Relying on the kindness of strangers

It just occurred to me today that people are sometimes nice...just because. In this season of Lent, and particularly today when things feel hugely overwhelming, I have to self-highlight things that people do that I want to mirror in my own behavior. And it was something as simple as flashing headlights. I had the car all loaded up to take some stuff to Goodwill. I was a woman on a mission yesterday. What started out as a search for empty boxes to throw away for trash day turned into a mini garage sweep. In just under two hours, I got half of the garage pared down to what we actually need. I was pretty proud of myself. I got the back of the Yukon all filled up, took a picture for posterity...ok, not really :) but for tax purposes. It helps me organize the It's Deductible program better. I headed over to Goodwill where I dropped everything off. I took a different way home, one that sort of weaves through the back of our neighborhood. As I make a turn, someone coming towards me is flashing her headlights furiously. I looked at the speedometer. Check. Everything is good. I can see the patrol car sitting in the shade and when I first look, it's pretty well hidden. Then a second car coming towards me does the same thing. At this point, I haven't really given their charity much thought. Further down the road and closer to home, I am on the phone and hang up. As I hang up, I notice another patrol car at a stop light. GREAT I think to myself. This is a notorious spot that some ladies on the local Austin board of BBC (my favorite website) have talked about getting a ticket when only going 2 miles over the speed limit. Why? Because this is in front of a school. But it's not the flashing yellow light time of day. It's about 10:30 a.m. I look at my speedometer again. I'm going 33mph in a 30mph zone. Uh oh. I slow down as soon as I notice the problem and wait for those lights to swirl around. It doesn't happen. Over in the grassy median is the other officer with his motorcycle. Turns out the two of them are chattin' it up. They didn't even have the radar gun pointed at anyone. I seriously dodged a bullet. I've never gotten a speeding ticket...or any ticket - ok, well, there was that one I got on campus years ago for parking without the right permit. But moving violations...I haven't gotten any of those.

The speed traps in Austin are ridiculous to say the least. But keeping things in perspective, I realize that things could have been a lot worse. On the heels of lots of sick kids, lots of visitors in the house and projects going left and right, I'm just glad I didn't have to add this to my list of things to deal with. I love spring, but with it comes a lot of decluttering. With that comes a lot of dealing with stuff that hasn't been dealt with in a while. It's good to get things taken care of, but at the same time, the old saying 'when it rains it pours' is the bitter truth. I like the idea of knowing I'll have a clean garage soon or that the kids' rooms are almost complete or that we'll get to do some shopping for new light fixtures, but getting to that good feeling means going through a lot of yuck in the meantime.

Lent is definitely a time for me to carry my cross more dilligently. I don't always do it quietly and that, in and of itself is my cross. I have to work hard at catching myself when I don't carry it quietly. I try not to complain too much, but sometimes it's honestly just that hard.

I think Lent to a more specific thought will be the topic of my next post. In the meantime, I am just glad someone was nice enough to flash their headlights for me. I'm a huge proponent of paying it forward, so I'll be looking forward to doing something nice for someone else very soon.

I think we may have the ugliest wallpaper...ever!

So, we finally bit the bullet and hired professionals to paint Jonathan's (and Drew's) room. Jonathan had wanted some outrageous color schemes for his room including black, but we finally settled on orange...two shades of orange. I want tangerines when I walk in his room now, lol. I got the paint for both the girls' and boys' room, but we admitted defeat after the girls' room because of all the ridiculous taping for the moulding, chair railing and picture moulding. It was just too much. It came down to $ vs. time. Time won out and I brought in a paint company to give us an estimate for the room as well as a couple other projects we wanted to look over and factor into our "I'm sick and tired of looking at it" budget. The bathroom was one of those rooms. Our bathroom. Why on God's green earth wallpaper was ever popular is beyond me, but we had three rooms with it. The kitchy kitchen with its PT Barnum and Bailey circus look, our master bath with the worst and largest print blue French toile and the kids' bathroom. We opted to do both the bathroom and Jonathan's bedroom at the same time. As I sit here, they are now putting up the primer for the paint. I am SOOOO glad we didn't decide to do it ourself. We'd have had to float the wallpaper seams, texture it ourselves and then paint it. I can't make a straight line to save my life...it would have looked gawd awful!!

So, now we'll be waiting for the upstairs bathroom and kitchen estimates to come through. I have to think long and hard about how soon I want to be displaced again. Going without the master bathroom was pretty hard. I keep Paige and Drew's clothes in my closet and I totally forgot to get extra changes of clothes out. Not to mention I totally underestimated the upheaval of the bathroom between work shifts. This totally solidifies my opinion of never wanting to live through any kind of renovations while living in the house. At least major renovations.

In the meantime, I'll just dream about what I want to do next.