Counting My Blessings

Good morning!

I was lying in bed last night thinking (dangerous, I know!!) about my week, and my life and how God has been there through all the trials and I was thinking how richly He blesses us each day. I'll admit I've been staying away from my blog on the bad days on purpose. I think in my head that no one wants to hear the discouraging stuff, or the ugly stuff that accompanies this disease. And I certainly don't want to remember it either! LOL What I do want to focus on, is how tenderly the Lord takes care of us, though we sometimes have to reflect on the little things to see it.

As I was lying there last night I started thinking about the week. How each day presented it's own challenges, but a few times during each day, I would receive phone calls. Phone calls from people I hadn't heard from in a while. They would each tell me, and I thought this was funny, how they had been a "bad friend" to me lately. They felt sorry they hadn't called me in a while. To be honest, who has had time? I haven't been here very often myself!! Anyway, the people who have been calling have been relaying stories of their summer, or remembering stories from our past and "tickling me pink" with laughter. I can't tell you how good I feel after a good "belly laugh"! So after this week full of "YUCK", I've also had phone calls of hysterical laughter. What better way to heal the sick? We all know laughter is the best medicine! As I was reflecting on my week last night, it dawned on me that those phone calls were strategically placed and timed in such a way that I had time to talk to them, we remembered happy times together, no phone calls overlapped, I got at least one phone call a day, sometimes more, and each one was the perfect length! Has God got timing or what??? Even though I was feeling like "yuck", I never felt abandoned, that people had forgotten me, so there was no time for a pity party. Isn't that amazing? God is sooooooooo good!!!

On that note, I have to tell a story that I was reminded of last night. A dear friend from college days called last night and we started talking about an incident that happened in chemistry lab. DS is taking chemistry this year and talked about the "chemical shower" they have in their lab room. It sparked a memory and when Ellie called last night I asked her if she remembered the time we tried to "blow up Hudson Hall". We were in bio-chemistry class just before and had been passing notes back and forth, and the last note was sent was "Well, it's time to "blow up" Hudson Hall" meaning that we were heading to lab class next. Our experiment that day was on distilling alcohol. We had an elaborate mess of glass tubes and rubber hoses all set up just as our book had told us to do. But!! And who would think this was important? When we went to get some of the "accessories" to set up this elaborate mess, we had to substitute a few things because not all of the "parts" were there. For example, we had to substitute a cork stopper instead of a rubber stopper. What difference would that make? *shrugging shoulders* Well, we had a thermometer stuck through the cork that was hovering over the bottom of a beaker full of acetone that was strategically placed over a flaming Bunsen Burner. As the acetone started to boil, it caused the cork to expand and that heavy thermometer suddenly slipped through the cork, breaking the bottom of the beaker, pouring acetone (did I mention how HIGHLY FLAMMABLE acetone is?) over the flaming Bunsen Burner. Hm...well now we had a flame thrower being fed by gas and accelerated by acetone. Of course the first thing I thought of was to turn the gas off to the Bunsen Burner, but guess what? It was on the opposite side of the flames from where I was. I turned to my lab partner and said "I was only kidding about blowing up Hudson Hall!!!" Fortunately our lab instructor was a volunteer fireman and he came to the rescue. I have to tell you I was minutes from rushing to that "chemical shower" in the corner and dousing the whole room in water! LOL Did I mention that the volunteer fireman was REALLY CUTE? My lab partner accused me of setting the fire on purpose so we could see his ripped muscles in action. LOL And you thought I had only become a Cheeky Girl recently. I've always had an appreciation for a well muscled man! *blush* We became known as the gruesome twosome after that. LOL Amazingly enough, the only "damage" we were responsible for was a broken beaker. WHEW!! I can only imagine what the cost would have been for the other equipment in that lab, not to mention a lecture hall in ashes. Ah....the good old college days. I miss them!!

Lastly, I wanted to share a little about DS the teenager. Do any of you have teenagers out there? Have they been reduced to one word answers to your questions? I know it's a phase but I'm constantly amazed at how quickly he fires these one word answers at me. It's pretty inventive. I wonder if he sits in school thinking up one word answers to dozens of questions I might pose to him when he gets home. Like....What would you like for dinner, hun? FOOD How was your day? GOOD What did you learn today? STUFF I'm serious when I tell you these are real answers to real questions. *sigh* But I was horrified to learn that DS is now taking American Sign Language as a course this year. I'm afraid those one word answers are going to be substituted with single motion gestures. It's going to be a quiet year. I was reduced to giggles though, when he told me he was multi-lingual now since he can speak English, Spanish, and American Sign.

And on that note, I'll bid you adieu. I'm off to fix some FOOD for lunch. Heaven knows what that will be. Hope he likes it...whatever that might be. Maybe I'll fix broccoli (he HATES broccoli) and that will be incentive to learn some gestures for his favorite food. LOL *Hugs*