On Our Way To Crazy

You know how when you’re looking for a job, and you get an interview, you start telling people about it? And then after the interview, if you don’t get the job, you have to tell those same people that it didn’t work out? And after doing that a couple of times you decide not to tell anyone you have an interview until after you’ve already got the job, so you can give them good news instead of having to relive your disappointment over and over again?

I’m kind of afraid of that same thing happening to me right now. Not with a job, but with our house. But I’m doing it anyway.

I think we sold our house. Yay!

We got an offer on Saturday, which was also moving day. Moving day was long and hard. You know what makes a long hard moving day better? Getting an offer on your house.

It was a little lower than we were prepared to accept, so we countered. Then he countered. And yesterday, we accepted his counter. So barring any unforseen issues, we could close on our house on July 13. Which is two and a half weeks. Holy moly.

Lots of exciting things going on around this place! We are officially living in our new house. Well, kind of living. We sleep and bathe there, but that’s about it. We just got our refrigerator yesterday… we have been living on nothing but water bottles, granola bars and fruit snacks for the past few days. Our TV was also hooked up yesterday, but we haven’t had two seconds to sit and watch anything yet. Aaron has been fighting with the bathroom sink for two weeks, but he finally won yesterday so we can stop brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink. We can’t wash clothes because the new house has the wrong kind of outlet for our dryer plug.

But still! We live there! Our stuff is there! Miles is there with his incredible echoing bark! Yay!

We leave for youth camp on Monday. I am nervous. I’ve never been the point person on a big trip like this one before. We’re taking 25 kids and 5 leaders to Centrifuge in Ridgecrest, NC. I can’t wait to get there… it’s the getting us all there in one piece part that concerns me. This the first time a lot of these kids have been to a youth camp before, so I am really excited for them to experience it and to get to be there with them. Our group needs to do some bonding and I think this week is going to be huge for that. Your prayers are appreciated.

Aaron is out of town this week for the third time this month. He will get back Saturday night, giving him Sunday to rest and wash clothes before we head out again. That is assuming of course that I can get someone out to fix our dryer issue before Saturday.

Any of you guys have mad electrical skills and want to come help me out? That would be awesome.

I have got to do something about the music in my car. Things are getting out of hand.

Yesterday I accidentally listened to half of a Rascal Flatt’s song before I realized what was happening. Rascal Flatts! They make my soul cry. Then, when I changed the station, I caught the very end of “Mr. Jones”. So sad.

I heard the song “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s for the first time last Friday. I have since heard it approximately forty-seven thousand times. I liked it the first time, now it makes me want to stick bamboo shoots up my fingernails.

Country radio in Nashville plays “Long-Haired Country Boy” a lot. A whole lot. And every time I hear it, I feel the need to sing along in my best Charlie Daniels voice.

I really hate that Pink song about you and your hand. It’s tacky. But more than that, I hate that she rhymes “tonight” with “aight”. But I do like the line “keep your drink just give me the money”. I am conflicted.

Christian radio spends a lot of time hijacking songs from other genres that have just a smidge of spiritual content and adding them to their playlists. Martina McBride? Really? Yeesh. Surely someone somewhere is writing better music than that.

It’s no wonder I spend most of the day listening to NPR.

I’ve always considered myself a pretty outgoing person. I’ll talk to anyone, I make jokes that sometimes make people laugh, I know how to bring the crazy. But there’s a big difference between being outgoing and being open, and lately I’m beginning to think I’m not open at all.

I don’t really share my life with people. We have lots of friends, we are invited to parties and events and we always have a good time with other people. But something in me keeps it from going further than that. I don’t tell my friends when something is wrong. I will share other people’s needs, but I probably won’t ask you to pray for me.

This has only recently occured to me. I don’t think it’s so much that I’m afraid to let people really get to know me as it is that I don’t know how. I don’t like to be vulnerable. I don’t want to be sappy or cheesy, so I avoid telling people what’s really going on in my life.

When something happens, from trying to sell our house to Aaron’s dad going in for surgery, I never think to ask people to pray for us. I just don’t. Maybe I don’t think our problems are big enough. Maybe I know that I don’t always pray for people when they ask me to, so I don’t feel like I should ask the same from others. Maybe I don’t want to invite people in far enough to share our problems and have them ask about them later on. Maybe that’s too much of a commitment for me.

But I think I want that kind of commitment. I want to really be a part of a community. I am really good at showing up and bringing food and listening and playing games and helping out. But clearly there’s more to it than that, or I wouldn’t feel like I’m missing something.

Oh my gosh, y’all.

We moved into a new office last week. It’s located in a house. My office is a bedroom right across the hall from the bathroom.

Right now there is a little kid in there. He is probably six. I don’t think he knows I am in here, because he is in the bathroom with the door open and he is making noises no one should share with another human being, particularly human beings they do not know are are not related to.

I don’t know what to do. If I get up and close the door, he will know I can hear him and I run the risk of some kind of inappropriate adult-child something or other if I can see him. But I’m worried that a parent or some other adult is going to come down here and realize what is happening and wonder why I didn’t do something. Is there a standard plan of action for situations like this? Did I miss that day in life skills 101?

This is not good.

I’d like to take a minute to talk about how awesome I am.

We closed on our new house last Friday and spent most of the weekend painting, changing light fixtures, treating for bugs and doing other assorted home improvement projects. Then on Monday Aaron left for a week-long work trip. I had lofty goals of getting a lot of house stuff done while he was gone.

I did not meet those goals. We are in the process of moving our church offices, and that plus youth stuff took up most of my time last week. When I had some downtime, I just couldn’t motivate myself to get over there and do anything.

The Sunday before Aaron left, I painted the kitchen. In order to do so, I unplugged the (empty) refrigerator and pushed it into the center of the room. I left it there that night, thinking I would be back in the next couple of days to touch up the paint.

I didn’t go back until yesterday afternoon. I had planned to get some work done before picking Aaron up from the airport. I touched up a couple of rooms, painted the hallway, pulled up all the tape. Then I went into the kitchen.

Do you know what happens when you unplug a fridge? It defrosts. And fills with water. That leaks out the bottom of the door. And onto your wood floors.

Do you know what happens when a puddle of water sits on wood floors for a week? They warp. A lot.

It’s pretty awesome.

I pushed the fridge back and got all the water up, but the damage was done. You can’t really see it when you walk into the room, but you can once you get close. And you can definitely feel it when you walk across the room.

I am so mad at myself. If I had just gone over there for a little while early in the week, maybe I could have caught it before it got too bad. Or if I had thought for two seconds before leaving last Sunday, I would have plugged the stupid fridge back in. But I did neither, and now we have warped floors in our pretty pretty new house. Sad.

I am awesome.