Saturday, May 14, 2005

Car's fixed, life goes on as usual

The folks who regularly fix the rustbucket for us called this morning and said that the distributor was arcing and that the plugs were full of oil. Eww. I'm grateful it wasn't something worse, though; we can't afford a new car... or even an old one, for that matter.

They did a tuneup and were done with it in time for Rick to head off to work for his third day in a row of 12-hour shifts. Thank goodness it has four days of no work at all in between.

All that will change in July. Don't know how, yet, but I suppose we'll see. Since he'll have to start out as the low man on the totem pole in the bindery (even though he's been with the company for nine years), he may get stuck with the third shift (midnight to 8 AM), which we found was simply horrible back when he had to do it a few years back. Of course, a few years back, all the kids were still at home (as was I) and we found it rather difficult to keep quiet during the day so Daddy could sleep. Now everyone's gone all day, so it might not be so bad. Or maybe he'll go back to second shift, or even first shift. It'll just depend on the other guys' preferences.

Spent a goodly portion of the day today with the Purple Fish family. The kids stayed with them this afternoon while I went to SoulFire practice, and then we all went to supper together at a local Chinese buffet where we were hassled by the wait staff who really seemed to want us to move it along... but we just wanted to chat and relax. It wasn't THAT busy in there, so I don't know what the deal was. The kids weren't being rowdy or loud, either, so I know it wasn't that.

Just finished giving Isaac a shower, and he's having a snack of Oreo cookies and milk. He insisted that it was a "healthy" snack.

I said, "Well, the milk is healthy for you, but I don't know about the Oreos."

"Oh, but when you dip Oreos in the milk, it makes a new kind of vitamin," he said.

Who knew?

Tomorrow morning, we're being presented as new members of the church. It's an interesting step; I have never been a member of any church that wasn't the denomination I grew up in, so in some ways this is really stepping outside the usual boundaries. However, the churches here in this area which are in that denomination are just not growing, vibrant, living churches. It's about time we were in one. The only real difference in this church is the way it funds missions; my former denomination pooled all the churches' missions money together into one big fund and then selected missionaries and paid them from this fund. It's actually a pretty efficient way of doing missions, because the missionaries don't have to keep coming back to the US every other year to travel around and raise $$ support. But in some ways it's a little bit like the income tax system -- it removes the giver from direct impact with the recipient of his support, and sort-of institutionalizes and de-personalizes the whole missions system. There are good and bad points to both sides.

Time to put Miss Alice in the shower now. And then I'm going to bed, even though it won't even be nine o'clock yet. I'm just TIRED and I really do want to arrive at church by 6:30 tomorrow morning in order to pray and settle down and collect my thoughts.

Ugh, I should think about what I'm going to wear, though, and lay it out before I go to bed because it will disturb Rick if I turn the light on to dig through the clothes.

G'night, peeps.

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