We have two track lights in our kitchen/dinning area. One of the lights is over the table and the other is over the kitchen area. They are nice modern track lights in the midst of our very old fashion kitchen. I have had to replace the bulbs, five per track, and they are expensive. Since the first time I replaced one of the bulbs, they are weird two pronged things, the tracks will intermittently go off on their own. This is frustrating, to say the least. Last night I decided to make macaroni salad, and have it sit in the fridge, to have it ready for dinner tonight. Well, both tracks decided to go out, and I just had to quit and leave the kitchen. I turned out the light switches so that both tracks could cool down. This is only one of the many fun things about this house.(Hear the sarcasim?)
It is not unusual to have a total house black out. If the air conditioning is going and I'm running either the dryer or the washer and then turn either the stove or the dishwasher on it's a sure bet the power will go out. It used to freak the boys out, but now they just shout to me, "Powers out!". I then walk through the back yard to the landlords house and flip the switch and go on with life.
Today, was like so many others, just one more frustration and obstacle to overcome. I never have had enough kitchen cupboard space here. Often I just get frustrated and clean out a few things and give them to Goodwill just to make room for the things I have to have. Today was one of these types of days. The main storage downstairs, other than a bedroom closet, a broom closet in the laundry, and the few kitchen cupboards, is the closet under the stairs that we can access in the laundry room (the room you have to go through to get to the bathroom). I have already taken stuff out of a kitchen cupboard to transfer to this closet and go to the closet to find the door closed and locked! This door stays open for an easy access to the storage and now it is shut and locked. Of course no one has the key and the screws on the knob are located on the inside of the door. I try with no avail to break in and finally realize that I'm in obsessive problem solving mode and I just need to give up!
The solution to many successive problems is to just get out the house. The boys have been couped up for a couple of days now and we just had to go somewhere that they could run and move around and have an open sky to be under. We packed up and got in the car and headed to the Sacramento Zoo. It was a really nice zoo. I'm not a real zoo/animal person, but I really enjoyed getting out with my boys and doing something different and fun. Animals are really amazing once you slow down long enough to look and observe them. I sure hope we have animals in heaven, tame ones that we can play with!
The animals were not the most interesting part of the Zoo. It was really interesting to be a Mom without a stroller, I have totally pasted that time of my life. Relief and sadness come from being past the baby stage. It's funny to be on this side of baby and toddler hood and have those nostalgia looks and feelings toward people who are there right now. It's also intersting to see families together and see how in some family there are some real domanite genes. Then there are the people who are there as couples, maybe not married maybe so, but in that "love" stage of life. The human race is so interesting to me, it's like we are all travelors, some have just gotten on the trian of life, others are seasoned rideres and others will be getting off on the next stop. We all have an important part....in someones life. We all have the ability to affect one another, either positively or negitavely. We get to choose so much and so much is chosen for us.
And then there was the bearded lady. Yeah, I know you had to read that sentance over again. We were walking toward a new area, and there was a couple who sat on a bench, the man with his hand on the woman's leg. I just kept staring at her. Could it be? Now I'm looking with my eyes crossed over to one side, so that I couldn't be seen staring. It really did look like she had a growing beard. I hope I was just seeing a shadow.
Okay, now on a different note. My Jake, he is so special to me. At dinner, after I'm done eating and his food still on his plate, he lookes at me and says, "This is my prayer," as he looks down on his food. I don't get it and say something like, "What?" He tells me he is like an animal and this is his prayer. OH, now I get it. So I tell him that it would be his prey. He cracks me up so often. When I was pregnant with him, God told me that he was blessing me by having him. I think of that so many times that I'm cracking up over him.
So here I sit writing in the simi darkness of Jake and Drew's room. We have this new night time ritual of me coming up stairs with my laptop and playing them music from a radio station on iTunes radio. Before all was settled, I needed to get Devin a blanket, and Jake had already been given the one Devin wanted. I went and got another blanket to trade out with Jake, the one he had was larger and it only made since for Devin to have the larger one. Jake had wrapped himself up in this blanket and yelled "No, I want this one". Okay, those were fighting words for me and I hollard back that he had to give it up and I would trade him the other one. He persisted that he needed to have that blanket. Devin said he would take the other one and once agian Jake has won by his strength of will. I sat down on his floor and started iTunes and then got to writing this blog intry. Wouldn't you know that the little stinker is lying there peacefully asleep with no blanket on him what so ever! It made me think, how as people we hold onto somethings so tight and just insist that we have to have it for ourselves, get it and then don't even need it. I'm learning a lot right now in my life about need. Living in such a small space I am finding that the less I have the easier my life is. Letting go of stuff and having less to manage (and someday move agian) is such a lighter load. Hmmmm, little Jake peacefully asleep not clutching onto a thing, me living peacefully with less.
Of course, I want more, that is human nature. The beauty of right now is that I can clearly see that happiness isn't in the more of life. Happiness is in having dinner with my husband and children, going someplace new, and just having them healthy and around. I want my life to be about more, just not more things, but the real more of life. More time with family and friends, more laughter over the silliness of living, more embraces and kisses, more of Jesus, more of knowing Him and following Him and resting in Him!
