October 4 – “Another chapter”

Ah, Sunday.  Always an interesting day.  Often a tiring day.  Today was no different on either count.  We were debating whether to take the Explorer in to have the front end aligned.  I noticed the tires were wearing very unevenly.  One option was this afternoon.  Another was tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. before school.  A third (Chris came up with this one) was for her to take it in herself after she took Mom to her eye doctor appointment.  Guess which one won?  At this point Chris has that one covered.    Mom slept in this morning.  Chris and I were talking about taking two cars to church when she finally woke up.  It was almost 8:30, and that's when we usually leave the house.  But, hey, she's worth waiting for.  We still arrived in plenty of time to get all our pre-service preparations done.   After church and after lunch with the Boyer crowd at Tortuga's, we faced the daunting task of moving dirt.  Last night one of our neighbors came over and asked if we wanted the rest of the big old pile of dirt in front of his house.  I told him, "Sure, we've been talking about getting some for our front yard, anyway."  He said, "Well, I'm tired of looking at it.  Can you come get it right now?  The weather is cool."  As tempting as that sounded, we had been working in the yard all day and had just returned home after rescuing Fritz and Heidi.  So I asked if we could possibly do it Sunday afternoon.  I figured I could round up a son or two to help.   We called Kel on the way home from the restaurant.  He was at the Dynamo soccer game in Houston.  We had forgotten they were going today.  So much for son number one.  We then called Nathan, but the call went to his voice mail.  There goes son number two.  Son number three was in Arlington.  So Chris and I put on our old Ike work clothes and headed across the street.  Did I mention that it was raining at the time?  Wet dirt that is a large part clay anyway makes for some very heavy mud.  That's what we started out shoveling.  I was throwing it into the bed of the truck.  Chris had our wheelbarrow.  That led to a funny scenario.  When she filled it up she lifted the arms just as I looked over.  The tire was as flat as it could be.  She couldn't budge it.  So I came to the rescue.  I manhandled that thing over to our house and dumped it.  And left it.  That thing was heavy and unwieldy and I was not about to do it again.  So we both set to filling the bed of the truck.  About that time Chris asked if I had texted Nathan.  "No.  You told me to call him."  So she texted him, and he called back almost immediately.  He said he would be right over to help, and wanted to know why we hadn't called him sooner.  I said, "I did call, but I didn't know the rule about texting first.  All I got was voice mail"  He apologized, and the three of us went to shoveling.    It took three or four loads.  That's how much dirt this guy was offering us.  By the time we finished, even Nathan's tongue was dragging. We were beat.  Nathan sat on the ground and said, "All right.  Another chapter finished."  He was talking about the whole Ike experience.  But the yard is going to look great.  Yes.  That's right.  We didn't really finish.  We still need to rake it out, but it was so wet and heavy that we couldn't.  The best thing about the whole ordeal (other than seeing Cailyn, of course) was getting to meet our neighbor.  We see him all the time and wave, but have never met him.  He was always just "the Bug Guy."  He works for Orkin.  Now I know that he likes the Cowboys, his son played soccer, and his daughter has him wrapped around her little finger.  I look forward to getting to Javier.   Colossians 1:16 says, "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."   Father, thanks for introducing me to Javier.  Draw him to yourself, and use me however you want to in the process.  Amen.