An Unexpectedly Happy Day

Ginny & I enjoyed an unexpected pleasant day; she’d clustered several doctors’ appointments for this morning and we held grim prospects of a day sitting around a waiting room, but it didn’t work out that way at all.

I was up at my usual 4 a.m. filling out online government forms to register books with the Library of Congress and puzzling over their conversion software for converting ten digit ISBNs to the new 13 digit ones. Of course after you do all that, there are still only ten blanks on the forms where you can insert the numbers ???? Mysterious. Maybe I got it right. I’m sure they’ll let me know if I didn’t.

Workmen have been replacing wooden ties along the railroad tracks near our home. They piled the old ties in a field for later pick up. We thought these might be a good textured background for a new author’s photo for the back of Glog, a novel I plan to publish next month about a dinosaur who prays for divine guidance. So early, before the first doctor visit, we posed:

To our surprise, Gin’s first test proved to be a walk-in-walk out affair. So we enjoyed a leisure breakfast at Denny’s. Over morning coffee we compared our experience with prayer to going to a charity hospital’s emergency room. You go in hurting only to find 38 people there ahead of you. You put in your request with full confidence that

the Doctor will help you – but, until He gets around to you, all you can do is endure. You may be miserable in that waiting room, but you know that help will eventually come… It’s just that they haven’t pulled your number yet.

Not a cheerful view of prayer, but that describes our personal experience best.

Since we had extra time, we drove to a store to shop for stuff we’ve been meaning to buy but just haven’t gotten around to: bird seed, a dishpan, shower curtain, etc. Nothing urgently needed but things we were glad to mark off our list.

Off to a new doctor’s office for Ginny’s next two tests. I told the tech doing the bone density test that it was not needed because Ginny is the densest woman I’ve ever met, but he gave her the test anyhow.

Then we drove to a hardware store to replace a broken drawer handle. Of course the salesman said, “They don’t make ‘em in that size anymore”. He wanted to special order a new one for $38; but since, years ago, we’d only paid $40 for that chest anyhow, we decided to pass on that bargain.

We enjoyed lunch at Harpoon Louie’s. We ate outside on the deck overlooking Fishweir Creek. No other customers were there so we sat for two hours sipping tea, munching fried onion rings, smoking, watching birds and tide, and talking: Here’s a photo we took of Fishweir Creek:Back home we discovered four pleasant surprises:

1. Ginny's mother sent us a nice birthday check.
   
2. My computer blog, which had disappeared for some reason this mo0rning, is back online.
3. Ginny applied for a job as a budget analyst months ago and today personnel called arranging an interview with her. I have no idea what a budget analyst does, but Ginny understands and she’s excited at the prospect.
4. The Library of Congress sent me the control numbers for both Glog and Letters From Stacy. So all systems are go for those two books.

Gin & I spent the afternoon dabbling in the garden, napping, reading and talking about books.

Our Bible reading after supper came from John’s Gospel, about the second miracle Jesus performed and we puzzled over the structure of the passage. Gin said the word “believed” is used with two different meanings and I’m confused over the time element mentioned. The more we read of Scripture, the less we understand.

We transferred, with much pain and anguish, wailing and gnashing of teeth, the photos we took this morning. Then tried to decided which one made me look less like a dork to use on the Glog book jacket…. Maybe a pix of the other dinosaur would be better.

Spent the evening reading novels and so to bed.

We thought we were going to spend this day hanging around waiting rooms, instead, we enjoyed a delightful time together. You can never tell what a day may bring forth.