I’m sitting here quivering with anticipation of yet another day lulled by the gentle sounds of hammers and saws with the underlying murmur of strange men’s voices emanating from our kitchen. Ah, the joys of home improvement cannot be captured by mere words – they must be experienced firsthand to truly be appreciated. Yesterday saw the total demolition of said kitchen, including the proverbial kitchen sink. No less than one hundred times did I consider doing something in there last night that would have required a flat surface, such as, oh, say a countertop, only to remember that the only flat surface remaining was the floor. Needless to say, it was a long night.
It would be nice if today would rectify that situation, but the repairs today are only another step in the journey toward kitchen-hood. The falling tree that prompted this endeavor was kind enough to not only destroy the ceiling in the kitchen, but to also let in enough rain to pretty much decimate the walls with water damage. Today, they are replacing ceiling and walls, and preparing them to be painted (which we will do ourselves at a later date, perhaps this weekend). Thus, we will have another day without counters, cabinets or appliances (except our trusty refrigerator which was not damaged and will have to be replaced when funds allow).
This has certainly been an adventure, one which we would not have undertaken without the impetus of a tree crashing through our roof. We’re not the kind of people who can save money towards home improvements. We’re more the kind of people who barely manage to make ends meet from paycheck to paycheck. We’ll start to get a bit ahead when some catastrophe or other drains our back accounts, and May and June certainly provided more than their share. So, yeah, completely remodeling the kitchen would not have happened except through an act of God.
Part of the adventure has been the multitude of decisions that have had to be made in the course of remodeling. Decision making is not our forte – it sometime takes hours for us to decide what to have for dinner – so this has been agonizing. It started when they brought us this chain from which dangled a couple hundred laminate chips from which to choose our cabinets and countertops. We would settle on one pair with a sense of relief, only to have someone suggest another pairing that would also appeal to us. Then the contractor threw in the possibility of wood cabinets, just to stir things up a bit. We finally just clenched our teeth and picked something that we thought we could both live with and sell to someone else should we ever decide to move.
So, tomorrow the cabinets, counters and appliances we have chosen should be installed and we’ll finally see the results of these decisions. Our overriding fear is that what looked good on two chips held side by side will NOT look good in full-sized glory. We picture ourselves standing in our new kitchen, looking at each other and exclaiming “Yuck” in disgusted unison. I actually doubt this will occur. Even though we’ve been counter-less for less than a day, we will be too thrilled with the ability to set a glass on a counter again to worry about the color of the countertop. And don’t even talk to me about microwaves – how on earth did we survive without them!
The saga is almost over and I’m thrilled with the prospect of our lives returning to normal – or at least as normal as it ever was. I’m sure that in the fullness of time (like 10 or 20 years) we’ll look upon this time with fond memories. At this point, we’re willing to settle for survival of the experience. So far, so good, but the worst has yet to befall us. What we’re awaiting now is the “butcher’s bill” for the Battle of the Kitchen. That, more than the memory of this experience is most likely to ensure that future home improvements will also need to be spurred by disaster – unless another tree falls through a roof, we’re just going to have to live with the house, just the way it is.
It’s been a week since summer camp ended and, so far, my days have been pretty full. My worry that I’ll suddenly have too much time on my hands doesn’t seem to be coming to fruition, and that’s a good thing. Each day, there has been some reason to get out of the house and interact with people for a bit. Generally, it’s been something fun, like going to Starbucks or out to lunch with a friend. There were a couple of exceptions, of course, like going to a funeral, but overall, it’s been a good week.
The week didn’t start off so good though. On Sunday afternoon, my sister’s car died which could have been disastrous. Our first thought was that it was the transmission and visions of massive amounts of money fleeing our bank accounts filled our heads. It ended up being the axle which could still have meant bankruptcy on our part, but in a rare bit of good luck, it was all covered under her warranty. That’s to that and AAA, we didn’t have to spend a dime out of pocket.
Odd thing – we were late paying AAA because we really just didn’t have the money for the annual fees. Last week, though, I suddenly became really uncomfortable at the thought that if my car broke down, I was screwed. My car (which is NOT covered any sort of warranty) has been unwell. I kept envisioning being stranded out on one of the semi-deserted roads that lead to the campus the summer camp was held and not having anyone to call for help. So I elected to forgo making some other monthly payments (and figure out how to catch them up later) and paid AAA. Good thing, huh?
Next week, I’ll probably be pretty much stuck in the house for about three days, so maybe I’ll devote some of that time to the resurrection of my room from the disaster area it has become. Tuesday, they’re coming out to rip out the cabinets in the kitchen. Wednesday, they’re going to work on the ceiling and drywalls. Then Thursday, they’ll be installing the new cabinets and appliances. Unless my sister is off any of those days, I’ll have to be here to “oversee” these activities, remaining in the general vicinity and being available to answer questions. Not too arduous, so I’ll have no excuse for goofing off.
What is arduous is this weekend when we have to remove everything from the kitchen, including the wallpaper. It’s hard to imagine how much crap those cabinets can hold and very little of it is anything that can be thrown away (since we can’t afford to replace it with new). Wallpaper does NOT come down as easily as it would seem like it should. I suppose that’s supposed to be a good thing but when you WANT it to come off it becomes a very bad thing indeed. Naturally, when the first strips didn’t just peel off the wall with ease, I dashed to my computer and googled it for the proper way to remove wallpaper. We’re going to try the water and vinegar method today – it that isn’t effective, we’ll be off to Lowes to seek out some sort of glue loosening solution.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on a new personal website. This past week was devoted to creating the template with the navigation menu and determining the best way to embed sound and video files – some creative parts with how it’s going to look and some technical parts with how to make it work. I’ve pilfered some from my previous sites, taking the things that I liked most of them and recreating them in the new site. But really, my primary focus isn’t so much to create a new site as to try out new techniques and to improve the old ones by using those new techniques. My problem – I’m so much rather work on this than tear down wallpaper or clean my room.
Speaking of wallpaper, I’d best get off my butt and get back to it. We must have it all done before they arrive on Tuesday. I foresee the potential for frantic activity Monday night doing everything we didn’t manage to get done this weekend due to inherent laziness on our part. I, for one, would MUCH rather be working on my site. Last night I discovered how to best include sound files and I want to play with that so bad. But alas, my duty lies elsewhere, so hence I must go forth and slay the wallpaper. Blech.
Techno Camp is official over. Last night was a “graduation” ceremony where the parents were invited to see what the campers had done during their two weeks. In some cases, it didn’t appear that they had done all that much, but in those cases, the parents didn’t seem too surprised or overly disappointed. I guess they know their kids pretty well and didn’t expect miracles out of us – definitely a good thing. Overall, I think it was a pretty nice experience for all concerned, though. I met some really good kids and some obviously caring parents – another good thing.
Now, of course, I’m back to having to fill my own days with activities without the benefit of some external impetus like work or school. In about a month, we’ll be venturing up to north Georgia for a wedding, but until then I’ll be searching to things to occupy my mind and my time. I’m a little disgruntled with myself for having this as an issue, feeling that it shouldn’t even be an issue and wouldn’t be for stronger, more normal people. But I also have to recognize that it is, in fact, an issue – idleness and depression can go hand in hand with me, so I need to launch this search with gusto.
The college has been ever so kind as to provide at least one small task to occupy me – more forms to complete (again) regarding my financial aid for next year. I’m not sure why it has all become such a problem for them this year, but they seem “concerned” by how little money I have to live on, and want all sorts of documentation regarding how I’m managing such a feat. In the forms I’ve already supplied, I’ve explained that I am dependent on the kindness of strange sisters, but they seem less than satisfied and want me to complete the same forms again. Hence, my Monday next week will probably be spent parked in the Financial Aid office at the college trying to explain the complex financial arrangement and circumstances that allow my sister to claim me as a dependent, but still makes me independent as far as the college is concerned. <sigh> I anticipate that this will NOT be a fun Monday.
Assuming that I manage to get that little misunderstanding settled Monday (unlikely, but I can hope), I still need things to do. Naturally, I’ll have plenty of opportunity for activity by cleaning my room (which still looks like a rather largish tornado has had its way in here), but since that is a thankless task that I’m sure I’ll try to avoid, I’d better have other projects lined up to use as a “reward”. I always having reading as a reward, and I might start watching some of these movies that we’ve bought but I’ve never sat down to watch. But I think I do better if I have something more constructive to do.
I’ve wracked my brain trying to find something both fun and productive and I keep coming back to the same project – a new and improved personal website. Now, I need this like I need another hole in my head. As I’ve said before, I have two “active” sites that I can link to. However, the oldest site has some pages that don’t work and others that are unbearably slow to load. The newest was created for my Web Design I class and I wasn’t anxious to include too much for fear of not getting it done in time for a grade. Add to those considerations that I’ve learned a fair amount of new web design skills and it all adds up to my decision to work on this whether it’s needed or not.
Now I’ve just got to consider what sort of look I want for the site, what sorts of things I want to include and which tools I want to use for this look and those things. This, of course, involves decision making – not my forte – so I’m sure this will take me most, if not all, of the summer. That’s a good thing. It will also mean that I’m not likely to want to work on cleaning up and organizing my room. That’s a bad thing. But that’s life, isn’t it – taking the good with the bad.
The first week of Techno Camp (and, yes, that’s its official name) ended without bloodshed – a real accomplishment when you think about it. I did sort of threaten one kid with possible violence. He was playing an internet game and when I asked him to stop that and start working on his website he told me he liked bloody games. I told him that unless the next blood he wanted to see was his own, he’d get off the game NOW. That elicited a rather startled look on his part, but he did get off the game – rather swiftly, in fact. Score one for the adults. Next week, we’ll have a new group of kids to threaten, er, work with.
One of the kids asked me if I had a website and, without thinking, I said I did. She asked me for the address so she could see it, so I gave it to her. It wasn’t until she actually went to the site that I began wondering if that was such a good idea. I write pretty candidly about mental illness and all its manifestations – was that really something that someone 13 or 14 years old should be reading, especially about someone they “know?” It’s funny. I “hide” behind the Dragonrider K’Jan persona, yet I have a link to my site and my blog on my Facebook account. It’s like I’m afraid to come out of the closet, but not afraid to let people into the closet with me. Weird.
Of course, watching these kids work on their own websites got me wanting to create another personal site of my own. I have NO idea why I would want to. Over the years, I’ve created three other sites, although only two are still accessible (the folks at Road Runner lost my very first site), and they all basically say the same sorts of things. On the other hand, I’ve gained so much knowledge regarding the mechanics of building the sites that I want to keep practicing and improving my skills. While I have been working on a site for a friend – my first paying gig – it’s not the same. There are constraints to doing a site for someone else. I enjoy it, of course, or I wouldn’t be doing it, wouldn’t be training to do it for a living. Yep, I can foresee another website being built over the summer – AFTER I finish my friend’s site, though.
The next two days are going to be devoted to rest and recuperation with a hint of preparation for next week. I can see some things we can improve on so I want to write up some handouts for the kids to use as guides. In fact, my mind is whirling with ideas so I’m not sure how much rest I’m going to get. On the other hand, not having to get up early tomorrow morning will help immensely in the rest department. Noon. Yes, noon sounds like a perfect time to get up.
Hot. Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. It is so f**king hot in here. Yesterday I was just sore and tired. Today I’m not only sore and tired but drenched in sweat. Last night our air conditioning conked out. Now, keep in mind I live in Florida. You know, the Sunshine State located in the tropics with all the heat, humidity and killer mosquitoes? Yeah, that Florida. The really, really, really hot state. Okay, maybe it’s hotter in the desert states, but this is still pretty darn hot. Have I adequately conveyed just how hot it is and how discontented I am with the current state of affairs?
My sister, who apparently spent most of the day out shopping with my niece, thought it was just because the air filter needed changing and the system froze up. She crawled up in the attic, changed the filter, shut down the system for an hour to unfreeze it and hoped that fixed the problem. When I arrived home, it was clear that it was not by any stretch of the imagination fixed. I was adamant – we needed professional help and we needed it immediately if not sooner. So we bit the bullet (or the checkbook) and called out a repair personage (at their prices, the warrant the term “personage”, perhaps even “illustrious personage”). We now await his/her arrival and this darned laptop is too hot to keep on my lap any longer.
…
As usual, there’s good news and bad news. The Holy High Priest of Air Conditioning arrived well within the time allotted. He went to the compressor and prayed over it, shook chicken bones at it and performed all sorts of other arcane and mysterious rites. He finally returned and said, “Yea verily, the compressor is dead. I can make it rise again, however, for a princely sum, such as all your worldly goods.” By this point, I think I would have given him all I owned and ever hoped to own in my lifetime just for the assurance of a good night’s sleep in air conditioned comfort. So readily we agreed and he went forth to his truck and returned with the necessary parts and completed the repairs. The good news – we’re already feeling a difference in the ambient temperature of our abode. The bad news of course is the significant reduction in our already strapped finances.
I don’t care about money at this moment, though. The sweat is no longer dripping from my brow – that’s what’s important. And my dog, George, is no longer laying in misery at the foot of my bed panting from the heat (he’s just as spoiled as me) – that’s what’s important. And the money? Well, we’ll figure something out. We always do. We’ll scrimp a little here and there and try not to let our rapidly falling credit ratings hit us on the head on the way down. We live in Florida and we have air conditioning – that’s what’s important.
Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. There are these achy, tingling things at the ends of my sore and tired legs. I think they were once my feet, but I can’t be sure now. The rest of my body is okay, but from the hips down, I’m a mess. What brought this terrible state to pass, you may ask? Well, this is what happens when you take a lazy, sedentary old lady and throw her into a classroom with some middle school kids who are trying to learn web design from a Chinese teacher at summer camp. My job was to walk around helping kids keep up, answering questions and such. That meant that I spent the vast majority of the 5 hours on my feet or walking around the classroom. Ouch. I say again, ouch.
All in all, it wasn’t horrible, though. The kids were basically good, decently behaved kids who seem to want to learn this stuff. It’s a free summer camp offered by the public school system in conjunction with the college, but the kids had to apply to get in and not all were accepted – there were just more applications then there were slots to put them in. There were a couple boys who were younger than the rest and needed a lot more help (especially when they weren’t paying attention the part of the time), but even they were willing to work to keep up.
Tomorrow may be different since half the kids didn’t show up due to some mix up with the buses – we had 12 kids today, but may have a total of 24 tomorrow. That will mean that half the class will have to learn everything we taught today, while the other half will be ready to move on to new stuff. That’s going to make things interesting, to say the least. And it’s also likely to entail a lot more walking around the classroom answering questions. I guess you can imagine my reaction to that thought – ouch. I can only hope that I have enough ibuprofen on hand to deal with all the aches and pains I’m sure to have tomorrow.
Yesterday, I said to myself, “Self, tomorrow you’re going to be more productive. No goofing off. No computer doodling.” Unfortunately, today’s self is saying, “Hey, yesterday’s self, speak for yourself. I’ll goof off if I damned well please.” Yesterday’s self is all huffy now and refuses to talk to today’s self. Today’s self is filled with righteous indignation about yesterday’s self’s presumptuousness. It gets pretty confusing when you argue with yourself from one day to the next. I think this is a sure and certain sign that my summer job is coming not a moment too soon.
…
Well, it’s apparent that today’s self has won the day – I did pretty much nothing productive, useful or goal-oriented. In fact, I’m not at all sure what I did all day except that it’s now approaching bedtime and I can only cross one thing off my list – having coffee at Starbucks with my friend, Julie. Oh, and since she was able to proofread my scholarship essay, I posted that and submitted my application online. So a few clicks of a button are all I have to show for this day. Not good. Not good at all.
On the other hand, it IS summer, the season where many people take some time to goof off and recharge their mental/emotional batteries. Perhaps that’s what I’m doing – recharging my batteries. The first half of this year has been long and arduous. I went through a major depressive and hypomanic episode all while taking four classes and working 30 hours a week (and still managed to pull some decent grades – three A’s and a B+). So maybe it’s a good thing to spend couple of days here and there to just drift along as the mood strikes.
Of course, being bipolar, I always have to watch these little changes in mood and behavior, analyzing them to make sure they don’t signal a problem. And that’s a bit tiresome, you know? Every time you feel a little down, you have to wonder if it’s just normal, everyday blues, or clinical depression. Even when you’re feeling really good, you think to yourself, “Am I feeling TOO good? Is this the start of something manic?” Yeah, it can be a real drag, but everyone has their little crosses to bear. Being bipolar isn’t fun, but it could be worse.
So, having determined that I’m neither depressed nor manic, I guess I can relax a bit and just enjoy this lackadaisical mood. I have a few days to prepare for my summer adventure next week with the kiddies and not all that much that I have to do to get ready. There should be time enough to get those few things done and I’m sure I’ll be able to handle the pressures of the job better if I’m rested and refreshed with my batteries fully charged. Maybe this is a good thing after all.
Today has been a rather lazy day for me – not much accomplished but I haven’t felt particularly bored. I got up at a reasonable hour (8 am), goofed off until around noon, got ready and went to a meeting at the church, came home and goofed off again. Now it’s about 6 pm and my sister will be coming home from work soon wanting to know what we should do about dinner (we still can’t cook in the kitchen) and I haven’t given it any thought. <sigh> What a whirlwind life I lead.
During those copious amounts of time spent goofing off, I was engaged in the computer equivalent of doodling. My sister in Georgia is a master doodler – given a writing utensil (preferably a gel pen) and something to write on and she’s doodling. I’ve been known to doodle a bit myself, but I’m a rank amateur compared to her. Doodling on the computer is very different although the intent is the same – to while away some time without having to engage our brains or body to any great extent.
So, you may ask (or not), how in the hell do you doodle on the computer? Many people probably do this without realizing that they’re doodling – it’s sometimes referred to as “surfing the ‘net”. For this really to be considered doodling, however, you have to have absolutely no purpose in mind. Hours spent looking up resorts for a dream vacation is not doodling – that’s research, even if you don’t intend to take said vacation in your lifetime. To truly doodle on the computer, you have to start looking up one topic – say, resorts – and hours later find yourself looking up something completely different – say, medieval costumes. In between, you must have looked at several unrelated topics, the more the better. You don’t necessarily have to visit multiple websites to engage in doodling. There are at least three sites that I frequent that offer an abundant source of doodling material: Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia compiled by internet users who may or may not have any earthly idea what they’re talking about. I would never use it as a source for my dissertation, but it can be a lot of fun since it contains a multitude of cross-links allowing you to jump from topic to topic without any effort at all. Most of the articles also include a list of sources and external sites to give you some indication of how valid the information you’re reading is, and also give you another place to roam while you’re doodling.
YouTube is sort of the audio-visual version of this. I tend to avoid the “featured videos” but instead search for a topic that makes me think of another topic where a related video triggers yet another topic. This is where I spent most of this afternoon. I wondered if there was anything new about Andrew Johnston (who was a 13 year old contestant on Britain’s Got Talent) which led me to other boy sopranos which led me to the Vienna Boy’s Choir (with a side trip to their official site) which led me to… well I forget now, but I ended up watching video clips of Black Adder for a while.
Facebook is there for social networking but it also offers a plethora of time-wasting quizzes and pages and causes and groups just for the purpose of doodling (I took a quiz that told me that of the Star Trek: Next Generation characters, I’m most like Picard and another that told me that of dog breeds I’m most like a basset hound). Not all of them are stupid – there are some really worthy causes represented and lately they’ve had a thing for polls about some hot-topic social issues, like same sex marriages. I think the key to using Facebook to doodle is that you don’t spend any great amount of time doing any one thing and seldom are the things you do related to one another.
There is another way of doodling on the computer – it’s called blogging. Now, most days I give a lot of thought to what I’m writing about. Today isn’t one of them. I just started writing and ended up here, dragging whatever unfortunate souls happened to be reading along for the ride (assuming they didn’t give up in the first paragraph). While I have a rather lengthy list of useful and productive things I could and should be working on, I choose instead to babble on and on about computer doodling. However, I’ve run out of steam and it’s time to find another outlet for my doodling frenzy. Or perhaps I’ll actually try to work on something from my list of projects. Or not.
I’m beginning to think that I’ve developed a terminal case of writer’s block. I’ve started several blogs over the past several days only to have the ideas peter out after a paragraph or so. It doesn’t help that I’m also trying to write a 1000 character essay on my academic and career goals that’s required for a scholarship. That works out to be about a paragraph – how in the hell is someone as verbose as me going to sum up that in a paragraph. And what are my goals, anyway. I mean, at this point, I’m only interested in going to school until I die so I don’t have to get a real job and pay back my student loans. Somehow I don’t think that would impress the scholarship committee.
Speaking of jobs, though, I have a job this summer (besides the one where I goof off as much as possible). One of my professors called and asked if I would help out at the computer summer camp put on by the college. It’s only for two weeks for 5 hours a day, but it pays $10 an hour – more than my work study job paid. We’ll be teaching kids about web design, which ought to be interesting – I have this sinking feeling that the little munchkins will probably be able to teach us more about it than we will be able to teach them. It will also be interesting since this particular professor has a very, very thick Chinese accent – think Jackie Chan (the actor) trying to teach computer science.
People who know me pretty well are amazed that I’m going to get involved with anything having to do with kids. It’s not that I don’t like kids. It’s just that I don’t have much in the way of maternal instincts. My two older sisters provided me with three nieces and four nephews who have in turn provided me with four grand-nieces and five grand-nephews. I’ve never had to go about the bother of having any of my own because during the rare occasion where I might want the companionship of a kid, I usually had more than enough from their broods to choose from. I’ve got George, my dachshund, and he’s more than enough of a spoiled baby for me.
I’m not a really touchy-feely kind of person. I’ve gotten better about giving and receiving hugs from people, but I’m generally not particularly demonstrative or affectionate (except with George, of course). I’m also not the most tolerant or patient person on the planet. With kids, well, I’ve just always figured that I’m not “The Mom” so I don’t have to put up with a lot of nonsense. I sort of have this standard of behavior that I expect from people, regardless of their age. Naturally, with kids, you have to cut them some slack, but my way of cutting them this slack is to avoid them when they are not meeting my standard of behavior. Like, if they start whining, I walk away. If they throw a temper tantrum, I walk away with a look of disgust. My thought is that it’s the parent’s job to deal with this however they want, not mine – I don’t interfere with that, even if they want to just allow that sort of thing.
The weird thing is that, in general, kids will either ignore me or like me. I don’t know. Maybe there are some kids out there that hate me but are really good at hiding that from me. The “family kids” now range from 30-something to a year old. The youngest ones (5 years old and younger) all live the Georgia so I don’t get to see much of them. But the other ones seem to have generally liked me. I mean, sure they must get royally pissed off at me at times. And yeah I’m sure that they all love me because I’m Aunty KJ and I’m not exactly evil or anything, but you can love people without particularly liking them. Like I said, I don’t know. I just have always found it odd, especially when one would seek me out just to talk. Not too long ago, I had an interesting conversation with a 9 year old about the pros and cons of tattoos.
So, anyway, this all means that my two-week summer job should prove to be as interesting as it is profitable. I’ve got a week to get ready for this adventure – we’re meeting today to plan what we’ll be doing and to fill out some paperwork so we get paid. And it certainly appears that I’ve recovered from my writer’s block. I guess I should tackle that scholarship essay again.
I’m not a big fan of conflict. I know that there are some people who seem to thrive on it, but I’m not one of them. In fact, I’m more of the “Can’t we all just get along” kind of person. I’m sure there have been times when I’ve stood up for what I believe in, but I think these are few and far between (and I can’t think of an example where I have at the moment). I think that in most situations I just keep my ideas to myself and let others believe what they want. I don’t see this as a good thing about me – I see it as a weakness.
For one thing I feel that I’m too wishy-washy about things I should have strong convictions about. I sit in the middle of the philosophical road, trying to see things from everyone’s perspective. I tend to see things as too complicated, too filled with shades of gray to take a stand on one side or another. But even when I do have an opinion about something, I tend to just “go with the flow” and smile and nod and give every appearance of being in complete agreement with whomever is talking even when I’m not. No, this is definitely not one of my better qualities.
Right now, we have a “situation” in our church that is creating some conflict, and I am feeling very much trapped in the middle. It’s not a huge conflict and it certainly isn’t open warfare. But it’s something that bothers me – a lot. Let me see if I explain the problem… No, it’s too complicated, so let me just sum it up: A person that I care about a great deal has a serious dislike on for another person that I care a great deal about. Both have rather integral roles in the church which is the source of at least some of the conflict.
Normally this wouldn’t be too big an issue since (a) he doesn’t have some murderous, loathing hate for the other person and (b) I don’t expect every one of my friends to love every other one of my friends. Part of my quandary is that I fear that Person A will at some point decide that he would rather just leave the church than to try to work it out with Person B. This would be a “Bad Thing” for the church – not horrific, but still bad. But more importantly from my perspective (and this is after all “all about me”) is the decision I will face – do I follow Person A to a new church, or stick it out with Person B?
Being the type who tends to “borrow trouble”, I’ve of course obsessed about this periodically even though Person A has not indicated that he has any immediate plans to leave the church. It’s just something he has considered. I should note that Person A has been a close friend for about 10 years whereas I’ve only known Person B for about a year. But I should also note that I have other friends at this church and am rather happy there (although I’m not sure how happy I’d remain without Person A).
Reading back over this summary of the problem, it sounds like Person A is being rather petty over something minor, or that Person B must be doing something horrendous in the church to create this potential schism. The sad fact is that they are both really good men who only want what is best for the church – they just have different ideas of what that entails. It would certainly make my life a lot easier if I could see where one or the other was clearly “in the wrong.” Unfortunately, life seldom offers easy answers to the little dilemmas it presents.
So we come back to the beginning – I hate conflict. I also hate making decisions, so when I have to make a decision that is a result of some conflict I’m doubly miserable. I suppose I’ll just have to stick it out in the middle until, perhaps, some course of action makes itself known to me that might help resolve the situation. I wonder if Martin Luther had some friend in the church that was torn apart when he decided to post his famous protests concerning the Catholic Church – some poor little cleric who just kept thinking, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
Really enjoy your blog! Hope your kitchen remodel is soon done. Focus on the way it will look - maybe that'll help. (And a trip to Hawaii wouldn't hurt 
by sometime soon 
Thanks for dropping in, sweetness - it was great to see you! 
Take care of that arm, my friend, and talk to the doc if you need to... 
Just wanted to let you know I've subscribed to your blog so I can keep up with you more easily. 
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or tea 
with me 
What an Amazing world we live in 
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