Last week was crazy hard.
Not impossibly difficult or devastating, just CRAZY hard.
Crazy, that I thought I was finished with going-to-see-the-teacher now that they are in college; who would ever guess that the teacher in our dear little community college would not know that her grading rubric would never, not in this life, add up to a passing grade? . . . or that she would take offense when someone just mentioned it in the most helpful way. . .?
Crazy that the alarm, the one that goes off every morning of the week, collapsed in nervous exhaustion on the most important morning of the week. . .and I missed my time with Wallace, the Personal Trainer, he of eternal patience and don’t-tell-me-you-can’t-because-then-you-most-certainly-will. I cried. Friday mornings is my time to feel like I can do things I never thought I could.
Crazy that an argument between two women broke out behind me in line at Stuff Mart over their places in the self-check line. Honestly, I recognized One when I heard One, and I just wanted to hiss to the young woman being verbally accosted, “Men-O-Pausal. Just back away. For us all. Just back away. Let this one go.” Crazy that when they stopped arguing, a husband shows up and quite innocently asks one question and here-we-go-again.
Crazy that seven minutes separated me from reaching the optometrist in time for Husband’s glasses. And he, the one who works so hard, is wearing Reading Glasses that pinch for the third week in a row.
Crazy that the line at Macadoo’s came to a complete standstill for 20 minutes right after I drove into the place where you cannot back out. All I wanted was a Sweet Tea. Stuff Mart on the Saturday before the SuperBigDealBowl demanded that I have a fix of Sweet Tea.
Crazy that I have to go back to Stuff Mart because I picked up the wrong thing.
Crazy that a paint store would close at noon on a Saturday or that the Pizza Guy would forget to bring our pizza. Forget and go home. (I’m not making this stuff up.)
Crazy that a grown man would get so bent out of shape that the avocados were too hard to make guacamole for the SuperBigDealWomanizingBowl.
Crazy, that mercy and grace abounds, and the Gifts gathered here are greater still and so I count. . .
#0817 - Kindness of strangers who listen, respond, refund
#0818 - Wisdom of Wallace, “Everybody has set backs. The secret is you fall down, you pick yourself back up .”
#0819 - Compassion for strangers who argue because they each bear a load the other cannot see. And huge amounts of compassion for unwitting Husbands who emerge from the Men-O-Pausal years without PTSD.
#0820 - Husband. My Husband. One big, six foot four Grace Gift. Because when the guacamole turned out fresh and chunky instead of the usual mushy dip, he mumbles humbly, “I like it better this way. Maybe the Good Lord just pointed you in the direction of these avocados.”
That’s how I like to think about it, that Proverbs 16:9 can be paraphrased in this way, “He just points us in the direction of unripe avacados, and we end up liking it better that way.”
Counting with the Community at. . .
Miss Bennett: "Books— oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings." 
"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. . ."
"Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. . . For you alone, I think and plan. "
"My beloved is mine and I am his." ~ Song of Solomon
