Monday, March 29, 2010

Life--The Most Precious Gift

I don't want to bring anyone down today--especially on such a gorgeous day, at least it is here in Missouri. But, since I haven't felt that "whoopie" over the past couple of days, I decided to stay in and get some much needed organizing done. It would have been nice if I had taken advantage of the cold, yucky winter days to do this but, alas, I don't always do the smart thing.

I started my project in the laundry room where I have a built in shelving unit. This is where most anything that doesn't go somewhere else ends up. It's also where I keep all of our family photo albums. There was lots of dust and lint all around them and I wanted to be thorough, so I took them all off of the shelf to dust. I'm so proud of myself. ; ) Before I placed them back on the shelf, I decided to take a little trip down memory lane. I started with an album of Chuck and I when we were first dating back in 1968 and worked up to 1984 before I just couldn't do it anymore.

We lived in a nice home with a pool back then and every weekend in the summer was "pool party" time. We all enjoyed it so much. I especially liked the fact that the girls wanted to spend their time at home and have their friends over to our house. It was a fun time. But, as I looked at pictures taken in July of 1984, I began to realize how many people that were there then are gone now. Six people on one page: my mother, my step-father, my grandmother, two old friends and of course Chuck.

Yes, it's nice to have the photos and remember them as they were--healthy and enjoying life, but I miss them so much. The good news is, I was reminded (once again) how precious life is and why we should all give thanks every day for this awesome gift. We can't know how long we have to enjoy our loved ones or our own time on earth so we must take time in our busy schedules to spend quality time with family and friends.

And this is going to sound real "cheezy", but I don't care because this is my blog and these are my thoughts. Whenever the song "If Tomorrow Never Comes" by Garth Brooks would come on and I'd hear the last line which went "..would she know how much I loved her?", I'd look at Chuck and say "Yes". He did good--I always knew how much he loved me and he knew how much I loved him.

So, while we're here, we should also let our friends and loved ones know how much we love them. It feels good--trust me.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Where did my blog go?

Just a little test to see why my blogs aren't posting to Facebook.

Have a great day all!!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Hallelujah! I've Been Redeemed

Finally we have found some free WiFi in New Orleans and we have a break in our duties, so I can blog for just a few minutes.

Just a little back ground for some who may not have any idea what has been going on down here since we left on Monday. I am a navigator in the van for Missy as we deliver tools to work sites here in New Orleans. Dee, Missy's mom is now, officially, Missy's PA and doing a very good job I might add. But, because of the way the traffic lights are set up, and the road construction that is wide spread here, and a TomTom with a mind of it's own (Missy also has a mind of her own) it can get quite stressful there in the cockpit. At one point yesterday, Missy was driving with her left knee, and talking on her phone while holding the TomTom she had jerked from my hand. I decided to eat an orange--trust me, this becomes an important part of this story. We're sitting at a stop light or stop sign--I don't remember which right now, when Missy realizes she needs to go. She takes off rather suddenly, and I hear her mom, cry out from the back of the van. She had been sitting on a bucket (oh, there are no seats in the back of the van) and during our "take off" it flipped over and so did Missy's mom and luckily, she landed in a box that was behind her, or she may have tumbled clear out the back of the van. It was pretty scary. So scary, that when I realized what was happening, I almost choked on my orange. Literally! It felt like it was going to come out of my nose. Poor Missy (yeah right) she didn't know whether to attend to her mom in the back--lying on her back, or me, who was gagging and choking in the seat next to her.

I need to speed up--my battery is getting low and I really have to post something before I lose my job. I've written tons, but haven't been able to get it posted--will do that later. It will be old news, but worth the read--I hope.

At the end of the day, the 3rd day, Missy was ready to pack me up and ship me back to Missouri--Wendy apparently knows how to navigate, eat, sleep, drink and everything better than I do.

But today, March 18 (I really need to mark this date) thank God (literally), I've been redeemed. We had a God moment and it was because of my lousy multitasking skills--or lack of them, completely.

Earlier this morning, she wanted me to enter an address in to that darned TomTom just to see how far away we would be from that point to a church that we will be visiting on Sunday. In all of the chaos of getting directions to the place we were going at that time and what we would be delivering and a dozen other instructions, I typed in the wrong address--not knowing it at the time.

We begin our day, fighting traffic and road construction in an effort to get badly needed tools and supplies to the correct teams at the correct sites. That is a job I would not want every day, even if I were being paid.

At some point, we begin looking for an address across town and we can't seem go find the right house--numbers don't look familiar, houses don't look familiar and I'm more concerned that the cars on this street (Joliet) are parked going the wrong direction. I even make the comment--at home, we would be ticketed for that. After a few blocks, Missy decides to stop at an intersection and try to figure out what is wrong. When Dee repeats the address we are looking for, Missy says, "But that's not the address that is in here (the TomTom)". Suddenly, I remembered that when she had given me the address for the church that morning, I had just put in the 1st two numbers that I could remember and the last two, I kind of made up. Yes, I do that sometimes. I was only trying to get a measure for distance at that time, not knowing we would have a delivery on that same street later.

Missy gives me the LOOK. And almost immediately, she shouts, "OMG, there's the church we're supposed to go to on Sunday!!" It was right across the street from where we were sitting. The address was not even 1212, the number I had put in the TomTom--close, but not the number. And we were supposed to be at 2730 or something like that. Missy is freaking out. "Sharon, how did you do that? That's amazing!" I'm like...uh, I don't know. So she tells me to get out and have my picture taken in front of this church, that we may not have ever found because we didn't have the right address--and weren't suppose to be where we were at all. AND, here's the clincher--we realized as we turned around to go back to where we should have been, that we had driven all the way down a one way street going the wrong way!! We never would have noticed the church otherwise. I hope this is making sense to people, but it was truly a God moment for us and just what I needed to boost my morale at that moment. Missy hasn't mentioned Wendy in several hours now. ; )

She has however, dropped me off at a coffee shop to blog and I'm a bit concerned that I may never see her again. Surely she hasn't forgotten about my shining moment....