Hospitals, Cars, Teeth and Dryers

A quick update on Julie then I'll move on. (Short post tonight, I'm rather tired!)

Julie told the hospital... she 'promised'... that she would never try to kill herself ever again. They let her go this morning. I simply don't GET IT. Drives me crazy. Other family members have said "ya know, next time, we'll just let her try to kill herself and we just won't do anything." I actually told Julie this tonight and she was bothered by this statement. But.... what does she expect us to do? I've been jumping through her emotional hoops since - what - Thursday? Come on!! We try to get her help and she lies her way out of that assistance. She is VERY good at getting exactly what she wants. And I'm so very tired of playing HER game.

Tonight I also told Julie that she upset Kayte when she told her on the phone "you know I'll always love you, no matter what happens" over and over and over again. Julie does not remember this conversation at all. Nor did she remember most of the other conversations we had. I'm emotionally exhausted about this whole thing.........

This morning I nearly had a break down. Actually, 'nearly' is an understatement. Why?

Julie was in the hospital after multiple days of the whole 'overdose' ordeal.

The Durango... well... it has problems. The power steering is now completely leaking. It had problems before, but now you put a bottle in and before you go 2 miles it's empty again. So... we are all getting ready for church with no real idea of how we were going to get there.

The dryer has been broken at home. This is a tough one to explain... the dryer is in the middle of the house, NO exterior walls. The dryer vent is vented up a wall, to the ceiling of the first floor, below the floor of the second story. (You know, sandwiched between the first and second story of the house.) The vent, in all, travels about 20 feet before it vents outside to the back porch. Well... we have been having problems with the dryer. Since we moved in it has always taken 2 full cycles to dry. Lately it's taken more like 3.... so I called a dryer vent cleaning company to come up and clean that vent. While they were out they noted that the dryer vent was 'broken' somewhere between outside and the dryer. Saturday I tried to do a load and the inside of my laundry room was covered with a dew-like dampness and the clothes were not drying at all. Something Chris should be able to repair, right? Well... yes and no. To repair it would mean removing the CEILING in the kitchen or the FLOOR in Kayla's room to get to it. Holy COW. Not a simple fix.

Add to that Chris got up in pain this morning... he's been having dental issues. He's been trying not to tell me, but I know. I've known. We've been married 21 year later this month, I know what he's feeling much of the time. He needs a lot of work, but we can barely afford for him just to have the teeth in question pulled. He doesn't want to do that, he wants them fixed. So, he's waiting. Waiting I suppose for a big job to come in so he can get the needed work done.

I --- well --- honestly --- I cried most of the morning. I was totally stressed to my eyeballs and just couldn't take it. To make matters worse, I was to sing this weekend on praise team. I messed my make up totally up!! Stinks! But I did manage to pull that off.... although I wasn't as 'there' as I would like to be, emotionally speaking. I found myself throughout service and even between services having to quietly cry to myself.

Then, I suppose I could say, the Lord stepped in. Chris, feeling better after Church, decided he could try to temporarily fix the dryer situation.

I had to attend my sister Katie's baby shower, and while I was gone he worked on the dryer. He went to Home Depot and bought some duct - and when I got home, the dryer is pushed out a bit, a silver tube is sticking up, out a door in the laundry room, through the office and OUT a window in the office. Now... let me tell you right now, it's nothing short of ugly. But.... it's a fix.

So, I'm thinking... I could live like this for a little while.

Then... I tried doing laundry. Since we moved into this house, laundry has taken a LONG time. When I say long, I meant that one load can take up to 3 hours to dry. Times that by the multiple laundry loads that are done every SINGLE day... and you can only imagine why laundry is a big normal stressor in my life here at home. When we first moved in I called Sears. They told me that because the vent exit is more than 10 feet away from the dryer, they can not guarantee that their dryer will work to it's 'full potential'. Today, after the temporary 'fix'... it look less than an hour for one load. And... they were DRY the first time through!!

Less than an hour?? I'm thinking this fix may not just be temporary. I may end up loving it. I am nothing short of ecstatic.

I can't WAIT to see what this does to my electric bill next month. Totally CAN'T WAIT!

It truly was the silver lining in my day today.

I'm really tired tonight though, and need to get to bed. I leave you with this short story I received a couple of weeks ago:

The Empty Chair
Author Unknown

A man's daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her father. When the minister arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows. An empty chair sat beside his bed. The minister assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit. "I guess you were expecting me," he said. "No, who are you?" said the father.

The minister told him his name and then remarked, "I see the empty chair; I figured you knew I was going to show up."

"Oh yeah, the chair," said the bedridden man. "Would you mind closing the door?" Puzzled, the minister shut the door. "I have never told anyone this, not even my daughter," said the man. "But all of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it went right over my head. I abandoned any attempt at prayer," the old man continued, "until one day about four years ago my best friend said to me, "Johnny, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus". "

Here is what I suggest." "Sit down in a chair; place an empty chair in front of you, and in faith see Jesus on the chair. It's not spooky because he promised, "I'll be with you always." "Then just speak to him in the same way you're doing with me right now."

"So, I tried it and I've liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day. I'm careful though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she'd either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm."

The minister was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old man to continue on the journey. Then he prayed with him, anointed him with oil, and returned to the church.

Two nights later the daughter called to tell the minister that her daddy had died that afternoon. "Did he die in peace?" he asked.

"Yes, when I left the house about two o' clock, he called me over to his bedside, told me he loved me and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back from the store an hour later, I found him dead.
But there was something strange about his death. Apparently, just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on the chair beside the bed. What do you make of that?"

The minister wiped a tear from his eye and said, "I wish we could all go like that."