Providence Illustrated

Not hard to discern which truck is mine in the Kroger parking lot. $22 for a new/used sofa at Goodwill, the last one a casualty of life in a home with 21 rowdy sons. Nearly a buck a son ratio? Why does my nerdy brain go there?

Yesterday's heat index was 106 degrees. Folks do everything nowadays to avoid sweating while I oppositionally prefer it to freezing. If you're sweating, you're likely having fun.

Nando, Jonathan and Scotty have Soccer Camp all week, scrimmages in the evening which I went to watch last night, bathed in my own sweat, a light rain soon began to fall making me only half as wet as when I was perspiring.

The big storms came after dark, thankfully dousing my gardens.

It came to me that I'm right happy lately. Nothing has changed, in that I still have ungrateful angry children with pissy bad attitudes, but I've been working more on changing me. Eliminating toxic folks from my everyday life, preferring avoidance and social isolation, doing the dumb stuff that makes me happy, such as planting, hauling home coffee grinds, reading, and likely, most importantly, just dealing with one dumb day at a time.

A feeling of well-being flooding my soul feels good, knowing I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, even when it doesn't exactly seem like a lotta fun. But was fun what I expected? If so, then disappointment would've surely been the next level.

Yep it's easier with Paloma at OTP, but Jonathan did step up to fill the void, he's been increasingly unmanageable and difficult, but my ability to disengage is much improved.

I still haven't harvested the first tomato. Grandma has done so, as have many of my friends, as evidenced on Facebook, but I've had plenty of other fruits and vegetables to pig out upon. What's up with my tomatoes though? Just slow I suppose.

Another dumb example of providence, but I'd wanted this ceramic basket when I'd seen it at a yard sale last week. The roses remind me of many of my antique rose bushes, yet I'd predictably balked at paying $4, knowing I could get an entire set of plates to later hurl in frustration, if need be, for the same amount of dollars. Thank you Lord for my industrial metal sink in the kitchen, big enough to bathe a horse if I so desired another challenge, which I don't.

But son of a gun, at Goodwill I'd found it, the rose thing, for $2 and then I had my 25% discount. Cool beans. I planted it yesterday, as part of my plant something everyday plan. Maybe in the winter, to meet my horticultural self-challenge I should include re-potting also? Or one seed a day in the greenhouse?

That's the kind of easiness that makes me smile. Knowing God's watching out for me even in the unimportant stuff is so emotionally soothing. Religion is the opiate of the mases, some might say, and to that I'd reply, "So what?"

Gimme the dope then.

My sweet Lily, who literally never watches TV, preferring art instead, has become entranced with a show that Tony had taped, knowing she'd like it, Animal Cops in Miami, her heart is clearly focused on animals, the Yorkies follow her devotedly around our house, the click click of three tiny dogs' nails on the hallway floors, anxiously checking out the every move made by this precious 12 year old child of mine.

"Mom, I could do that," she began a conversation, totally sucked in to the show that I found kinda gross, as I abhor medical crap, animal or human, it just makes me wanna hurl.

Lily has a strong academic basis, good in all subjects, this is easily a path on which I'd love to encourage her.

If the rain holds off tonight, the Children's Church has a swim party at a local neighborhood pool in which I'll need to drive Tabby, Nando and Jack, while also leaving the other 11 teens and preteens at church for Youth Group, thus eliminating my own chances for the Bible Study tonight, instead I'll find myself taxiing everyone, but oh well, it's what I do, and I can do it for today, not unhappily at all, but rather grateful for an easier life nowadays with a smaller and better adjusted group of children.

Sweaty CW'd cleaned the pool, coming in to relax and sweat upon my new couch already, it'd been in our house all of two minutes.