Whatever Lord!

In a great example of "when it rains it pours" literally, yesterday my car started acting really strange again and we had to take it to the mechanic to be looked at. We think it might be the transmission again, which luckily is under warranty.

Then as if my not having a car wasn't enough of a sacrifice for today, last night as mrangelmeg was changing the air filter on the heat pump something went wrong and it isn't working at all. We called the repair guys but they can't get here until tomorrow to look at it, so I am without air conditioning or a car.

But God is good, all the time. Instead of being impossibly hot today it is going to be stormy all day, so we should be cool in the house so long as we don't bake cookies or use the dryer or produce too much excess heat. And my son has the day off, so I can use his car for my errands.

I pray that both repairs will be easy, inexpensive and quick. Hey, it could happen!

Pax

Quick Auto Update

So my wonderful mechanic got the new transmission put in and was testing it out when the check engine light came on, so he checked around and found that I have a oxygen intake problem as well and wanted to fix that too before he turned the car back over to me so that it will run smoothly for a good long time. The extra work will only cost a few hundred more, and he can do it this morning.

I really like him for that. He never wants to charge us too much, but he also wants to make sure that everything that should be done gets done while he still has the car in his shop (saving another diagnostic fee).

I feel very safe when he has taken care of my car, and I know he only charges for what absolutely has to be done.

What is that line about the two most important men in a woman's life besides her husband are a her plumber and mechanic (I guess they don't have to be men anymore, but in my case they do both happen to be men, and are both honest and reliable and I wouldn't trust my car or pipes to anyone else.)

Pax

The car should be done today.

Transportation Update

My vehicle did in fact have a transmission failure. It will be an expensive fix, but thankfully we have the funds to cover the fix, because the alternative is having to purchase another vehicle large enough for the entire family to ride in all at the same time (a seven passenger car) which would be much more than we can afford with two girls in college, and the angelbaby entering private school next fall for middle school.

So after having to share a car with son-and-heir for a week, which he has done very graciously I might add, I should have my car back on Monday. Our only mishap was on Tuesday when I went to my internship in Indy and forgot to give him the key. He had to take a taxi to work and that cost him a pretty penny because we live outside the city limits and taxi rates are determined from the city center and not by the length of the ride (we only live five miles from where he works). He could have taken a Greyhound to Florida for a little less I fear.

I am sure son-and -heir will be happy as a clam to be back in his own car. I know I will be glad to be back in mine. I miss my stash of gum something fierce!!!

Pax

A Reflective Week

This has been an interesting week for me. It was the first week of my new semester in my Spiritual Direction Internship. This semester "the gloves come off" so to speak and we actually have to begin to perform the task of spiritual direction in a very structured and supervised environment directing our fellow classmates.

This semester also the topics go even deeper into the realm of spirituality; for instance the first topic on Tuesday was Spirituality and Social Justice. For three hours we delved into the true biblical meaning of justice and how counter-cultural it is to contemporary societies meaning of justice in many ways. It was an intense morning to say the least.

I volunteered to be a Guinea pig directee for the first session of Spiritual direction in our afternoon session. One of our instructors was the Director, and was showing the other classmates how to conduct a direction session. I was told to come prepared with a topic to discuss, so I had been thinking over the weekend about something that I have been trying to figure out for a while. I didn't expect much, since the session was only going to be 20 minutes long, but what happened was an extremely intense spiritual experience in which I was able to unpack not only why I have been struggling with this issue, but also to explore an even deeper understanding of how I see God and God's love and care for me.

By the end of the time I had laughed and cried and found a resolution to my dilemma that will keep me in a volunteer ministry that I love doing but that had been causing me great distress for quite some time, because I am doing it for the right reason, and my human, faulty gift to that ministry is worth giving.

Then yesterday as the angelbaby and I were driving to school, the car transmission went out and we got stranded on the side of the road in the freezing cold. As we were sitting there assessing our situation the angelbaby was trying to find something to be optimistic about and realized that had the car gone out earlier in the week mrangelmeg would have still been away on his work trip and not blessedly a local call away to handle calling for son-and-heir to come pick us up, and a tow truck to pick up the car and tow it to the shop.

I am constantly amazed at how many faith lessons I learn from my youngest child. We still don't know the extent of the car's problems, and may have to make a decision as to whether it is even worth it to sink a bunch of money into a 10 year old car, but we at least have son-and-heir's car to share for a few days and the girls all have Martin Luther King Jr Day off on Monday.

After sitting here this morning and reflecting on my week, I have come to realize that God carefully orders our steps. I am so blessed that I have this family that is filled with people who are so willing to pitch in and get the job done.

Next week it is my turn to be Spiritual Director for the first time. I have no illusions that I will be as masterful as my instructor was, but if I learned anything from my session of direction this week it is that anything worth doing is worth beginning poorly because you can't begin to improve unless you begin.

Pax

RIP to a member of the family . . .

Our Van Died.

Or rather it will cost way more than we are willing to pay to get it runing again, so at present I am back to playing Taxi service to my children until we can get my son another car to drive to work.

In the blessings column, nothing spectacular happened when it stopped running, it just quit on him and he made it to the side of the road without incident. Our mechanic knew someone who was willing to take it off our hands, so it is all taken care of.

Oh joy, I get to go car shopping on Friday.

Pax

This Just Wasn't My Morning

So I got up Early and got ready to take Daughter to school and go to Mass. First the garage door was frozen to the ground and wouldn't open, then the passenger front tire was low. I stopped at the gas station to put air in the tire but the valve on the pump was broken and all I ended up doing was taking even more air out of the already low tire. I was so scared of driving on it that I drove back to the house and made mrangelmeg take daughter to school.

This just isn't my day.

I went out and fed the puppy her morning meal and found that she had chewed a hole in her (pretty expensive) thermal blanket we just bought to keep her warm this winter. I had velcroed it to the floor of her dog house but she ripped it right out the first day. Now there are little pieces of the foil liner all over out there. I am so glad that she is an out door dog with all of the things she tears up.

Then, I remembered that I don't even have my computer. It has been crashing on average about twice a day so I finally took it to the shop yesterday and the nice man there said it would be at least three and probably five days before I could have it back. Five days without my computer! That will be like five days with my arm tied behind my back. I can't even sync my IPod and get new podcasts for five days! It wasn't until I was driving away from the shop that it ocurred to me that I hadn't done a sync that monring. ARGH!

Thanks to mrangelmeg, who graciously got my tire aired back up, I am not stuck here in the house all day -- and I will get a few loads of laundry done that would not have gotten done had I gone to morning mass. And I do have access to my son's computer when no one else is around (which is for about an hour a day). So I suppose even though things aren't going the way I would have liked them to go, all is not lost.

I just have to see the good in the day.

Pax

Close Moments in Cars?

It's a Cursillo thing . . . reminding one's-self to be aware of those times in the day when God is very close, so close that one recognizes that the intervention is happening right when it happens. At least I never used to think about them or be as aware of them before I went on Cursillo, but since then I am always aware of those "close moments" in my days.

Lately most of my very "close moments" have been connected with driving, or being in my car. None quite as big as this one, (thank God) but they have all been moments when I have realized that God is with me. I will list just a few to show you what I mean.

The place where the angelbaby and older sis have fencing is on a horrendously busy street and getting out of the parking lot is difficult at the best of times. Each time I leave the parking lot I am sure it is going to take me forever to get space enough in traffic to pull out, but each time I am blessed with a very large space in which to pull out. For this I am immediately thankful.

I have a very old Handspring Visor Palm OS (grey-scale)PDA that mrangelmeg got me about a year after I started working. I used it for everything back then, calendar, address book,prayerbook, brain, you name it. In fact, when I first started gradual school I even added a portable keyboard and typed my class notes into it and had a bible translation loaded onto it. Lately though I have only been using it as an e-reader with the addition of Plucker software. After the last weekend of Medieval Philosophy class it went missing and I thought I had left it at Gradual School because it wasn't in my suitcase or my book bag or my music bag. When the maintenance department at my Gradual School didn't find it I had pretty much decided that it was a write-off since I only use it as an e-reader and to buy a replacement just to do that would be way too expensive. Then just the other day the angelbaby and I were driving somewhere in the car and she was rummaging around in the junk bin in the front seat to see if she could find any candy and what should she find but my Visor!!!!! I have no clue at all how it got there. What a close moment, because I have loaded a lot of philosophy resources on it that are very handy to carry around for when I have a free moment to read (I am actually trying to understand this stuff).

The price of gas is so volatile around here that I hate to put gas in my car for fear that when I do the price will go up that afternoon. The price has gone up about thirty cents since the 4th of July. I was putting off getting gas hoping the price would go down a bit because it had actually gone over 3.00 a gallon on Friday. Yesterday I was doing laundry and watching videos all afternoon. I had to run to Walmart though in the evening and when I actually finally did get out to run my errands the price had gone down to 2.99 (mrangelmeg paid 3.01 earlier in the day). I call that a close moment. Even those few pennies saved will help.

I realize to a skeptic these will all seem like random moments of chance, or good fortune. To me though, especially since I have a very long history of having had to grow comfortable driving (I didn't drive much of anywhere until I was 31, and even then I used to get horribly ill every time I had to get behind the wheel of a car). I have always trusted God to be with me. Noticing God in these small moments of my everyday drivng experiecne are all a part of "finding God in all things.

God is good, all the time.

Pax

Nothing Funny Here: On Being Tireless, but not in a good way. . .

or tragic either though, thank God!

I had the most harrowing experience of my not-so-young life today. When I was driving to visit my mother I thought it sounded as though my tire was flat so I got out and looked at it, but there was no problem with my tire. So, I got back in and drove the rest of the way to mom's house and drove around the city where she lives without thinking about it again.

On the drive home though the sound returned, only this time it sounded more like transmission trouble. I called mrangelmeg on my cell phone and told him about the noise, and he and I discussed the situation and decided since the car seemed to be drivable I should attempt to drive it back to our mechanic at home.

When I was about a block from the mechanic's place, on a very busy street, someone motioned to me to roll down my window and told me that my tire was in bad shape, so I pulled off into a church parking lot. After calling mrangelmeg we decided that rather than try to drive it the last block, he would call a tow truck to come and get me and tow the car to our mechanic's shop.

When the wrecker got there and I explained the situation to the operator he took a look at the tire and said that for sure it was a problem with the tire. He pulled off the lug cap and three of the lugs (stem and all) fell off onto the pavement) another came off in his hand leaving only one holding the tire onto the car. At this point I was about to pass out.

He asked if I had had any tire work done recently and I said that yes I had had the tire repaired in January. He said that he wasn't sure but he thought that the tire had been put on the car improperly. To think I have been driving it since January and all that time it had been working its way breaking the lug stems right off the tire one at a time.

I must have some really great guardian angel coverage today. I didn't just have one guardian angel, I had the multitude of heavenly host looking out for me on the drive home. That last lug could have snapped at any time and I would have been tireless.

Thanks to my heavenly protectors, and the great wrecker driver, and the people who work at our mechanic's shop. I am home safe and sound. They are going to see what happened to the tire, fix it and then we will decide if we need to go after the place that did the tire work back in January. Right now all I can think about is how blessed I am. Miracles do happen.


Update: I got my car back from our mechanic and he agrees that under the circumstances he can't figure out how I could have driven the car. He says with the lug nuts out so far on the stud there is no way that I should have been able to keep control of the car at any speed. He said that he had never seen anything like that before. Luckily there was no damage to the tire at all, and everything has been replaced and they double and triple checked the tightness of the lug nuts, not just on that tire, but on all the other tires, just to be sure. That is why we always use that mechanic.

Pax

Update on Yesterday

Blessedly, they came and got my car, took it to the shop and when they got it off the wrecker they tried to start it and it wouldn't start. They were about to shove it into a work bay when one of the mechanics got in and turned the key just to see what would happen and it started just fine. Every time after that it started just fine. Thankfully the shop where I took it was run by an honest Christian man who didn't try to sell me something I didn't need. He told me that not having any diagnosable problem, there was nothing he could do for me. So I went and got it and drove it home without a problem. He checked the battery and everything he could, but since the starter worked fine every time they tried it, except that first time, he didn't feel that he could honestly sell me a starter. I was only charged for towing and a diagnostic fee that was less than a half hour of labor cost, so I think that was very fair of him, and he promised that if I had any trouble while I was still in town he would bring it back for free (not charge another towing fee).

I have driven it today and no more problem. I really think it was a blessing that I was around to observe the changes my mom is going through. She really needs changes in her meds and my sisters need more help with respite care which we are getting them through Area 7 Agency on Aging. Perhaps the wandering at night can be controlled by my one sister staying up later a night and then napping when the aide is there in the afternoon.

Like I said before it is such a dance, you get used to one set of symptoms and the rhythm and tempo changes.

Pax

Everything Happens for a Reason . . .

even cars breaking down.

Today my car broke down and I am stranded at my mom's house. I had intended to leave here by noon and be on my merry way back home. Unfortunately, due to a mechanical failure that I first thought was a dead battery because this is the first time my car hasn't been in a garage at night, but is something more serious because a jump didn't help and the electrical stuff came right back I had to have my car towed to a shop.

So, now I am here at mom's and am observing what my sisters have to deal with when they take care of my mom. Last night was a bad night. Mom didn't settle down until after one in the morning. I think she finally got to sleep at 3. I stayed awake so that if she came back down stairs someone would be awake. My sisters do this every night! She seems pretty awake having only had a few hours sleep, I am exhausted.

Her medication is supposed to keep her calm and not agitated, but she has gotten angry three or four times today over things that don't really matter. My sisters have handled it really well, but to have to take this kind of abuse every day would be extremely hard to bear I think.

Mom needs to have her meds changed for sure. Alzheimer's is such a dance, one set of meds will work for a while, and then suddenly it will just stop working. At least now we know. If my sisters are going to be able to take care of her and take care of themselves, we need to get this straightened out very quickly.

Good can be so good. If my car hadn't broken down I wouldn't have seen how really bad this was getting with my own eyes. I only hope this lesson doesn't cost me too much in car repairs.

Pax

I Found It!

Praise God, I found a car I actually a) like and b) can afford. It is a one owner Ford Taurus Wagon that is low mileage and looks great for being 9 years old.

Now if I can just go pick it up tomorrow without massive amounts of buyers remorse setting in. I think that the only thing worse than having to purchase a car is having to purchase a dress for a wedding and I am speaking of not the bride's dress, just a dress to wear to a formal wedding that I think looks good on me.

I know this is the car I want, it feels like the right decision. I am so glad I don't have to look anymore.

Pax

Haloween, All Saints, Day of the Dead, etc

We had three Dr's in the house for Halloween this year. Daughter number 1 was Dr. House, Daughter number 3 was Dr. Who (number 4 or 5 I can't remember) and the angelbaby was Dr. Allison Cameron from the show House.

Son was Samurai Jack, and Daughter number 2 settled for a plain old vampire. She put her costume together in about ten minutes.

Today for all saints the kids and I went to Mass at the Campus Newman Center because our parish doesn't have a Mass this evening for the Holy Day. It was a really nice mass. We have Dominican Priests here at our Newman Center and they have brought a very interesting viewpoint to our community.

Tomorrow I will celebrate Day of the Dead by searching for a replacement vehicle, as the insurance company has decided that my car had too high mileage for them to warrant doing the fix after all so they declared it a total loss and paid me off. Sigh. Is there a patron saint of used cars? I could sure use his help about now.

I just hope I don't end up being dead one after spending three days looking for a replacement vehicle, I am exhausted already and have only been at it two days as it is.

Pray for me.

Pax

Crisis Averted

So I took my poor battered car in to the shop today and now I am driving a rental car for the duration.

I was a bit concerned that I would have a difficult time finding a rental car in parking lots. I had visions of myself using the panic button more often than I care to think about and embarrassing my kids thoroughly because I couldn't for the life of me remember where the heck I had parked the rental car.

Well, I don't think I will have much trouble finding the car I got, it is the most disgusting color of neon blue that it practically glows. I will be able to spot it from at least three rows away!

Which just goes to show you:

God is good, all the time.

Pax

When it Rains . . .

Last Wednesday my car was rear-ended in a rainstorm. I have some substantial damage to the rear bumper, but I am fine. My insurance company finally tracked down the insurance company of the young man who hit me and I will soon be getting the damage to my car fixed, I hope.

Tonight, my dear son, who has only been driving for less than a month was driving his truck in the twilight on a rainy four lane street following my husband who was taking his mother's car to the shop, and somehow got distracted and swerved into the other lane and was in an accident. He is fine, but his truck is damaged beyond repair probably.

I feel worse for his confidence behind the wheel than for his driving ability. The poor kid only got his licence a few weeks ago at the age of 22. I think he probably just wasn't ready for the conditions.

Our agent is going to love us now. Oh well, that is why we have insurance.

Please pray for my son, that he will be able to move forward from this and regain his confidence and hopefully get behind the wheel of a car again and drive soon. I know that an accident early in my driving career scared me away from driving for nearly 12 years.

Pax