It's going to be one of those days. I can SMELL it already.
When people talk about the best laid plans of mice and men, they totally discount the best laid plans of women who hate mice and the mess they leave behind or this average woman's total lack of mechanical skill.
It isn't like I am stupid.
Right? Right . . . ?
I decided that since we have ordered ourselves a new cordless, battery-powered mower, that I would go out and reclaim the gasoline from the old mower before I forgot about it yet again. After all, a penny saved is a penny earned. Old Ben said that and Old Ben wouldn't lie about a thing like that.
Back in a minute or two, okay?
Well, that didn’t work out according to Hoyle. This is where the part about mice and men and gasoline comes into the equation and I was never that great in math. Fact is, when I add that combination up, I have visions of an Aquanet fired potato gun launching the mice into a field for distance. But that is another journal entry entirely.
Logically thinking to myself that the little tank on the mower was on one side and that if somehow I could tip the mower over onto that side that I could get the gasoline to gravity flow out and into some sort of vessel (no, not the kind with a mast and a sail, silly!), that I could just easily put it into the gas guzzling van that is my transportation. That sounds like a plan to me.
Digging through the junk in our storage shed, I came up with a moment of brilliance and what I believed to be a brilliant solution (Look, if you are going to be sticky about the definition of brilliance, then we are gonna tangle!). I wound up successfully turning the mower on its side, and then dumping the mower’s tank into a hospital bedpan (no kidding - doesn't everyone have one of these in their storage building?) and, in what I believe to be a second flash of brilliance brought on by the query of "how do I get this into the tank now", I used an improvised funnel that I fashioned from cutting the bottom off of one of those funnel necked STP bottles to get it from the bedpan cum gasoline receptacle into the tank.
Then, the tragedy unfolded as surely as a paper hat in a gale. As the gasoline from the bedpan dribbled down my hands and sort of into the funnel (STOP LAUGHING!!), I realized that there was an issue I had failed to take into account. Okay, more than one issue.
The little improvised funnel just wasn't going to stay still in the tank's neck or hole or door or opening or whatever the manly men call that doohickey where pump jockeys stick in the nozzle* to fill up my car while I fiddle with the radio (*See, I know a technical gasoliney sounding word!).
Given the choice between holding the little funnel in place and/or continuing the baptism of octane washing over my hand or allowing the precious elixir of power to go into the grass, I held onto the little funnel and remembered that years ago gasoline used to be 35 cents a gallon and this would never have happened. We would have sold the broken mower with its 'free tank of gas'. I finally got the rest of the gasoline from the mower’s refill tank poured in safely.
Now my hands smell like 87 octane.
Aren’t you jealous? Despite my having washed my hands thoroughly, I still smell like gasoline. I will continue to wash them as some vision of Lady Macbeth of the petroleum era flashes before my eyes. Maybe by next week they will smell like something else. But at the price of gasoline right now, dang it, this OUGHT to be a turn on. To somebody besides the crusty old man at the Wavaho who ALWAYS smells like gasoline and isn't a turn on in a dark room with desperation in the air along with the diesel. This stuff costs almost as much as that fancy perfume folks go bankrupt to buy!
Oh well.
I will console myself by looking at the online brochure on the new mower. I will not, however, ‘lick my wounds’, because then I would have gasoline on my tongue. And that would just be wrong . . . and nasty.
April 10, 2008
April 6, 2008
Just Wondering . . .
After enjoying the conference sessions today and then watching some of the other programming the internet linkage to BYU TV offered, I sort of vegetated while waiting for the smoked beef roast to get done.
I wonder sometimes how we mere mortals manage to make such a big deal of ourselves that we forget just how much we need each other to survive.
While reading a book the other day, I came across a phrase that had me quite confused. Then, oddly enough, I heard it repeated in the lyrics of a song from several years ago "Stuck In The Middle With You".
The line is "proud that he's a self-made man".
What an odd concept. How can any man or woman seriously believe they are 'self-made'?
It dawns on me that if I started to make a list beginning from the moment that the doctor slapped my butt to get the crying started, that I couldn't possibly name everyone who had a hand in making me what I am today. For better or worse, the events, people and places that go through the steps and stages of our lives are the very things and people that make up who we are now and, indeed, who we are to become in the future.
The last time I checked, we don't live in a bubble that is isolated from the contact of every other person in the world.
By virtue of my bubble touching your bubble as we pass through life, there is an impact of some sort that leaves an impression.
From the smile on the face of the bucktoothed and friendly man at the gas station, to the nice lady at the library who is always so kind, to the old lady I see walking around the block from time to time and to the man who stopped when my car's engine was on fire years ago - all of them have made some kind of impression that directs how my life goes.
I remember sitting for long hours in the Children's Hospital years ago waiting to see if my child was going to live or die. Thankfully, he is alive and well and a smiling, handsome young man. But, during the time that this outcome wasn't on the horizon, I had a lot of time to think and to see how people around me reacted to the horrors that are part and parcel to being in a critical care unit in the hospital.
There were people who chose to make mountains of molehills and add stress to an already hard circumstance. The nurses couldn't ever make them happy because they weren't quick enough to suit them. I felt so sorry for these women and men who were trying to care for the children the best way they could under whatever restrictions that the doctor had imposed.
Some of the nurses wore frown lines and sour expressions that could have been off-putting to a saint. But others radiated a light and happiness that let me know that they had been influenced to be not self-made, but God-made.
While we are all most certainly God-made, there are so many people who don't know that little gem of information that would maybe change their life - if they let it.
All I know is that most of the breast-beating, preening and strutting people screaming about being self made seem to be awfully unhappy. I t hink it's because they have fashioned their image after the wrong creator.
Setting our aim too low is a sure way to find disappointment and disillusionment in our lives.
When we look up to Him who made us, we can become so much more than self-made. We can reach into the unknown and grasp the Hand of Him who is the Master Creator of all. He can show us a vision of who HE sees that we can become. And what he reveals to us is infinitely more important and valuable than what we make of ourselves alone.
It all reminds me of the book I read called "Acres of Diamonds" years ago.
We are all too willing to go look for 'the gold in them thar hills' while ignoring the diamonds that are close at hand. We are missing the mark and overshooting the target because the lesson of just who we really are is pushed to the back burner or off the stove entirely.
Because we don't like the interposition of the Creator in our lives, after all - our ego tells us we should know best how to do everything, the beauty of becoming God-made people is a slow process.
For some of us (okay for ME), the innate stubborness that some people confuse with an indepenedent spirit is as much a burden and handicap as it could be a blessing if it were turned over to God and used in His way.
Everytime I try to be self-made, I create problems and sadness for me and everyone around me.
But I have noticed that in those times when I willingly place my hand into the Hand of God and allow Him to make and fashion me in the way that He knows is best for me, miracles can and do occur.
So why is it that the pull of mortality and the myth of being self-made is so very strong?
Just wondering . . .
I wonder sometimes how we mere mortals manage to make such a big deal of ourselves that we forget just how much we need each other to survive.
While reading a book the other day, I came across a phrase that had me quite confused. Then, oddly enough, I heard it repeated in the lyrics of a song from several years ago "Stuck In The Middle With You".
The line is "proud that he's a self-made man".
What an odd concept. How can any man or woman seriously believe they are 'self-made'?
It dawns on me that if I started to make a list beginning from the moment that the doctor slapped my butt to get the crying started, that I couldn't possibly name everyone who had a hand in making me what I am today. For better or worse, the events, people and places that go through the steps and stages of our lives are the very things and people that make up who we are now and, indeed, who we are to become in the future.
The last time I checked, we don't live in a bubble that is isolated from the contact of every other person in the world.
By virtue of my bubble touching your bubble as we pass through life, there is an impact of some sort that leaves an impression.
From the smile on the face of the bucktoothed and friendly man at the gas station, to the nice lady at the library who is always so kind, to the old lady I see walking around the block from time to time and to the man who stopped when my car's engine was on fire years ago - all of them have made some kind of impression that directs how my life goes.
I remember sitting for long hours in the Children's Hospital years ago waiting to see if my child was going to live or die. Thankfully, he is alive and well and a smiling, handsome young man. But, during the time that this outcome wasn't on the horizon, I had a lot of time to think and to see how people around me reacted to the horrors that are part and parcel to being in a critical care unit in the hospital.
There were people who chose to make mountains of molehills and add stress to an already hard circumstance. The nurses couldn't ever make them happy because they weren't quick enough to suit them. I felt so sorry for these women and men who were trying to care for the children the best way they could under whatever restrictions that the doctor had imposed.
Some of the nurses wore frown lines and sour expressions that could have been off-putting to a saint. But others radiated a light and happiness that let me know that they had been influenced to be not self-made, but God-made.
While we are all most certainly God-made, there are so many people who don't know that little gem of information that would maybe change their life - if they let it.
All I know is that most of the breast-beating, preening and strutting people screaming about being self made seem to be awfully unhappy. I t hink it's because they have fashioned their image after the wrong creator.
Setting our aim too low is a sure way to find disappointment and disillusionment in our lives.
When we look up to Him who made us, we can become so much more than self-made. We can reach into the unknown and grasp the Hand of Him who is the Master Creator of all. He can show us a vision of who HE sees that we can become. And what he reveals to us is infinitely more important and valuable than what we make of ourselves alone.
It all reminds me of the book I read called "Acres of Diamonds" years ago.
We are all too willing to go look for 'the gold in them thar hills' while ignoring the diamonds that are close at hand. We are missing the mark and overshooting the target because the lesson of just who we really are is pushed to the back burner or off the stove entirely.
Because we don't like the interposition of the Creator in our lives, after all - our ego tells us we should know best how to do everything, the beauty of becoming God-made people is a slow process.
For some of us (okay for ME), the innate stubborness that some people confuse with an indepenedent spirit is as much a burden and handicap as it could be a blessing if it were turned over to God and used in His way.
Everytime I try to be self-made, I create problems and sadness for me and everyone around me.
But I have noticed that in those times when I willingly place my hand into the Hand of God and allow Him to make and fashion me in the way that He knows is best for me, miracles can and do occur.
So why is it that the pull of mortality and the myth of being self-made is so very strong?
Just wondering . . .
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