Rhonda's Ramblings

On Tuesday night, I rushed home from work as usual so that I could catch the last few minutes of The Amazing Race, which is pretty much the only t.v. show that I don’t like to miss.

All of a sudden sirens are blaring, and when I look out my window, I see a couple of sherrif’s cars (SUVs actually) had pulled over a little Nissan directly in front of my house. The two sherrif’s deputies jump out of their cars and draw their guns. One of them is screaming as loud as he can: “Put your hands in the air! I want to see both hands right now! Put them in the air.” OK, no problem, the suspect can do that, right? The problem comes in when the other officer is screaming at the same time as officer #1. Officer #2 is screaming. “Turn the ignition off. NOW! Turn the car off!!”

The poor suspect has no chance from the first moment on. How can she do both? Put her hands up and turn off the ignition. Then when they told her to get out of the car, she had to do it with her hands up. The problem there? She was parked on a hill, and the car kept rolling back when she took her foot off the brake. But she needed to put her hand down to set the emergency brake.

It ended up they were not the people that the cops were looking for, though they had been involved in an altercation with the guy the cops were after. But they sure did get manhandled by the cops quite a bit while they were trying to figure the whole situation out. (The man was thrown against the car quite a bit, the whole time telling them that he had ID with him, if they would just let him get it. But they didn’t want to. They believed he was the guy they were looking for, even though he wasn’t).

It was a two hour ordeal before the cops finally let them go.

I just wanted to watch The Amazing Race. Little did I know that an episode of COPS was about to go down directly in front of my house. I really don’t feel like I live in an unsafe neighborhood. I leave my windows wide open when I go to bed at night, but somehow these things seem to happen in front of my house. (Last summer, there was a bit of an altercation that ended with a firearm being discharged.)

I still don’t know who was kicked off the race last week.

I visited my grandpa yesterday in the “old folk’s home” that he lives in. Due to transprtation issues, it is only the 2nd time that I have seen him since returning from Africa. His confusion has definitely gotten worse in the last few months, which is sad.

Most of the time we were together yesterday was spent in the living room of the Maple House where he lives with about 15 other elderly people. (They don’t live in the living room, but they live in the house.) Some of them are much more coherent and active than others, and some just sit in their wheelchair all day long. It’s not the most pleasant place to hang out…a bit depressing, really.

Yesterday, Mamie, a usually sweet-tempered woman in a wheelchair, was having a bad day. She hated everybody (except for me and my grandpa, because we are “decent people”. But she told me probably avout 15 times how much she hates everyone that lives there. “I hate them, because they told me that everybody hates me. I don’t want to play their stupid binocular games anyway. I hate them.” Reminds me a bit of jr. high cliques.

While we were sitting there, Kit along with his sister, Carrie, came to visit their mother. They didn’t do much visiting with her, since she barely can hold her head up in the wheelchair, and she never talks. But this didn’t stop Kit from talking and talking and talking. About politics and how his sister was a liberal freak and wouldn’t listen to reason. He talked about her as if she weren’t sitting right next to him. Then he went on to tell me how horrible and awful his other sister is because she never comes to visit their mother. Just what I wanted to do while visiting my grandpa….get in the middle of family politics…a family that is not mine.

My grandfather was the only male in the facility for a couple of months until John moved in. The women were all quite excited when two new eligible bachelors moved in. John, apparently is not so excited to have competition. He is usually quite friendly and amiable. But one day, he was funming. He told my grandfather, “If I ever catch you with your hands on my wife again, you will regret it.” Thankfully my grandpa is pretty easy-going and was able to laugh it off, and thankfully John forgot about it by the next day. (His wife isn’t alive.)

I don’t look forward to getting old.

~Rhonda

So, I’ve decided that the way people get jobs is through networking. They know somebody who knows somebody who knows about an opening at their company. And since I am officially horrible at networking, I don’t know how to find a job. Anybody know of any openings? Plus, my resume sucks. I don’t know how to make myself sound cooler than I really am. And I’ve been out of college 6 years, and really only had one real job. How does one make that look good?

Since I haven’t found a real job yet, (I’m waiting tables a few nights a week), I have been spending my time beging domestic. I planted a vegetable garden and lots of flowers. I made grape jelly this morning from grapes from my backyard. I’ve made lots of lemonade. And I love to bake, but since I live alone, I don’t have anyone to bake for really, which is sad. I made a cushion for my porch swing…and have made lots of greeting cards. Fun times. That’s my exciting life.

I usually am not very happy when a table comes in 10 minutes before the restaurant closes. Last night was no exception. I was ready to begin vacuuming and then go home when the party of five arrived.

Even though I was sad, I did not show it. As usual, I was very nice and polite and friendly. Every time that I went to the table they were discussing a series of articles that is currently in our local paper. The articles are the stories of a woman who spent a couple of months working with an American doctor in Uganda. I have been reading the same articles, and was going to say so, but I didn’t really want to get in a big conversation with them. I just wanted them to eat quickly and leave. But finally, I jumped in on the conversation, and asked if they were discussing the articles. They were talking about them because one of them was leaving this week to go to Uganda. So, naturally that led to me telling them that I had just returned from Kenya, and we had a good conversation about Africa and churches and community. They were very nice and I had a great time talking to them.

And they left me a $100 tip!!! WOW! I have never gotten such a hugely generous tip, and it definitely made me want to cry. I got tears in my eyes. What an incredible blessing. So, I ran out to the parking lot to thank them profusely.

I guess the moral of the story is God is good all the time. And that I shouldn’t always get annoyed when customers come in at closing time. And I should make conversation with customers…you never know what you might have in common.

So, that’s my happy news of the day. That and my sister came home to visit…but only for a day. I haven’t seen her in five months, so it is SO great to see her. We have had a lot of fun in the few hours we got to spend together. My brother and I are driving her back to the camp she is working at today, which should be great!

My computer is still broken, and will be forever probably. It’s about 999th on the list of things to spend money on. It’s not really worth fixing. Eventually I hope to get a new computer, but that won’t be happening soon. But I miss all of you and miss being involved in my online community. Don’t forget me, please. For now we will just have to live with my occasional time online when I’m at my mom’s or a friend’s house.

I was so worried that he was going to forget me while I was gone for 3 months. And then he was gone for 2 weeks when I got home. When I finally saw him he was a bit nervous and shy at first, but within 5 minutes, he couldn’t get enough of me and my attention.

He spent much of the day cuddling with me, and I am in love with him more than ever! He wins my heart over more every time I see him!

Isn’t he cute?