Perspective

There has been a lot of stuff going on in my life lately.

I've talked about some of it here. The new job, trying to buy a house, life in general.

Some of it, I haven't. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of stuff going on in the background that I won't go into here for many reasons.

I have my moments when I sit and think about everything that is happening, and I wonder if I will ever get any of it accomplished. I am living in such a state of limbo right now, waiting for the right pieces to fall into place in so many aspects of my life, and it seems like it's never ever going to happen. Seriously - there is so much crap that is out of my control right now, and I have to wait for things to happen. I have done everything that I can humanly do, and now it's a waiting game.

And of course there have been those instances when I think that everything has fallen into place, and then something else falls out and crashes - and I have to start all over again. It's life. It happens. Pick up the pieces and get going with the reassembly process.

The boys and I went out walking around the neighborhood today, scoping out the damage from last night's storm. We walked to a nearby creek that has been dry for what seems like years, and found that it was full and overflowing, finally.

And then I had a "do as I say and not as I do" moment and I walked up to the top of the railroad bridge. No, I didn't walk across it, even though it was tempting. Instead, I just sat on the rail for a moment and snapped a few pictures looking down the tracks.

Kind of a neat view, isn't it?

It reminded me of a lesson that one of my teachers taught in high school. It was actually in geometry class, and it was about parallel lines: lines that will go on and on forever without ever intersecting. I remember the teacher talking about various examples of parallel lines, and then he went off on a tangent (get it?) about optical illusions, and the specific example that he used was railroad tracks. We know that they're parallel - we know that they never cross, but yet if you look far enough down the track it looks like they do come together.

It seems like things are so far from falling into place for us right now - but I know that if I look far enough down the line, it will all come together. And it won't be an illusion - it will happen. I just have to be patient.

So I made these plans...

Tomorrow is my day off. And I had plans.

I was going to get everything done that I had to do tonight. Lots of computer work mainly, but some other stuff too. Then, because I wouldn't have anything that HAD to be done tomorrow, I could sit around and sew.

Right?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Instead, we had this little thunderstorm roll through the area. Now, we all know that I'm one of those nuts who loves a good thunderstorm. I go out and videotape them from the porch. I watch and enjoy.

Instead, I saw what this one looked like on the radar, and I opted to not only turn the computer off, but to unplug it. The television too. I lit candles.

And it hit. It hit like an angry PMSing Mother Nature on steroids who stepped on a lego in her barefeet after finding out that chocolate and wine were now illegal.

Water started running in through my laundry room light fixture. Then in a line down the laundry room ceiling. Then through the ceiling of the furnace room. The wind started howling. The thunder and lightning were unreal. I wandered around the house, watching the ceilings to see if there were going to be any more leaks. The power went out, and came back on, and went out, and came back on..... 5 or 6 times total. Then finally, the storm started to slow down a bit. I stepped out on the front porch to watch. I stood out there for a few minutes, just watching and listening.

And then it happened.

There was a Z-Z-Z-z-z-zzzzzzzzot!!!! followed immediately by blinding light and the sounds of an explosion. Just the sound itself almost knocked me off of my feet and I ran (I admit it) full speed back into the house. I didn't know at that point what the lightning hit, but I knew that my hair was standing up on end and my body was tingling. My lights were still on and I looked out the side window to see that the neighbor's lights were still on - so it didn't hit either of our houses.

When the storm finally stopped, I looked outside. I could tell from the amount of debris that either a tree got hit by lightning, or we have a helluva lot of wind damage. I grabbed my camera and went out back (imagine that). I couldn't see much, and was just pretty much aiming blindly to see if I could get an idea of the damage, and these are the shots that I got.

It's a waterslide!

We got a little bit of rain.

Kind of weird here - it was bubbling up around this block
of cement. Nothing like standing in your yard in the dark
and hearing gurgling coming from right beside you.

*sigh*
So much for my naked ladies.

So. Yeah. There you have it.

Tomorrow's plans?

sit around and sew all day long
clean up yard and assess damage

Door #1

So what was behind Door #1 that I mentioned last night?

I'll tell you - it's the closet in the girls' room.

Now, what rocket scientist decided to take an already-tiny closet, and then paint it a dark, dark blue - so dark that it's almost impossible to see anything in there without a flashlight? This has driven me nuts ever since we moved into this house.

So I decided to do something about it.

The first step was emptying all of the crap out of it. Uck.

Little bit of demo work to get the shelf and the rod out.

Daniel wanted to help paint.

I let loose with my inner graffiti artist.

First coat.

I was so thankful when I realized that the carpet in there wasn't attached to the floor....made getting the bottom edge done so much easier.

Level...

Drill.....

Shelf/Rod!

Recycled this from the opposite side of the closet and added a couple more hooks to it.

So tomorrow I get to go through all of their crap and get it all put back into the closet, along with doing their laundry and getting that put away. Yes, I will do it for them this time, simply to make sure that everything goes where it's supposed to go at least one time. I really should go through their dresser drawers too, but I so do not want to even go there.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By now I'm sure you've all heard about the earthquakes that have hit this area of the country. I had heard nothing about it AT ALL until 10:53pm last night when a quake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale hit central Oklahoma. I was in bed - asleep - and it woke me up. I will freely admit that it scared the shit out of me for a few seconds until I figured out what it was - and the epicenter was roughly 180 miles south of here. But it was crazy. I could go into all of the details of how it felt and how it sounded, but honestly, at this point, it would sound like every other OMG you're not going to believe what that earthquake felt like! story.

The point of me rambling on and on about the earthquakes? Oh yeah - I almost forgot. I wanted to show you my damage. PLEASE IGNORE THE COBWEBS. Yep. I had damage. Woo. That crack had already started, but was only a few inches long - until last night.

Mental note: go through house and clean cobwebs from walls/ceiling.