so much to say...

wow.

wow. wow. wow.

I'm not sure I have words for all that's happened in the past 2 weeks, but here goes. I feel the need to write about it, and get it off my chest. (Really off my brain, but that's for another time!)

To start, I went away for a week to Louisville, KY with the Youth Group for a huge youth conference. That, I will have to tackle in another post, because it's a whole thing unto itself.

Let's start with the good news/bad news, shall we?

First off, I came home from the trip sick. Not really a major deal, but the cold that about 8 of us got on the last day or two of the trip. I rested about 20 hours the day after returning, because I was so tired. All well and good so far. Until the next day...
I work up and KNEW that something was wrong. Called the Dr. and got in that morning. Turns out that the cold had worked its way down into my chest, and I had bronchitis. For me, this is the usual course of action, so I wasn't dismayed. When I went to the Dr., I had a temp of 101.5. No WONDER I was feeling so bad!

I'm on the usual drugs now, and feeling a little better every day.

In this situation, I am so grateful that I didn't get bronchitis while ON the trip because that would have been terrible! I'm grateful that my Dr. understands what's going on, and that there are cheap drugs that will fix me right up. I'm also grateful that I had time to rest and get better.

OK, next situation.
On Tuesday night, my downstairs toilet exploded. This is the 2nd time in 3 months, and it was hellacious to clean up. I shop-vac-ed almost a whole canister of "water" off the floor before it was all over, and then had to clean up after all of it. I called Roto-Rooter and they couldn't come until morning, so the next morning I had the Roto-Rooter guy at my house bright and early. He listened to me, and immediately called the HOA to tell them that the main sewer line needed to be cleaned out.

So, the sewer clean-up was not the greatest experience, and at one point during I was dripping sweat, and crying because I didn't feel good (bronchitis, remember?) and didn't want to be doing THIS! But I pulled up my big-girl panties and did it. Gave me a sense of accomplishment, actually.

For this I am SO grateful for a couple things:
First, that it didn't happen while I was out of town. Blllleeeeeeech. I cannot even imagine that sitting on my floor for days.
Second, that the Roto-Rooter guy didn't even fiddle with my toilet, because he KNEW that the problem was in the main line. This is a blessing because the HOA won't randomly fix things unless they KNOW that it is not anywhere inside one of the units. If I called and talked to them about this, it went nowhere. But when the Roto-Rooter guy called them directly...well, he's my new favorite person.
I'm also grateful that I didn't have to pay for any of this huge repair and be reimbursed - since he called first, the HOA just took care of it totally.

Yes, it was an inconvenience to not use water at all during the day while it was being fixed, but when I step back and look at the whole picture, everything really did turn out good in the end.

I'm taking a cue from my friend Beth over at Like a Day Off, and looking at all things with JOY.

Next, the skinny on LIFE, and all the LIVES it changed.
K