This Week, Part 1

Today I have so much to say, and I'm not quite sure where to begin... I guess I'll start with Sunday, since the last time I shared anything was Saturday. So here goes...

Sunday at church, Hubby was playing drums, and I wasn't singing on stage. Usually it irks me somewhat to sit and not be singing, and I sit (or stand, as appropriate) there hearing all the mistakes being made by the people who are singing on stage, jealous of them, nursing my bruised pride that I was not chosen for that Sunday. (Pretty awful, I know.) This week, I was not in that frame of mind at all. I was there, where I usually sit with Big Girl (before she goes off to Children's Church), happy for the people who were singing their hearts out to God on stage. Sure, I still heard stuff that I would have sung differently, but in my heart I didn't respond like I usually do. As the morning's worship service went on, I was aware that there was a difference, and I was happy about it. I was having a "Yay, God!" moment for most of the service. When the invitation came, I was bowing my head, still in my introspective mode, thanking God for the attitude improvement, when I was tapped on the shoulder. The worship leader wanted me to go sing for the invitation (several of the other singers had left). So I did get to sing after all, when I wasn't looking for it, or jealous about it. God gave me a little gift in that, I believe. He blessed me for my good attitude.

Then Sunday lunch, we went to one of our favorite local Mexican food restaurants. It makes my taste-buds happy to eat those fajita beef/chicken combo quesadillas! Little Girl didn't eat much that day. Big Girl ordered a peanut butter and jelly taco, which was a mistake for her. She had a very hard time when the peanut butter and jelly started dripping out the back end of her tortilla. Lesson learned. She won't get that again.

As he was leaving church to join us to go to lunch, Hubby was approached by another band member who lives out in the country and whose wife runs a business with their stables, giving riding lessons and boarding horses. He is building an office for her, and asked for Hubby's help Sunday afternoon. My husband is not a typical guy. He is strong, but he's not handy. I build the IKEA furniture at our house. I see how it goes together, and he just doesn't really. Plus, he worked Saturday out of town, and hadn't had a weekend yet. He's also scheduled to work out of town this Saturday, so he knew he wasn't getting another day off for a while. He also doesn't do very well being thrown a change in plans at the last minute. All of this added up to his not going to help. But I am quite handy. I do see how things go together. I may not be as strong as he is, but I thought I had something to offer, so I went in his place.

There were four or five people working the whole time I was there. The first thing we did was secure braces to hold the framing square. (For my female readers, that means there were 2x4's going all sorts of diagnoals, nailed at the top of the framing, and we were securing the bottoms of those diagnoals to hold the tops of the framed walls in just the right spot so the room would be as square as possible.) There was a carpenter at the top of the frames, watching to see when we got it to the right spot, Mike (whose place it was) with the nail gun, then me and another girl leaning on or pulling the braces until it was in the right spot and holding it until Mike could nail it. That didn't take very long.

Then we hoisted trusses to the top of the framing we had just squared. This was the second story, by the way. The trusses were on the ground when we started. Another helper had shown up between the bracing and moving the trusses, so that was good. Mike and Judy stood on the ground, lifting the truss to me, Candace and the carpenter, John, who stood on top of a first story roof and then lifted slid it up to the second story and let it go to rest across the framing. One time we didn't quite push it far enough and it teetered like a see-saw for a minute, until John could push it around some more and move it out of the way for the next truss to come up there. There were 13 in all. It was interesting how Candace and I went from being timid about grabbing them and lifting them at the beginning, to practically doing it without John's help by the end. I also lifted sheets of plywood, one at a time, standing in the bed of a truck, up to Mike who was then on the first story roof. There were 30 sheets of plywood. After that, some of the help had to leave. Candace and I helped Mike measure and cut plywood for the outside of the walls on the first story wall until the sun went down and we lost our light. It was an afternoon of hard labor.

And I don't have time today to go into all of what I want to get out here, so I'll have to leave Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday for another post.

The song in my head comes from my husband's facebook status update. His update: "Hubby" liked it, and nearly 10 years ago put a ring on it. I thought he was being sweet, and he was. But that status sentence came from his having the Beyonce song, "All the Single Ladies" in his head. When he was working out of town last weekend, he had to drive people's cars for the study, and he doesn't mess with the people's radios when he is in their cars. That song came on while he was driving someone's car, and so it got stuck. It would have been sweet if he hadn't then made me listen to that song. So if you want to know what I'm talking about, here you go. If you want to skip listening to the song in my head today, that's OK with me. I completely understand. I wish I had had that option...