Stories and other stuff

Well, apparently I ain't superman and I finally had to (and brother I mean HAD to) take a nap today.  Two weeks of 4-6 hours of sleep a night and running full tilt finally caught up with me and I passed out on the couch while the peach pie I made was baking.  By the way, if the pie and the oven are 425 degrees, chances are the pie bird which fell over during the baking process is also 425 degrees.  Just sayin'. Yesterday was a work day and I needed Chevron to help me out just one last time.  She's still wounded and I'm wondering now if the problem is in the intake manifold.  But Chevron was good for just one more roadie...just one more, and she didn't let me down. My truck is starting to show her age.  She's 15 and never been garaged.  It's starting to show, especially on the top of the cab, where the sun has been a little brutal to her.  Things under the hood aren't so great these days either and as much as I hate to say it, the diagnosing is...

It seems that no matter what, I find myself very busy these days.  It's a lot of the reason I don't post much these days.  It isn't that there isn't stuff going on, but that I'm a lot of too tired to share it.  There are a half-dozen posts about this or that, started but not finished because the need and urgency to sleep were greater than to share what's going on in my life. Things here at Lark Circle are, for the most part, well.  Having my friend here has been such a blessing to me and it's nice to be able to be a blessing in return.  There's been a little bit of drama in the house, but I think that, with God's grace, I was able to put a stop to most of it.  Sometimes just saying sorry, even when you don't feel like you ought to be, goes a long way toward smoothing over hard feelings. You can do things in love; even offer a rebuke.  I'm grateful for that understanding.  It's God-given.  My human nature (and my big fat mouth) would j...

To say that I'm tired would be a bit of a misleading statement.  I passed tired a very long time ago.  I'm well on my way to worn out and there was nothing I wanted to do more this morning than to just sleep. I didn't get me out of bed this morning  I had some encouragement from my house guest and drive from the Holy Spirit.  Not going to church was an entertained thought but it just wasn't gonna happen. I mentioned to my houseguest that on days when I don't feel like going, there is usually something important to me for the circumstances I find myself in.  I don't mean to sound like church is unimportant or that I don't get something out of every Sunday service.  That's just not the case, but it seems like at times there are important take-aways from the message I need to get through the next week and they seem to come when I'm faced with reasons not to go, like being very tired. Today's sermon was about letting go.  Perhaps I need to.  I ho...

My boys and I spent some time in Yellowstone National Park over the weekend.  On the way out of the park and back to the campground on Saturday evening, we noticed several cars pulled over to the side of the road.  This, if you're not familiar with Yellowstone, is an indication that there is some sort of wildlife worth gazing at. As we got out of our car to see what the fuss was about, a tourist from another country told us that it was "just an eagle" and pointed across the Madison river.  There, perched high atop the tallest tree, which happened to be dead, was a very majestic looking Bald Eagle. We looked through our binoculars at the bird and as we did, my mind started to form some thoughts I wish I'd shared with the foreigner.  "Just an eagle?" As we talked about this later around the campfire, I told my sons this: I think the man we saw today doesn't understand what seeing a bald eagle means to an American.  This proud, majestic bird represe...

It's amazing to me how something so little as a rose bush coming back from the dead can change the mood around here.  This though wasn't just any rose bush.  It had a bit of significance and I kind of wrote about it in the last post.  What I didn't mention though is the hope of new life it brought with it. My home has been in turmoil since the day after Father's Day.  I mean that.  The brief re-appearance of Cindy in my life kind of set the stage for a bit of a pity-party on yours truly.  I can see that now, but for the last month, maybe not so much.  I was keeping to myself and maybe blaming it on just being tired from working so much overtime was only part of the whole story. In the midst of that turmoil, a friend of mine (yes, that  friend) had some turmoil, too.  In fact, I've never seen so much happen to one person at one time in my life.  That bit of turmoil spilled over into some extra-extra drama around here and it took that ...

Last year, the men of the church were involved with a landscaping project at the church.  I picked up two things during that project; one was my downstairs roommate and the other was a very old and established rose bush.  This thing was about four feet tall and put out the biggest, prettiest yellow roses you've ever seen.  It was happy living among the various things that tried to grow where the rose bush was.  Nothing really thrived but the rose bush did. It didn't do so well here when we transplanted it.  In fact, it died.  I left it alone over the winter, though, on the off chance that it would grow back.  It didn't, so about a month or so ago, I pruned down the dead wood on the bush, just leaving maybe the bottom foot in the hopes that cutting away the dead wood would spark some new growth in the roots. There is a very weak, very fragile, but very real yellow rose bush growing again! I noticed it today.  The stems are about two feet...

I do not like to work on cars.  I work on airplanes for a living and wrenchin' is wrenchin', right? Wrong. One of my co-workers and I were talking about cars last night.  The operating principle of a jet engine is actually simpler than the regular internal combustion engine.  The engineering and precision required is different but more simple.  And cars of old were easier to work on than they are today. My car problems may have been exaggerated by yours truly.  The way the car was acting, I wouldn't have thought so.  A can of head gasket repair which may have finally worked and a radiator cap made Chevron drivable last night.  I'm still going to throw the tester auto zone has for rent on the motor and see if there's exhaust gases in the radiator, though. The thing is, I replaced said radiator cap when I changed the radiator in the truck several months ago.  That may have actually caused more problems than it solved because the problems in ...

I have had some tough weeks.  I'm no stranger to seeing some pretty unusual things, too.  I've been around the block a time or two and sadly, I have far too many stories I can't tell anymore and the shameful memories of them.  That being said, I've never had a week like one of my dear friends had last week. Often times in life, we as humans think it's OK and somehow it's going to help someone to tell them in the midst of despair and hurt, why it is they're in despair and hurt.  It's why Christendom has a reputation for shooting their wounded and it's a real problem for us.  We live by some pretty high standards and God calls us to be not of the world, but far too often we find ourselves in the world, or at least being victimized by it.  When we stumble or fall, we don't need someone holding us down in the mud.  We need our brothers and sisters (or in this particular case I have in mind, parents and adult children) to lift us up and dust us off...