A Very Blessed Christmas!

I want to share my blessing of having my family together for Christmas this year with you.  Because I feel very blessed and lucky to have them all here this year.  Each year as I get older and look back on Christmases in the past, I realize how I didn't take the time to thank God for every Christmas I got to spend with both my parents, my sisters, brother, and  now my husband and children and grandchildren.  As a child, teenager and young adult you tend to take those things for granted. But this year I've realized you should never take family for granted, or friends for that matter!  Friends and family move apart because of jobs or whatever, so it means even more when they are able to get together as special times of the year to see each other and be together.
  This year I am especially looking forward to just being together. The presents don't matter, neither does the food, although it will be so warm here in Southeast Missouri that we'll be grilling calzones for our Christmas Eve dinner with our kids!!  But the whole point is we get to be together.   This year I've realized just how very blessed and lucky I am to have them all here. 
  So thank you God, for the blessing of my family.  I pray that all of you may have the blessings of family surrounding you this year, even if someone is missing, far away or unable to join you, remember the past when they were with you or the future when we will ALL be reunited in heaven for a forever Christmas.  No more tears, sorrow or distance. We'll all be within arms reach of each other in the sight and beauty and glory of our Lord.  We'll never know sorrow or tears again.  Each time I miss my loved ones who are already enjoying that vision of the Lord, I try to remember that someday I'll be there too joining them in singing God's praise!
  God bless you this Christmas and always. Treat each other with patience and kindness, love and compassion. Put away the disagreements, differences and tension and drink in each other's warm hug and smiles and know God loves all of us no matter what.  We just have to love Him and everyone else back!
Peace...

Do Contacts Get Old? And Other Questions on Aging

   I was preparing to go into the hospital for knee surgery and wanted to wear some disposable contact lenses so I wouldn't have to worry about my gas permeable lenses while in the hospital.  I had some disposables at home from the days when my kids were younger and we used to go swimming and floating down rivers a lot, but the expiration date on them had come and gone…like by ten years so I thought I'd better ask my eye doctor if they were safe to wear.

   I walked into the eye doctor office and handed them to the assistant at the front desk and asked her my question.  Her eyes got wide and she asked, "Are you wearing these?"   "Well, no, of course not, I wear gas perms,  I have these to wear when I  go swimming and I don't do that much…I'm wanting to know if they are safe to wear."

   "Oh no, I don't think so!" she answered with a horrified look on her face. She turned to another assistant sitting at a computer, "She shouldn't wear these, should she? Look at that expiration date"

   Glancing at the dates on the disposables, the other young woman got the same horrified look on her face. I sighed, I realized I was much older then either one of them but it's not like the original date on the lenses pre-dated either of their dates of birth for heaven's sake.   "I am going into the hospital for knee surgery and just wanted to wear them there so I don't have to worry about my gas perms getting lost."

   "You should not wear these!" the computer lady replied handing them back to me.

   "Okay, okay, I get it, but can I buy some more disposables that are in date? Just a package to get me through the hospital stay?" I asked taking back the strip of disposables she held at arms length like they were going to explode any minute.

   "Well, let me see, oh I don't even see those disposables listed on your record," she gasped while punching the keyboard.

   "Well, I actually got them way before the expiration date so…"

   "Umm, well, I can't get you anything because those are so old they aren't even listed on here.  It says you wear gas perms and the dates on those are even… oh wow."

   "Yes, I know, I wear gas perms and they are not new.  But I take really good care of them, no scratches..."  I stopped and took a breath, "Look,  I just need some disposables to use temporarily."

   "I can't give you any because we don't have your prescription for disposables."

   "You can't use the prescription for my gas perms?" I asked getting a little worn out from all of this.    My knee was hurting from standing so long.

   "Oh no, no, no…that is something different. I'll have to ask the doctor if it's okay and get a new prescription."

   "I was just in here a few months ago…"

   "I still have to ask the doctor."

   "Okay…I can wait."

   "She's not in yet this morning." 

   "Oh."

   "What is your phone number? I can call you after she gets in and I ask her."

   I gave her my number which is also listed on my patient screen, as is my gas perm prescription and my age, height, weight, line of work, insurance, eye color… but whatever.

   I hobbled back out the door to my car.   I wondered how many things we use on a daily basis go out of date?  I mean I know there are expirations dates on milk, canned foods but why do some things last forever and other things don't?  I have a car that is seventeen years old and it is still running great, but all the plastic in the car like the seat belt covers, and the clips for the visors have become brittle and broken.  Then I wondered if my gas perm contacts which are also plastic were going to become brittle and break in my eyes at some point in the future.

   How come they don't make all this stuff out of the plastic used in star foam? You know those containers that were invented for fast food hamburgers?  A few years back a study was done that found these containers last like one hundred years in landfills and everyone was strongly urged to quit using them!

   I took a deep breath and  hoped I would make it back to work in one piece without having my eyes fall out, my car fall apart and strand me in the middle of the street where I wouldn't be able to walk because I need a new knee…oh no,  horrified at the next thought that came to mind;  the new knee I was getting was made of metal and PLASTIC.  What would happen if that plastic started falling apart inside my knee? Do I really want a plastic and metal knee put inside my body?!! 

   Wait, I wondered;   could I get a knee made of star foam?

Don't Let the Devil Win

I was driving to work this morning when I pulled up behind a car with numerous bumper stickers on the back. Usually it's an amusing sit at the stoplight trying to read all of these but this morning I was more disturbed at the anger the owner of the car in front of me must have been feeling.  Let's just say the decal and what it expressed was aimed at protecting a woman's right to contraceptives and/or abortions. 

I felt immediately sad that this person first of all felt so angry they would display this decal on their car and secondly wondered what made them feel that way? 

The anger and tension in our society keeps growing and getting worse. It doesn't seem to matter that we live in the most prosperous and free country in the world. Our sense of righteousness seems to know no bounds so we even wear our anger on our vehicles.  Is that what you want people to see you as when I sit behind you?  An angry person?

The devil is winning his war against humans by dividing us up into compartments, having us take sides and get into boxes we cannot get out of.   We cannot help each other inside a box, we cannot have discussions when we stand on this side of a fence or the other, we cannot make peace without shaking hands.

Let's shake hands, not fists. Let's agree we ALL have a personal reason for the choices we make and with some compassion hear each other out.  Jesus didn't condemn people for making mistakes or even turning and walking away from him.  He reached out with love, and when sinners didn't take his hand he let them walk away, not yelling at them, but still loving them.  We need to do the same.  Stop condemning each other, pray for one another.  Reach out in compassion, not anger.  Let there BE peace on earth and it should begin with me and it should begin with you.   Declaring our stand or our side on the back of a car is not the way to get people to heaven.  Don't let the devil win.

Tech versus Fiber

I am an old world nerd.  I love teckie stuff but I also love making my own yarn from alpaca wool and knitting socks and scarves.

I love getting a new computer or a new smart phone, but I hate the time it takes to get it all up syncing and working.

I love beginning with a new yarn, feeling its softness and admiring the color, but I hate finishing the toes on the socks.

Today I had a teckie victory!  Despite the fact that everyone in my office considers me a teckie wiz, I am not. I cannot compete with my son-in-law who actually writes code for apps you get on your phone or your television.  But sometimes the technicians at the computer company we use at our office to  do really techie things like install our server network, think a little too much of my teckie skills. I mean I appreciate their confidence in me but it is sorely misplaced in regards to my ability.  It is during those times I would much rather be home beginning a new soft alpaca fiber sock.

Take for instance this morning. My boss came into my office with his electronic key fob which unlocks the doors on our campus.  "It stopped working." He said and handed to me.

This normally wouldn't be a huge problem, I have an app on my computer that connects me to the server where I can key in a new fob and have it working for him in a jiffy.  But today that wasn't going to happen because the program I needed to key in the fob was sitting on my old computer which was unconnected and under my desk. My office had to undergo upgrading all of our computers to using Windows 10 because we were still using 7.  It worked to do that on almost all of the office computers except mine.  My computer was too old to accept Windows 10 so I had to get a new computer.  Cue happy face on me because isn't it always exciting to get new technology?  Aren't I the one who loves new teckie things?   Yes, I am unless new means a giant pain in the arse when you are on the phone for hours at a time with tech support because Office doesn't want to accept my activation key, or find my iTunes account or let me have a signature in email or any number of things I was constantly calling our tech company for.  I am positive they are rethinking their admiration of my teckie skills by now.

 But finally, once all the bugs were out, my new computer has been purring along for almost a week with no knowledge it should have this program on it's hard drive.    Even though my  technology friends tried, they could not get this program to move over to my new computer.  I told them it was no big deal, I hardly ever use the program to key in new fobs so they could take their time trying to figure it out.  Their short term answer was I could always unplug my new computer and hook up the old one and use the program I needed to key a fob when needed then unhook that one and hook up my new one again. 

Cue Murphy's Law to jump into action.  And it did.

I look at my boss and smile, "I will get that done for you!" "As soon as I can figure out how I will do it." The rest of that response was totally inside my head.  My boss is not a teckie person. In fact he is a self proclaimed Luddite, someone who doesn't deal with technology.  He doesn’t understand anything about computers except that they cost us a lot of money but they are a necessary evil.  Considering the fact that we both work in a church office and he is a priest doesn’t take away any of the irony of this opinion he holds.  I know I work with necessary evils all the time.  We have to deal with evil in all its forms around here let me tell you and technology can look a little devilish at times.  But for crying out loud, the man doesn't even own a cell phone!!

He left my office and I dropped to my knees to the floor.  I know I should have been praying to St. Isadore of Seville, the patron saint of computers, but I was trying to get under my desk to pull out my processor  and figure out how I was going to switch back and forth between these two computers. 

I unplugged the new computer and plugged in the old. I put the network plug from the new one into the old and changed monitor plugins and viola, my old computer was up and running again. I searched for the program and got Father his new fob!

I could not believe how easy it all worked.  So I had figured that out thankfully, but  I immediately got on the phone to call the company who had the software for that program to get them to come install in on my new computer.  "Gee whiz lady, we're busy…it's been had a hard week, lots of customers with problems," was the answer I got.  So I graciously replied, "Okay I can wait."

 I once again got back to work when the phone rings.   Yup, you guessed it, someone else had a fob go down.  Well, it's back under the desk I go!  That software company wasn't the only one complaining!