Twenty-One

Twenty-one years ago today, I tied my tubes.  I also gave birth via cesarean section to my baby girl, Kimberly.  Thankfully, we are not sidetracked with all the pagan business of celebrating the occasion, so other than noting the significance of the year, that she may now buy alcohol, it has been just another day.  Especially, gratefully, because she doesn't care for alcohol.  I'm so happy that my children really embrace this part of our way of life.  Living in Catholicsville, we've seen a whole new side to celebrating holidays that simply does not occur on this level in the South, and we are so tired just watching those people decorate their yards, light up their trees, and shove their way through WalMart.

And I can't tell you how many yard sales we've been to that were 80% old holiday decorations, right next to the crosses, right next to the Ouija boards and the books on the paranormal.

Today we had our garage sale.  Stayed up till 2:00 a.m. pricing and got up at 7:30 - looked out the window and people were lined up in the street.  Raised the garage door a few minutes later and people were ducking under before it was all the way up.  Still have one big dining room table and a small vanity, but that is about all that is left aside from maybe 2 bushels odds and ends.

We made $100 over my goal, so it's a good day.  I got ripped off twice (that I know of).  A woman put two necklaces in one baggie and left the empty baggie on the table.  I just figured if she needed a free $1.00 necklace that bad that I was going to let her take it.  Then, we have a laptop table, the kind that you use in bed, looks like a tray to have breakfast in bed, has a small lamp on the side.  So we have the receipt and original packaging showing it was $55.00.  We have it marked for $10.00.  So it's getting late and a woman offers us $5.00.  I said well, okay.  Then she says is the light broken, and I said no, it needs a battery.  She says then I can only give you $3.50 since I need to buy a battery.

It made Carly mad.  This woman was driving a very nice car.  I wasn't real happy, but I just looked at her and said well, sure then.  I guess she feels good about it, is probably blogging away to her friends about the buy she got on it right this very minute.

Carly says how can you not turn red and be mad over such exploitation?  I said it's a 2 Timothy 3:1-5 moment.  It's a sign of the times when people act that way, and I know we're getting close to a physical paradise to match the spiritual paradise we already enjoy.

And that woman has nothing but a laptop tray.  Really, I can afford to be generous.

So, here's to my tubes that have been ligated and by now have rusted with age.  May Jehovah give me a red headed baby boy in the new world.  Someone once told me there would be no freckles in the new world.  I guess we'll see.  I will have to have a husband first, and that's kind of sad.  This morning I sold the shirt I was wearing the day I met Abel.  I was never going to wear it again.  One day the week after I met him, I was thinking about him in TJ Maxx and I ran into his sister-in-law and she was nice as all get out to me.  I had just moved to a house in Windber and I had a bare spot on the wall of my green kitchen and I bought a plaque that said:  When I count my blessings, I count you twice.  I really did buy that thing thinking about a husband being a double blessing, both a friend and a lover.

I got $1.00 for the plaque.  I hope the woman who bought it ain't thinking about a man and breaking her own heart.  Carly said how about putting your CD's in the garage sale.

Nah, I told her.  It's only the things I did/bought/wore/made thinking about him that are infected.  The stuff he did for me, what there is of it, is okay.

If you did the math, you know I didn't sleep much, so I'm going to go to bed right now and get up early and study my WT.  I have one week until school starts, but I've gotten a lot done.  Sorry to have missed you yesterday in the interests of commerce.  Sometimes, life just intrudes.  But I missed my sisters.  I love my two baby girls too, so if you pray for me sometimes back as I do for you, pray for those girls to be not only my daughters, but also to fully become both my sisters, and yours.  I pray this for your children always.