Weekend Happenings!

The van died.

Was gettin gas the other day...so turned it off at the pumps. And it wouldn't start again. I had power to other things, like the dome light and the headlights, but no ignition. Hmmmm. So like a big mechanic girl, I call LB. "HEELLLPP ME!!"

No...seriously...actually I was very calm about the whole thing.
I've never had to deal with fuses before, but figured that is probably what it was. So I got a fuse. (Thank GOD they are cheap because I am broker than broke. I'm using dishwasher soap to do necessary laundry, for goodness sake!) And HEY, when I put the new fuse it, it started.
COOOL!

So I head off to go get the kids. Pick them up. Go home. Do my thang. In the morning, I take off to take them to school. HOLY MOLY, it shuts off at 60mph goin down the highway. Well, that is definitely an adrenaline rush, because when the power is off, the power brakes and power steering don't work all that well.
I'm just sayin'.... you know!

SO I tried another fuse. And it started again. Hmmmm, starting to see a pattern here.
Make it almost to the drive at the school and CLICK...
Dead again.

This time, no amount of fuse switching or tire kicking or wire wiggling or bawling was going to make a difference. The principal helped me push it off the road. I caught a ride home and cried.
THen I worked on my homework...and cried.
Then I called a couple people to try to set up rides to school and appointments...and cried.
Made dinner...and cried.

LB came over after work LATE Friday night. I had Lab on Saturday. Caught a ride with another student and spent the morning going over MegaCodes and stabbing people with 20 gauge needles. And getting stabbed. Spent the afternoon trying to remember the dosages of 20+ medications that are in the EMT Intermediate "Scope of Practice". My brain hurt.

LB spent the morning "motivating" the children to clean house. Then he spent the afternoon trying to figure out WHAT in the WORLD was wrong with the van!

Then we had a BDParty for the number One Dude! WOW...he's 15. Can't believe it!
Anyway, then LB and I went to visit his son in the Big Big city and got home about 2am.
He made me breakfast. I got sick. Not from the breakfast...OK?
Too much sugar and not enough sleep.
Then we went back down and worked on the van again...cuz it's still at the kids' school, ya' know.
We tossed around ideas. Peered into corners. Perused manuals and schematics. And JUST as we were about to give up? BINGO! LB finds a crumbling wire back behind the battery.
He says it was God. I said YES, but GOD used YOU! He said it was MY idea that made him look back there.

So we agreed to just praise God together and WOW are we!?! The entire repair cost about a dollar fifty. AND a batch of cookies to the man who let us borrow his multimeter.
It's not a permanent fix...but should last until I can make other arrangements. Everytime I start the van - I smile! And thank God!

And miss my sweet LB more and more every day....

PRAISES!

"The prayers of a righteous man availeth much!"

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!

Ya'll....I am just awestruck and humbled how God has answered prayer this time. My last post was pure D fear and worry. I was unsure how things would work out and how I could move forward. Now I am not afraid...listen to THIS!

• FREE washer AND drier from a friend at church. My washer hasn't been wringing the water out of the clothes and I have to do it by hand.
• My Power was going to be shut off, so I had to go to a public service agency and beg for help. I thought they were just going to pay enough to keep it on...but they paid my ENTIRE past due balance. Close to $700! HOLY COW!
• Got a letter from the college. Not only did my financial aid come through for this term, but I will also be reimbursed for all the tuition I have paid already for the 2007-2008 academic year. They are going to SEND me MONEY. NO KIDDING!!

Isn't our God good? I have a friend who told me she was jealous of all the blessings I get. I don't know about that. But I know that He cares for me and my kids. And I know that you were praying for me. AND I know that He is telling me not to worry; He has it all under control.

WOOHOOO!

Gotta go for my biopsy today. Come what may, I will praise Him. Thank you all so much for lifting me up. You are true blue friends.

My prayer life gets a jump start...

Please don't think I'm making fun of my Heavenly Father or prayer here. Because I believe He is the only one who saved me today...

Have you ever found yourself hanging upside down in the dentist's chair and he/she says...
"Well, I'm gonna TRY this one but it MAY end up being a root canal and then we'll have to REFER you out to a specialist. OK, then! Let's get started!"

And I got right with God in about 1.2 seconds.
Then I began fervent intercessory prayer. For myself!

"OH please GOD, no PAIN! OH please GOD, no PAIN!
OH please GOD no root canal! OH please GOD no root canal!"

It turned out alright...for now. BUT, if it starts hurting so bad that "even Tylenol doesn't help" then "we may need to go ahead with that root canal."

I think I'd rather go ahead with an extraction!
Or dropping a bowling ball on my foot.
Or piercing my eyelids with needles....

Ummm, ok, you get the idea.

And I have the added bonus of being forgiven now for all the naughty things I have done in the last couple of weeks.

I needed to "catch up" anyway.

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!

I GOT IT!

so why am I so scared?

Big step of faith time. I am NOT even kidding.
I was awarded one of a hundred spots in the entire state to participate in the Degree Completion program.

Which means I have 18 months to get my Associates in Emergency Medical Technologies.

And learn how to be a midwife (but I didn't tell them that last part - you know...not their business)

I don't have to find a job. BUT..
I do have to survive on state assistance for that 18 months.
I do have to find private funding for college...they don't help with that part.

And if I DON'T stay registered as a fulltime student?

Dropped. Like a hot tater.

So how does one survive on less than $800 a month with four kids?
Any ideas?

Like my Mom said...God has always provided for me before. He has set me on this path. He will back me up if I stay in tight with Him. Why am I afraid?

Cuz my "human" is showing.

18 months to go to school, pursue my dream and be there for my kids when they get home from school.

THANK YOU, LORD! YOU ARE SO GOOD TO ME!

UPdate on medical stuff

Well, got the test results from the Dr.'s office today. The verdict is...
NO DIABETES.
Hurray.

But then I have to decide if I am going to pursue trying to figure out my blurry vision and shakey episodes or just let it go.

Well, how about we pray about it and maybe it'll go away. :D
Thank you, my friends. I am honored that you would remember me to our Heavenly Father.

Sister of my heart

I've been slackin' a little in my Blogworld-buddy visiting duties the last couple of weeks. Mainly because I've completed so many college scholarship applications, I can't count them. And let me say for the record that if I don't win a single one of the 30 or so I have submitted, I'm going to have a MAJOR crisis.
I may lay down on the floor and kick my feet and cry.
Then I'll get up and say "Your Will be done, Father!"
Because He will have something else in store for me.

Anyway, I tagged my buddy Connie to do the "Five Reasons I Blog" meme, so I figured I ought to go read it, you know, just out of courtesy. Cuz I made her do all that typing...wore her little fingers down to the knuckles.
And I discovered that she had already done a TON of typing on this post, the story of her three year anniversary of the end of her world.

I read it and I was sick to my stomach. Not only over what my dear friend had to go through...but because it sounded SO like what I went through! I can feel my heart pounding harder and feel the confusion as you think to yourself "No, seriously, this cannot be real. There is no way my husband could do that. There has to be some mistake. Somebody DO something. What Aliens came and took my husband and put this monster who looks just like him here to hurt us? I don't understand...I don't understand...I don't understand."
The first day it happened, they act like you are a criminal, too. They separated me from my kids and I was so frightened they weren't going to give them back! They took my foster baby away without even letting me kiss her goodbye! I don't think I have ever been that scared in my life. Ever. When people do meme's or quizzes that ask the question "What are you afraid of?" I truly say...Nothing. I have been scared beyond belief. After that day, everything else pales in comparison!
And Connie has felt that same fear. She lived it a little over a year before I did. And she has come through with flying colors. Amazing!

I want to state here and for the eternal record that nothing in the last two years has been such a wonderful blessing to my heart as finding this amazing woman who knows exactly how I feel. When other people look at me like I'm insane... She's there.
When "friends" and family tell me they are tired of hearing about it...She's there.
When no one understands why I can't just "Put it behind me and move on"...Connie understands.

When she told me her story, I thought she had been reading my blog and was copying me or something. Seriously! Then, as we talked more, I discovered she and I have many of the same interests and dreams. As I sat crying for joy at the computer, MG says "Maybe you two are twins separated at birth!"

So I just want to say Thank you to the "sister of my heart" for her mentoring, her prayers and for showing me that...Yes, I WILL survive.
Someone else has been there. And she ROCKS!
My prayer is that someday I can help someone like she has helped me to heal.

God has used you, Connie. Your little light definitely brightened up my corner of the world.

GREAT NEWS! I survived!

You know what? Prayer works!

Not that I didn't know that BEFORE...but I had answered prayer today. Sitting in the dentist chair. So tense my eyebrows were merging with my hairline. And I was shaking.

It all started as soon as we hit the waiting area. I started pacing. MG pats the chair next to him...but I can't sit! I gotta go potty...gotta do SOMETHING...want to run out the door.

They call my name and set me up in the little cubicle. I know SOMEWHERE someone tried to design those chairs to be comfortable. It's because they KNEW that people would be coming to sit in them and be tortured! It's just so hard to relax when your adrenaline is rushing and you KNOW that this is going to hurt.

So the assistant comes in and we talk about what to work on today. That seems to be the thing about MY particular mouth...there is ALWAYS something to work on. Unfortunately.

And I show her the broken one. Turns out that WASN'T the one they did the root canal on. Silly me! The pain was so intense, I guess it was just hard for me to tell EXACTLY where it was coming from. At least I knew the general vacinity.

So they XRay this broken one. Hmmmm. Wow. Look at that!

Adjust the chair and hang me practically upside down. Cuz the dentist lady is about 5 feet tall. All the blood is rushing to my head. Mask on. Gloves on. Little mirror...look around...

And she says...

Wait for it....

"Well! We'll have to scrape away this old filling and see if we can get away with JUST a huge filling or if we'll need to do a root canal."

OK, folks! The prayer machine kicks in to HIGH gear.
"Oh, please, oh, please, oh PLEASE, God! No no no no root canal!"

30 minutes of grinding, chipping, hacking, and chiseling later, she decides to fill it. Though she did scare the crud out of me one time when she said "oops!" That's what she said immediately preceding the LAST root canal!
And I really shouldn't call it a filling. What she did was start with the base of a tooth, put in a little metal circle around that and fill the little metal circle with something called "Fuji" and topped it off with "composite". Basically, she constructed a tooth where one no longer remained.

THEN they said, "we'll have to see if that holds. If it still hurts in a couple of days, we'll have to do the root canal anyway."

And they loaded me up on pain drugs. :D I'm happy.

Only the pinchy shot and NO ROOT CANAL!

God is good!

MG drove me home and snuggled me all afternoon. Yep! Prayer works.

Wait till you see my post tomorrow!! Dun Dun Ta DUUUUUM! It's gonna be GooooooooD!

Sniffles and potato salad

Have you noticed that I usually write in Large Bold type (different fonts, but still large and bold). Holy. Moly. Does that mean I'm getting (GULP) Old? Yikes!! Don't you EVEN say it!!

My sweet MG has a cold! He is so stuffy and lays awake at night coughing. Poor Baby Boy! He's trying so hard to finish a commissioned project on time and he can hardly breath. Now here's the kicker...

I AM JUST BLOWN AWAY BY THIS GUY!! Every man I've ever known with the exception of my father is a MAJOR weenie when they are sick. (My Daddy could cut his arm off and he's just say "My, That hurts" and go back to chopping wood or mowing the lawn).
Men tell you OVER AND OVER, ad nauseum, how bad (terrible, crappy, awful, horrible, ill, etc, etc) they feel. One can only say, "I'm so sorry, honey" about 22 times before your voice starts tweaking toward sarcasm and you begin to wish he would hurry up and DIE like he seems to think he's going to. JUST KIDDING, but you know what I mean...Even number one son is that way. It's ok, I know he's just practicing to be a man.

HOWEVER, my wonderful, precious, gorgeous guy DOES NOT DO THIS!! Serious!! Kidd you not! I have to BEG him to tell me how he's doing and he apologizes for waking me up with his coughing. Aaawww!

Yes, he's a man. Very macho. Last night, he told me to soak my feet and he massaged them with lotion. This morning, he made me potato salad...Ladies, let me tell ya', this guy makes KILLER potato salad. OOOhhhh YAAHhhhhh!

And he's home with my kiddos today while I work. Yesterday, he took them to a parade.

All this when he has a cold. Stuffy, flushed, probably running a fever. Trying to meet a deadline.

Tell ya' what! I love this guy! He's my bestest friend. It breaks my heart that he doesn't feel good. But I am SO stinkin' proud of him.
When it turns out your first husband was a rapist and your second husband is a child molester, you start questioning yourself. What kind of decisions am I capable of if I choose men like that? How can I trust myself anymore?
But God steps in and says "Hey, JD! The choices those men made were NOT your fault, girl! Here...I'll give you a guy SO WONDERFUL that you'll know without a doubt that he's a gift from Me!"

Someone I can respect, someone who will lead instead of forcing me into that role, someone who treats me like a princess, someone who will love my children and guide them with care. Even when they do drive him crazy! :D

Thanks, God! I don't deserve any of this...

But thanks!

Oooo wow moment...

Just had to share this quick one with you...

I had a "Birthday list".

You know...the kind you make when you are 6 or 7 or 8. What you want for your birthday...

Mine had some weird stuff on it.

Like someone to help me paint my bathrooms.
And rubber boots for my kids so they won't ruin their shoes playing in the mud.
Lasik surgery so I don't have to wear glasses anymore. (Yah, like someone is going to shell out $3000 for me to get my eyes cut. Right!)

Well, one thing on the list was for my dearest friend's blood sugar to be normal. Uncontrolled diabetes can kill and she's been working on it. But still no where close to where it needs to be. And I worry. In case you couldn't tell...

OH. WOW. BIGTIME.

She called me a little while ago...her sugar this afternoon was 110. I freaked!!

Yep...that's normal!!

Isn't God good?

Maybe next year, I'll ask for world peace and see how that works!! Or maybe a million dollars! :D