the sting of life (pun intended, unapologetically). It re-focuses the mind that has re-trained itself to expect the worst and to think of life in terms of the first bit of the book of Job: Satan is throwing this at me to test me. Perhaps. But if there is anything that I have learned emerging from the dark night of the soul that was the past three years of my life, it is this:

I may have felt filthy and alone, dark and desperate, sinful and alarmed. But even just barely clinging to my faith by a few ragged fingernails is a grace that I do not deserve, can not expect, and can never, ever, ever repay or be thankful enough for.