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Showing posts from June, 2013

Oh, this little life of mine

This is gonna be one of those Because a Bug Went Ka-Choo! stories. We're having a hymn sing/pot luck at church on Sunday.  I've been trying to figure out what to make for said luncheon and I decided on comfort food.  I have to use up some chili sauce I made last year so I decided on meat loaf and mac & cheese.  I have this three hole crock pot, so two for meat loaf and one for the mac and cheese. I was going to buy the burger at the commissary but things like to disappear from the fridge at work so I decided at 1:34 p.m. I had time to run to the Smith's and then back home before work.  But not much time.  I had to be to work at 2:30 p.m. I'm in the express line and there's a woman in front of me.  I wouldn't have paid her any attention but she ran over her foot with her shopping cart.  I felt bad for her and of course, the first thing you do is look down.  The young woman was wearing sandals and for some weird reason I noted she didn't h...

well, here we go again!

I love surprises sometimes.  Sometimes, not so much but I'm also one to never look a gift horse in the mouth. I wore out my string trimmer.  Flat wore it out.  I may have ruined the engine on the thing, too.  I don't know yet.  I forgot to mix a bottle of oil into the trimmer gas when it spilled out during last week's adventures.  My son used gas from the right can when he filled the thing up.  His old man forgot to mix the oil in it.  I'm always so careful to put exactly one gallon of gas in the can so it can be mixed properly.  And then I forgot to add the oil.  I thought the gas looked a little pale when I filled up the tank.  It quit running while I was at the tail end of finishing up a yard for a lady at church.  I pulled the rest by hand and couldn't figure out why the silly thing wouldn't start.  Now I know. If I can get it running again, it should be OK. I had to tell y'all that to explain why I was at the Ho...

this past week's theme

I mentioned this subject to the guys at my Thursday afternoon Bible study.  It's about a verse in Romans 12 that reminds us that God chastises those He loves as children.  It's been a recurring theme and I heard it as recently as today at about 12:40 p.m. When I hear things more than once, I listen closer.  Closer is going to play into this story in a different light at the end and it's building on another recurring theme.  Anyway, back to being disciplined. There are things I don't understand but I don't believe in coincidences.  I'll tell you why: Last night, I was watching a KC-135 bank right after taking off.  I've seen that sight hundreds of times and it still brings out the little kid in me.  I was part of making that happen for so many years and last night it was with a touch of sadness because that part of my life is over.  I loved my job with the Guard and I miss my friends.  But that's kind of looking backward.  Two thing...

And then there are days....

I'm almost done at my sister's place.  I finished a project today that I think I should have finished years ago.  I installed a sprinkler timer for her.  She had the valves in the ground already but no timer.  What I didn't know was that she had a timer in the garage.  A hundred feet of sprinkler wire later and the water now comes on by itself. I had to fix a couple of leaks too.  One was fixed with prayer and the tightening of screws.  Prayer came in when tightening the screws the first time didn't seem to stop the leak, but prayer helped because tight screws were able to be tightened just a hair more than before.  Prayer works. Even for simple things. I had a discussion later on in the day with the former Mrs. Cooper.  She got mad at me because she thought I was mad at my son because the lawnmower wouldn't start.  I was not happy the lawnmower wouldn't start but it was nothing my son did.  I explained to her what I was not h...

The plan was...

I was going to take the riding mower to my mother's house today and then let the former borrow it.  That was the plan.  But this morning, after all those years of faithful service, after always being ready to go, for the most part anyway, the tractor was not. I found it with a dead battery and a flat rear tire.  That's no big deal except that I'm crunched for time today and now that's not going to happen.  I have spare tires and a battery charger so both things are easily remedied.  My biggest problem is the two hour commute (hour each way) and the fact that I have to work tonight. It's nice to be in a place where you don't get too upset when things go wrong.  I ripped my arm open last night (not too serious, looks worse than it is)  and just kept working away.  When the job was done, I got some medical attention.  My own doctor was working the late shift at the clinic last night so she patched me up and told me my blood pressure was "exc...

Oregone!

Yesterday, one of the guys that used to work on the fuel crew was walking around in our hangar.  I hadn't seen him in six months or so.  He's a huge Ducks fan and had on all his gear; shorts, tee shirt, water bottle, the whole thing.  He's from Oregon and yesterday he was a walking billboard. Two weeks ago, I was in Salt Lake to look at the car.  Me and the former went to the store by her house.  As I pulled into the parking lot, there it was:  A red car with Oregon plates. I saw three more today.  A small truck at Smith's; a car going down the road, and a truck on base as I was heading for the doctor's office. I have a little boo boo on my arm.  It hurts. Bad. Me and #3 son are planning a bit of a camping trip.  Maybe we ought to consider camping out on the beach for a couple of days.  I wonder if sand really gets into everything.

Busy hands are happy hands

I have a ton of stuff to do this week.  There's the regular mow the lawn stuff.  Then there's some stuff I need to do for my mom this week.  There are weeds galore in the garden and those will be taken care of in the later course of the week.  A hoe will make quick work of them. Then there's the truck. I took it to the body shop this morning and the damage from the incident last week totals up to about $3,000.  That's only the half of it.  For the rest of it, I had to call my insurance company. In August of 2010 I ran over the front of a BMW.  I never had the deductible to get my truck fixed but I kind of do now.  I figured that if I was going to get part of it fixed, I might as well get the whole thing fixed and Farmer's doesn't have a time limit on repairing the claim, thankfully.  It's just going to take a bit to get the claim re-opened.  That's OK.  I have time.   All of the damage is on the passenger side and it'll b...

(don't) You Be the Judge

I saw a saying on the sign at a church by my house that said: "God calls us to be witnesses, not lawyers or judges."  I think there's a lot of wisdom in that and it's kind of been in the back of my mind all week. So has some timely radio programing I was blessed to hear about the book of Job. I think it's all right to pass judgment on a situation without "hating" on people.  It's that whole "hate the sin but love the sinner" concept.  This week, I found myself in a position were that really came alive for me.  Fortunately I've been very busy with work and projects which has kept me occupied and I've felt the presence of God's Holy Spirit this week like never before.  I got through this week, but I didn't do it on my own.  I mean that.  If the Footprints  poem is correct, in the movie of my life, this is one scene where there are only one set of prints on the sand. I really can't explain it better than that. Life isn...

When you're angry...

I put a list of three things on my Facebook page I've learned over the years.  I should have added a couple more, but then I wouldn't have a blog post for today, would I? In life, not everything will go the way you hope.  You hope for simple and sometimes what one person views as simple becomes much more complicated to another person.  Me and the Mrs. are at that point. What I think is simple for her to do is complicated for her to do.  What she thinks is simple for me to do is complicated for me to do.  It's really as simple as that.  Granted, the issues each of us faces are tough ones.  Neither of us wants to be where we are; it is however where God put us today. I was pretty angry last night and I actually prayed very loudly to God.  OK, I yelled, but respectfully, at least I think it was respectfully, about this to (or maybe at) the Creator.  It wasn't long though before I was on my face asking forgiveness.  It's good to fear God...

slow motion and part two...

I heard the clunk of a transmission being shifted and then I saw the car roll backward.  the driver's door was ajar just enough to be caught and bent backward by Chevron, which now has some lovely blue scrapes all the way down the side.  I watched in horror as my roommate chased his car, with his young son behind the wheel across the street where its progress was stopped by my neighbor's mugo pine. It was ugly. And scary. The little boy is unharmed.  Shaken but unharmed.  The car, well, the car took the worst of it.  I have fantastic neighbors and I think a handful of freshly dug carrots helped pave the way for good neighbors to be good neighbors.  Chevron is scarred up and thankfully she came equipped with swing lock mirrors or it would have been much, much, much worse. Me, I'm not mad.  It was an accident and I've caused more than my fair share.  Things happen and  a couple of dents pounded out and some fresh paint and we're good as...

God's mirror

I have to share another blog post with you today.  Please read  this  before you read the rest of what I'm writing today. OK, you're back... I came across this by accident(?).  And as I read it, in my mind's eye I saw me saying something similar to this earlier today.  It was more like, OK, God if you want me to do this then I want you to do that instead of just doing what was laid on my heart to do. It wasn't a big deal and I didn't do anything wrong, but the if/then is just better left between me and Jesus.  But what I didn't see me doing was trying to manipulate God; as if I could.  I'm perfectly aware of my relationship to God.  I would be the created and He the creator.  I can't manipulate God. Sometimes a mirror isn't a piece of glass with special paint that reflects an image back to you.  Sometimes God can use words to make us stop and take a good long look at what we see.  I didn't see it until I read it. So my new...

Send beer and goats!

I'm taking a quick break from yard work.  Man, my yard needs a lot of work.  C'mon furlough! It got hot!  I still have to clean the pool after I finish mowing the front yard.  I love miss June, but I'm out mowing the back lawn and she decides to turn on the sprinklers to give the flowerbeds a drink, which means the front lawn got watered, too.  I'm waiting for it to dry! It's not a bad thing.  I just have to move on to other things.  I have tomato cages to set and I suppose I ought to get going.  So far, just from mowing the back lawn, I have collected three lawn & leaf bags of grass clippings.  Add to that, one from the back, and one from the front when I'm done.  It's only been six days since I mowed. I'm loving the hot weather!  But I need beer.  And maybe, a goat.  I haven't talked about what kind of shape the garden is in. It's gonna be a long, hot summer!

It's gonna be a long summer....

Sometimes the battle within rages.  Yesterday was a good example of that.  There I was, minding my own business, when  I saw a really pretty, in a trashy kind of way, woman.  I was attracted to her so much so that I actually had to trade places with one of the guys I was talking to so I couldn't see her anymore.  She was wearing a black sundress that didn't leave much to the imagination.  You can take the boy out of the 'hood, but it's harder to take the 'hood out of the boy I suppose.  It's funny to me.  I've been to the best beaches in the world and I can look at a woman in a bikini; no big deal.  But trashy is a different story.  Sometimes I wonder why we're attracted to who we are. What we see sometimes becomes what we want.  I read about this the other day in a little discipleship exercise.  It's why porn has such a disastrous affect on some people, and it's been that way for a very long time. In the Old Testament, Job...

Sharing

OK, I know I need a hobby, but this one is all I have and some things are worth sharing.  I hope you'll take the time to read  ThIS One of the things I'm hoping for is to have a bountiful harvest of corn so that one Tuesday, it'll be corn on the cob and hot dogs.

I like quiet and I added some stuff at about 6:45

Here's a synopsis of the last 24 hours of my life. I worked on getting the divorce paperwork fixed during my lunch period last night.  Close.  Not quite but close.  As in good enough for me close.  But then they were good enough for me when i filed  them.  I'll figure it out. I was going to (note going to) file them again today.  My plan was to get up early, go to the bank, have them notarized again, go make copies again and this time try not to leave my debit card in the copy machine, and go file them again.   That was  the plan. I had to tell you that for two reasons, one will make sense now, the other won't because, well, this happens to you every day.  I was looking for the hours for the court house.  I couldn't find them but as I scrolled through the court info, I couldn't help but notice the name of the court clerk for the Commissioner who will be handling my divorce.  My friend formerly of Colorado and the court cl...

Technology 1, Coop 0

Technology wins today.  I quit. I don't know where to draw the line on failure, so either this attempt 7.5 for the divorce or we've officially moved on to #8.  But what I do know is that I'm learning a lot about which laws you can and can't ignore. There are laws in Ohio and Utah that are similar and ways to resolve the issue those laws pertain to administratively; that is to say that the State of Utah has provisions to resolve those issues quickly and quietly.  Because I thought those laws were enforceable and pertained to me (SILLY DALE), I made a choice to follow them.  I remember reading something about that in the Bible.  And it was the right thing to do. When it came time to file the divorce, I included as a provision of said filing, the non-administrative way of dealing with the issue in question because what was easy and free for me apparently was not for the future former Mrs. Cooper.  OK, I'll respect that.  My only concern was being on...

It happens to you all of the time.

I think part of my "yes" needs to be to learn to say "yes" sometimes.  Today's story is going to involve a yes and a no that quickly turned into a yes. Yes, no yes,?  Huh?  Yeah, it's confusing now but it'll make sense at the end. About elevenish, I decided I needed to get off my buttocks and get down to the church.  The lawn needed to be mowed.  I had three dollars sitting on the counter and I thought to myself that I better take it because I was gonna need it. So, I'm about half way through with mowing the lawn.  I've already trimmed it.  Sweeping comes last.  The church is on 25th Street, across from the library and there's a lot of foot traffic.  I try to nod, smile, and say hello to passers-by.  If I have an extra dollar and someone asks me for it, I'll give it to them.  It doesn't happen every time I mow, but it does happen a few times a summer. Anyway, back to being half-way through mowing the lawn.  As I'm headi...

Do the hustle

On top of everything else that's going on in my life and because there's just a little bit of room left on the plate, I get to deal with this: Furlough. I never in my life dreamed that working for the United States Government was not the most secure job in town.  But as things stand right now, I'm going to enjoy a lot of long weekends off from July to the end of September.  Eleven unpaid days off. It's about $500 a payday and 90% of that is going to come straight out of the take-home pay.  I take home just a little over half of what I earn each week.  I have a loan against my retirement account and that payment doesn't stop or change.  The cost of my health insurance and life insurance does not change.  Because of the bankruptcy, I can't contribute to my 401k plan.  So that money comes right out of the take-home and that's going to hurt. I joked with a friend on Facebook the other day and told him that at the end of this, I was going to send my...

Finding "yes" in a mine field of no

I picked up a book that I've been trying to read for about six months or so.  It's about finding your yes.  Before I couldn't get into it, but I thought yesterday was a good day to start trying to figure it out. It seems that no matter where I turn in that search for the elusive "yes", I find myself in a minefield of what my "no's" are. For so long now, I've defined myself and my yes to be this Don Quixote struggle to fix something that I kind of took responsibility for breaking.  Now that's fixed, finally, by breaking it to smithereens.  I know that doesn't make much sense, but let's just say that sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees and I do still believe God put me here to teach me a few things while I was on the journey. To nowhere. (pardon the pun).  But not to nowhere at the same time. It might sound like there's a bit of remorse in saying that but just the opposite would be true.  I feel like a huge ...

Someone should take a hint

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You gotta laugh

On top of everything else that happened yesterday, I got a phone call from a friend who used to be more than a friend, and maybe, just maybe it explains the whole thing. To set up the story, I have to re-tell another.  Last summer, I was late for church when I heard a sermon on the radio about God using delays in life to accomplish His purposes.  As I was driving around Ogden and listening, I found myself at 20th & Wall ave in the left turn lane.  A couple of cars behind me and in the other lane, the future former Mrs. Cooper rolled up. Ever since then, it's been in the back of my mind that maybe all of this was not about me and the future former getting back together, but maybe, just maybe it was part of God's plan to make me into something He wanted to while keeping me from doing something He didn't want me to. I told my friend on several occasions that God didn't want us together.  She used to tell me I was making more out of things than I should have. ...