My grandma was rolling in her grave yesterday…I mowed the grass while her beloved Johnny-Jump-Ups were still in bloom. She loved every tiny precious flower that God gave her. She would NOT be happy with me!
Well, the taxes didn’t do me in this year. Neither did the banking or starting a new business in uncharted territory. Nope…what got me was Facebook Marketplace. You know we have the Big Birdhouse up for sale. We put it on Marketplace about a month ago which, in hindsight was probably a bit early. I’m kind of a novice when it comes to selling on FB. Apparently, if your item doesn’t sell in a certain amount of time, you can renew your ad but only for a certain number of times. Here’s a little tidbit of info I didn’t know…if you go in and edit your listing, it counts as one of your times. Who knew?
We dropped the price…that counted. I added photos…that counted. Then when it reposted…only the first 1.5 sentences remained. I went in twice to try to fix that and used up the rest of my nine lives apparently because I finally got a message that said I could not renew. Go figure. This was actually on Tuesday night. So I waited till yesterday morning to repost. For some reason…my laptop was extraordinarily slow. I mean, creeping. I was trying to get something to work…anything! And it just spun its little wheels. I think the little guy who lives in my computer was kicked back with his boots up on his desk because this was a no go.
I was growling so loud Mr. FixIt finally asked what I was doing. When I told him, he said he saw the ad back on there early this morning. Grrrrr. I asked him to show me, but it was for a specific website…not the blanket, overall, everyone-can-see-it Marketplace. So, I went back to work. After another hour, my sweetheart asked me if I was ready to go to The Farm to mow…which apparently, he was. He suggested I bring my laptop with us and try at the farm. The internet is faster there.
We arrived and unloaded the push mower and weed eater and I went up to the barn to get the tractor. We had all kinds of trouble with it last year. It was really hard to start. I mentioned this to Frank and Beans…the new owners. They worked on the tractor and, lo and behold…that thing started up the first try! Finally…something was going my way! The yard is only about 3/4ths of an acre at the farm, so comparatively speaking…it is a piece of cake. Well, MY part is. Mr. FixIt runs the push mower in the ditch out front and a few areas the tractor can’t get to. Then he does some weed eating.
We finally finished and sat on the porch to enjoy our JR’s Pepperoni Rolls and a soft drink. It was up in the 80’s yesterday and we were beat. After lunch, I sat down with the laptop to try to knock out the new Marketplace ad. The clinker was…all the photos were on the iPad and my phone. They’re Apple…I’m old school and kept my PC…they don’t talk to each other. It didn’t matter anyway because my laptop was still having a hissy fit and refusing to cooperate.
I’d say, “To make a long story short” but that horse is out of the barn, now isn’t it?
It turns out, the cleanup program I thought was working in the background…wasn’t. Let me see if I can explain what happened with an analogy. Let’s say you have a funnel with a small opening and you’re pouring sand in a bottle. It works great till there’s too much sand then the funnel fills up and nothing is moving. Well, essentially my bottle was full. So full, as a matter of fact, I couldn’t even open the program to let out that pesky sand. Finally…I started making a little progress when Mr. FixIt indicated it was time to go home.
Breathe. I choose to love him. I choose to love him. I choose to love him.
I put him off as long as I could then finally closed up shop and headed out the back door. On a whim, I turned on the faucet in the kitchen to check the water…and there was none! We had a couple of long power outages with those windstorms two weeks ago so when the pump was off, we lost the prime. When the power came back on, there was no water in the pump and it ran on and on for who knows how long. We didn’t have the tools, the time, or the energy to prime it so I just unplugged the darned thing. We’ll prime it the next time we go out to mow…probably next week before we head to the beach.
When we got home, I finished cleaning the junk out of my computer and managed to get the photos I needed on the laptop. By that time it was after 9:00 last night and I still needed to write my post. I gently closed the laptop, thanked God for the blessings and opportunities of the day. With a kiss and a hug for Mr. FixIt, I headed out to the peace and quiet of the camper to write.
Electronics. Machines. The Internet. They’re all supposed to work. And when they don’t, we have a choice. Pitch a fit, or count our blessings. We can’t control the things that happen to us, but we CAN control how we react to them. There’s always a teachable moment in every situation.
?
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”
James 1:22-25 NIV
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When things begin to pile up and you find yourself getting frustrated or angry…choose JOY, Joy can pull you out of a lot of dark places.
