Excuse me? Excuse-yes? Yes, I’m ready to order. I’d like a cholesterol free life experience, you know what I mean? I don’t want to have heart troubles or feel sluggish. I need to be in peak shape so that I can run the good race, can’t have any heavy stuff weighing me down. So, if you don’t mind, could I have my life made with No Yokes, please?

If you’ve ever placed an order like this, I can relate. Recently at work there was a cafaffle about a locked door. The fact that the printer was behind it was most of the trouble, the reasons of which are largely inconsequential, and I needed to use that printer. Imagine having to waste the time it takes to unlock a door, purposelessly, a hundred times a day to get anything off the printer when you’re doing casework and have to get things off the printer all the time, constantly, ad nauseum, ad infinitim. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? Probably isn’t; Not the point. The point IS that come Monday morning this week, after doing this for about two months, I had Had Enough. I was livid and decided to act like a child. I purposely went in and UNlocked the door at every opportunity hoping that it would stay that way, and when that didn’t work, I just left it standing open. I figured  two could play that whole Drive-Someone-Crazy-About-Something-As-Inane-As-A-Locked-Door Game (What? You’ve never played that one?). I fumed and complained and made a real jerk of myself.

But then something happened. A coworker of mine who was the dumping ground for my vitriol did something that absolutely changed my perspective and my attitude: She prayed for me. I didn’t know it at the time. I had gone outside for a minute to take a break from my rage with a book that just happened to be in my purse called Forgotten God, which is about being guided by the Holy Spirit. Ouch, by the way. And as I read, I thought, Is this Love I’m acting with? Or Selfishness?

And it occurred to me that I was angry because I didn’t have a choice about the way things were being run in my office, but I was being offered a choice about how I was going to run things in my heart and how that heart was reflected in my actions. And I decided I was going to submit to God and run it right, in a way that would please Him and make me, as His representative, be honorable to the great gifts I’d been given, like having the Holy Spirit to dwell within me and guide me. Like having a job, like having the capabilities to work it, like having the income it provides me to support myself, like having all the luxuries in life that make it not only possible but to seem even justifiable to complain. I realized that I couldn’t do anything about the yoke, but I could carry it with dignity and the grace befitting someone who professes Jesus as Lord.

So as I was saying earlier, if you want a life with No Yokes? Good luck finding anyplace that can fill that particular order. But if you care about your heart really, you will (as I am still continuing to) learn to bear them with courage, humilty, and above all else, Love.

The first thing that I’d like to do? Is to chug it it when it comes to working tonight instead of sipping it politely over the course of nine hours. Too bad I can’t.

So I found out some devastating news this morning. Part of me is wondering how I’m managing not to simply freak the dickens out, but I’m kind of sick and tired so it might just be taking its sweet time sinking into my processing cortex. But, here it is: The UC lady told me today, for the first time, mind you, that the only way I can test out of my prerequisite French classes? Would be to go back in time and take the equivalency test before I started taking my current French class. Groan.

I do have a little hope though. I’m pulling a “When Bank’s Compete, You Win” type scam, or at least trying awfully hard to. I emailed Kent State and asked them if I could test out of my French classes with their equivalency. Of course, it will probably be about mid-January of 2011 before I hear back from anyone, but ya gots to do whats ya gots to do, eh?

Sigh.

(more…)

So, guess what? Delightfully  I got my french textbook finally. The joy of this most recent conquest almost caused me to pirouette as I bent down and picked it up from my doorstep. Giggling, I peeled back the tape on the package and looked inside. I drew out the mass of pages and opened it to the number for my assigned homework, and-

And-?

(more…)

So another long night has ended. A night spent manning four phone lines and staving off the ravages of violence from my little corner of womankind. Dawn rises as worry releases the crumpled face of this fair city. The morning breathes a sleepy sigh, knowing that there has been no cruelty this night. I’ll be honest:  I should probably be wearing a cape.

So, in the spirit of a Spirit-like self important monologue about the glorious effervescent emersion of a place, please be so kind as to allow me go on and on.
(more…)

So my old boss called me this afternoon and asked me to come in to cover the overnight shift tonight. Fine. Great. Wonderful.

And she also asked me to take the same tomorrow because the woman who usually comes in is in the hospital and no one knows when she might be released. Fabulous. Super. Happy to oblige.

And after work I have an interview at Kristen’s mom’s workplace. Fantastic. Cool. Bring it.

And when I get to work there’s a knock down drag out fight over whether or not the door should be left open in one of the rooms, futher complicated by a language barrier and stressing the already taut nerves of a group of domestic violence survivors. Manageable. Pithy. Taken care of.

And I’m sitting up in the early morning hours, chugging a 20 oz. Diet Coke and playing Text Twist on Yahoo.com, when my sister calls and asks me, So, how’s school going?

Anxiety. Panic. Disaster.

(more…)

It is better to give than receive. Especially if what you’re talking about is a sharp smack across the face or a parking ticket.

This is the greatest wisdom I can come up with at this present moment. Probably because it’s four in the morning and I haven’t been to sleep yet. Why? Because my body is retarded. I don’t mean to use the “r” word out of turn, I really mean it. My internal clock is retarded, moving at a slower pace than it should. Or so it would seem.

So I get to go to work on Sunday. I can’t remember ever being so pleased about waking up early on a weekend to drive twenty miles in the blistering cold, but there it is. That’s not exactly true, maybe. When I started work at the crisis center, it was the same way. I absolutely loved it. I’d never loved my job before. Mostly because I was doing the work of a 1940’s automat but with way worse style. I shuttled food back and forth in a fish printed button down shirt, or served an after dinner coffee wearing a green bow tie. . . .. But this work, this work I’m gonna be doing? It means something.

I suppose I should expound on that.

. . .

Later, suckah.