August 30 – “Sounds of the night”

 

 

School officially begins today for Cailyn's Mommy.  That means we'll be seeing her on a regular basis about three days a week, depending on her Daddy's work schedule.  She was here for awhile yesterday so her Mom could get caught up on the six chapters of reading she had to do before the first day of class.  Welcome to the big time, April. 

 

I got a kick out of Cailyn's response to Chris' supper plans.  She heard Chris ask if I wanted pasta with some chicken we grilled.  Cailyn said, "Pasta?  No, pasta, Nani."  Later, Cailyn was helping make the pasta.  As Chris got ready to pour it into the strainer, she asked Cailyn, "Do you like to eat noodles?"  The response?  "No noodles, Nani."  And finally, as we sat down to eat, Chris handed her a bowl of those squiggly things.  She said, "Here's your noodles."  And Cailyn, looking quite frustrated, rolled her eyes and replied for the last time, "No noodles.  It's macaroni, Nani."  Get it right there, Nani.

 

Speaking of Nani.  Have you ever been in bed and just listened to the unique sounds of your house?  Since I usually just get up when I wake up in the morning (why waste time?  It's a new day.  Get started), I rarely pay attention to things like that.  But Chris claims that I have a very noisy routine in the morning.  So today I listened before I got out of bed.  We have an icemaker in our refrigerator.  I heard that.  We also have an ice machine.  Now that really made some noise.  Our air conditioner is right outside our bedroom door, so I heard that every time it kicked on.  Since it was already almost six o'clock, which of course it a great time for everyone to be waking up, I could hear car doors slamming and engines revving.  And every now and then I could hear Mom rolling over in bed.  Not bad for an old dude who wasn't wearing his hearing aids.

 

By far the most annoying sound we have, though, involves our air conditioner.  We have a unique system of disposing of the air conditioner condensation.  After Hurricane Ike the plumbers ran a pipe through the attic and connected it to the drain in our master bathroom.  So every time the drain pump kicks in we can hear the unmistakable sound of water flowing down the drain.  I have experimented with closing off the sink at night, and that seems to help.  But I never remember to do that consistently, so we finally just got used to it.

 

Sounds of the night.  I guess this is one of those times when I can praise God in the midst of the adversity of having very poor hearing.  It must be really tough for Chris. 

 

Proverbs 24:10 says, "If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength!"

 

Father, thank you for the gift of hearing.  Amen.