After what seems an interminable stretch of warm and sunny days, this morning is cloudy and cool, and there is a rumor of this crazy wet stuff that falls from the skies (I think they call it ‘rain’). In spite of the universal cloud cover, sunshine bathes the slopes of The Mountain and illuminates the daffodil fields outside Puyallup to the delight of my eyes.
I woke at 4:50 this morning, wheezing and snurfling from my allergies, and spent some entertaining 40 minutes trying to get back to sleep, as the paper route lady with no muffler continued her plague of our street with her comings and goings. Eventually I gave up, and took solace in a long hot shower, only emerging when the water temperature began to fail. Whatever troubles may accrue in life, everything is more bearable when there is plenty of hot water.
I’ve been on-call this week, which was a source of some concern initially … I was worried that I wouldn’t know how to assign the tickets as they came in (finding who is responsible for a problem is a real challenge where I work). It has been a pretty quiet week, however, and I’ve only been paged a few times (and none at night). Today I hand off the duty to someone else, and I don’t come up for a turn again for several months.
Over the weekend I have been working on the much-delayed Wilderness Northwest 2004 Day Camp DVD, and so I didn’t take the kids on any kind of outing (except a brief walk around a nearby lake). I felt that I needed to stay near the house in case I was paged … as it turned out, this was an unnecessary precaution. If I hadn’t stayed home, though, it would be just my luck that I’d be off in some remote place and all kinds of trouble would break loose.
I have five children, but they ride like a thousand.
I’m trying hard to finish the DVD before Easter … it is rapidly coming to the point that if I don’t finish soon, the video will be of little use to Jody and the camp. Initially I told Jody I hoped to finish by Thanksgiving, then Christmas and Valentines’ Day. Easter is pretty much my last fall-back position … beyond that, kids will already have signed up for the 2005 camp session. I don’t know how movie directors can stand to cut out all those good scenes … I’m trying to cut about 40 hours of video down to about 130 minutes, and it is a real challenge.
Over the weekend we attended a seminar on preventing child abuse and molestation at church … a required seminar for all those volunteering to serve with children’s ministries. A chilling and unpleasant topic, the seminar ran from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm Saturday, effectively monopolizing the day. On a more positive note, I had the opportunity to see an old friend and mentor who preached at Main Post Chapel on Fort Lewis, and to chat with him for more than half an hour after the service. We also attended the Concert of Prayer at church Sunday night, which was a lot more fun than I expected. Joshua, Rachel and Daniel joined us and were not afraid to pray out loud in their small groups … I was proud of them.
I always brace myself on Tuesdays, because it is the start of my week, now that I am working four-day work-weeks. But it is remarkable how quickly the weekend comes along again … working only four days is a privilege I am coming to really enjoy.
