I Live!!!! (Warning: Read at your own risk)

It has been at least a week since my last post, and I assure you that I have no valid excuse whatsoever. I haven’t even been online since last Thursday, and that trip was certainly brief. The more time passed, the less I felt like tackling the project of bringing you all up to date. But as a dutiful member of the blogging community, I feel that I must amend for this terrible transgression by writing an obscenely enormous post to cover the highlights.

First off, the salad bar.

I’ve had the past few days off of work, which has been great. The last few days I worked, though, were messy. Sunday, especially, was hard, as the morning crew had left us most of their work to do besides our usual duties. We made it through working like dogs, since there happened to be three of us scheduled for once. Life at the salad bar has been stressful, since some of the girls aren’t pulling their own weight, and everyone seems to want to take the same days off. Hopefully things will improve when we start training and working the new hire next week.

Now for the fun story.

So on Saturday I went to Hy-Vee a little over an hour before my shift started. My great-uncle Doug was visiting, along with his wife, so they and grandma June came up for lunch. So after we all had a leisurely lunch, I put on my tie and apron and went to work, only to discover that the store was out of several types of fruit. We made up for it by doing extra containers of veggies, though that was difficult too, as we were out of our usual containers. Near the end of the shift, as I was cutting the celery, I made a rather unusual discovery. We wash our celery after we cut it, so it was my knife that routed out the vegetable stowaway. I found a snail whose spiral shell was at least an inch across. It was also in three pieces, since I had apparently chopped right into him as he was calmly munching away on the leafy celery tops. Of course, it’s just as likely that the poor guy was long dead from cold before I chopped him, but you never know. It really grossed out my coworker, Kristen, but I was just amazed at the sheer size of the snail. I mean, its head was so big I could see its mouth hanging open. Its skin was grey and bumpy and it had those little nubs on the top of its head. If this grosses anyone out, don’t worry. The produce boys wash the vegetables before they put them out on the shelf. I only found the snail because we steal our stuff straight from the back cooler and wash it ourselves.

Enough about work, let’s talk about life.

My daddy walked me down the aisle in a wedding dress on Sunday. Well, we were actually walking UP the aisle, not down. In honor of Father’s Day, we performed a short drama at the opening of the service. The scene was my wedding day, and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the congregation. I was actually really nervous to be performing in front of the congregation—I’ve never been much of an actor. But doing this skit with my dad was a real joy. I got to wear my grandmother’s wedding dress, along with a headpiece I made for the occasion. (Her veil had a 3-foot train, and was too awkward to walk in.) Pictures would be forthcoming, but we have a slow internet connection.


And the silliness continues…

Since coming home for the summer, I’ve been having very strange dreams almost every night. Most of them involve USF people as the characters. I think that means I miss you guys. The oddest one that I can remember was two nights ago. I was in an airport with my brother and Brittany Drullinger. We were waiting by the luggage claim (which looked like the one in Dublin) and Kevin was holding a tray and selling hotdogs. There were hotdogs coming around with the luggage for him, though they all came out one-by-one, and they were footlongs without buns or anything like that. There were also among the baggage various things we use at work, specifically packages of chicken fajita strips and deviled egg kits (which we were out of all weekend…). Then we all had to clear the airport because the Iranian soccer team was coming through. Weird, huh? If this continues, I should have some other good ones to tell you about by the next time I post. And don’t worry, I intend to keep posting on a more regular basis from now on.

But I haven’t just been working and sleeping.

Yesterday daddy and I took on a minor landscaping project. There was a bush needing to be planted in our backyard, which had been given to him by Larson’s for Arbor Day this year. We ended up putting it by our west fence. But it would look rather silly there on it’s own, so we also moved another small bush to a spot just a little further down the fence. This one will serve a double purpose once it’s tall enough to block the view our neighbors have of our backyard. A man bought the house and added on to the back, with a piece that juts out above ground very near to our fence. Since they also took out the trees to do this, our yard feels rather exposed now. So the bush—when it gets taller in a few years—will add a bit more privacy to the yard. But for now the project was just a fun way to spend the afternoon. Of course, the rocks in our lawn conspired to put as much work into our fun as possible. Dad set me to digging the second hole on my own, while he got the second bush out of the ground to move it. But the hole turned out to be dead-center on a rock pretty much as wide as the hole itself. It took forever to get that thing dug out of our way. And of course, once we got it out we realized that it was only about 3 inches thick and had been lying in the ground the long way. It figures that it would be positioned so as to make itself as difficult as possible. Anyway, afterward I realized that I had burned my shoulders, but don’t worry mom, it’s healing right up nice and quick like. Today we finally got the garden finished—we planted a couple rows of beans to compliment the tomato plants already in the ground. And I was given part of a row to try growing some flowers. Sunflowers and hollyhocks, if you’ll believe it. I figure, why not apply the common maxim “go big or go home” to gardening? Not really, I just think they’re cool flowers. We’ll see if I get to see any of the blossoms this time. Last year’s sunflower—that’s right, only one survived that long—didn’t bloom until after I’d gone back to school and so I missed it. Oh well, better luck next year! Or should I say, better luck this year!

There is just no good way to flow from gardening to cars. Deal with it.

Yesterday Kevin came up from Madison just to take his little sister to a movie. Yay! The family went to see Cars on Father’s Day, but I had to work, so I couldn’t go with them. Yes, I had already seen it, but that was a hurried affair in which we missed the opening previews and couldn’t stay for the credits. And you know that with any Pixar movie, you have to stay for the credits. So Kevin took me to see it again and it was just as good the second time. Let me tell you, watching the tractor-tipping scene with a Midwest audience is priceless. You just know that someone around you has at least thought about doing the same thing (with cows, of course, we can’t tip tractors). I love responsive crowds at funny movies. They’re just a hoot. Anyway, I looooooved this movie. I’m definitely going to but it when it comes out, and I may even get the soundtrack. It seriously gave me a new appreciation for country music. Not that I was exactly opposed to it before, but I just hadn’t heard much of the good stuff. And let me tell you, this movie has plenty of the good stuff.

And now for something completely different.

I’ll be going out to Camp Judson at the end of next month to counsel, and am intending to help lead the 4:00 am Mount Baldy hike. But I’ll be the first to admit that I’m nowhere near in good enough shape to do that. So I’m riding the bike path and doing a few other things in pursuit of physical fitness, and let me tell you, it is hard! I had gotten too used to sitting on my butt all day at school, and my body is still sore as I work my way through the beginning stages of my health regimen. I tell you, it’s times like this that I realize how different life is from the movies. In a movie, when someone needs to get in shape, they get a five-minute music montage and then they’re done. Rocky had an inspiring montage; Mulan had only one song before she was tougher than the whole army. But the rest of us have to tough it out minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. The other day I actually had Mulan’s song “I’ll Make a Man out of You” running through my head as I finished my ride, and the weird thing is that it actually seemed to help me keep going. Perhaps I should put together a workout soundtrack for my own music montage, although not having an mp3 player makes that somewhat of a moot point. I do have this little radio thing, but knowing my luck the Refuge would play something slow and sappy when I need something upbeat to keep going. It’s all just a matter of time and effort now until I get back into the shape I was in high school, when I rode the trail every day. If I can keep this up, I should be able to make it up the mountain next month.

Time is a funny old thing, isn’t it? We romanticize time, and I think literature is largely to blame. Certainly, when a couple has been married over 50 years, it is a great achievement. And there is a great deal of truth in the saying “love is spelled T-I-M-E”. If we truly care about something or someone, we will spend time on it or with them. Time is valuable, and we will not waste it on something that is not worthwhile. But think of some of the most poignant love stories, and other stories, out there. Time always plays an important role. The guy in the Notebook waited years to get his girl back; Buttercup waited more than five years for any sign of Westley; Anne, the heroine of Persuasion spent nearly ten years pining for her lost love before she got him back; Joseph spent years as a slave in Egypt before his dreams were realized. I could list more examples, but you get the point. The waiting, the hoping, the striving—the stories are not complete without such elements. But we never see what this time is like. It is always glossed over in a single paragraph, or even just a few words. We don’t live through the days of Anne weeping for Captain Wentworth; we don’t watch Joseph pacing his jail cell day after day, year after year. Even here words cannot convey the real length of time. We simply read it and think, “oh, eight years of waiting. Isn’t she a brave girl.” But how would you feel if it were you? What if you were the one who had to wait, hoping against hope for a dream that might never come true? Like I said, we romanticize the idea, but I don’t think very many of us would like to live it. On the other hand, we do live it every day. Almost everyone I know is looking for, or waiting for, that special someone to finally come along. How long will it be? Another year? Five years? Never? When it finally arrives, others may look at the time spent waiting and call it romantic, but we might have a different word for it. Or if this is too mushy for you to take, we could look at it in another context. We all have other dreams we hope to achieve some day. A dream career perhaps, or the dream of home ownership, the dream of parenthood, or the dream of world domination. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be handed to us, and it isn’t going to come any time soon. We have to wait for it, and work for it, probably for years before we can have it. Will that be romantic? Perhaps, afterward, when we can look back on all the pain and smile. But right now, in the midst of it all, it can really hurt. The hard work is sweaty, dirty, painful and above all, hard. Sometimes the waiting and the working seem so long and hard that we can’t even see what we’re working toward anymore. And sometimes, I must admit, we fail and there is no reward for all that work and waiting. At least, not the one we were expecting. Now, don’t think I’ve become cynical or merely impatient. There is one time at least when the work and the wait will always be worth it. Living the Christian walk is hard work. Everyday we face persecution and derision from unbelievers who call us narrow minded or just plain crazy. At the same time, we must daily battle the temptation to sin, not only in big ways, but mostly in small ones. God’s path is not easy, but it is right. I admit that I too often choose the easy path, but I’m entering into a bit of spiritual training this summer as well as physical. Doing God’s will and following him on a path that I cannot see will be the most difficult struggle of my life, but I know that it will be worth it. When my days end and the toil is done, I want to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Don’t you? That one moment (which I suppose will stretch to eternity) will make it all worthwhile.

-Kim