Posted on by mikebobsworld

The Blog That Almost Wasn’t

Churning out a weekly blog is not very easy.  First, you have to have an idea and then you have to already have the needed information at your fingertips or you have to be able to do the research.  Stumbling on the first can almost be a disaster as something might never get written.  Take last week for example.  I had no clue what to write about and heeding the advice of a good friend I decided it was better to say nothing than to write something that I don’t feel passionate about.

Make no mistake.  I have yet to write a blog that I didn’t feel was important if only to me.  I write because I was made to write and eventually I have to sit in front of a computer and start putting words on the screen.  Before that, when I was young, it was pen to paper.  Pen to paper has a nostalgic feel to it today.  My penmanship is truly horrible and it only can be deciphered by me, but something is inspiring to write the way Charles Dickens, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Mark Twain had to write.  I was inspired to write by watching The Waltons and seeing John-Boy sitting at his desk keeping notebook after notebook filled with his journaling.  Watching him made me want to do the same and I did.

The second difficult part is research.  Now research today is much easier than when I was growing up.  We had no internet.  Very few people had an encyclopedia which was a set of books that tried to comprehensively cover every possible subject in the world.  Doing research for a school project meant doing hours in the library both at your school and the public library.  We didn’t have an encyclopedia at home but my next-door neighbor did and I would go there when I need to look something up.

Let me tell you about my next-door neighbors.  Their names were John and Mary Rainier.  But to me and only me, they were Aunt Mary and Uncle John.  Aunt Mary was a lovely lady that was a hairdresser at one time.  She would give my mom permanents whenever she needed one.  My Uncle John I really don’t know what he did for a living but he was kind to me and always had a smile and occasionally some good advice.  Aunt Mary was special.

Aunt Mary didn’t mind my friends playing in her backyard which was joined to my side yard.  She gave us taffies regularly always reminding us not to run with them in our mouths.  Advice which most of us failed to heed but luckily we never got hurt.  To me, she was a kindly aunt.  Who took me out to lunch occasionally, bought me treats, and gave me the best Christmas and birthday gifts.  I think she was giver at heart and showed her love in that way.  On my mom’s birthday, every year, she made an incredible lemon chiffon pie.  I have no idea how it was made but it was one of the most delicious desserts I have ever had and miss it even now.

I remember going to her house to use the encyclopedia.  That set of books was something precious in that house. I don’t remember ever being told to be careful with anything while visiting her, which I did often, but those books were to be handled with care and respect.  My parents even warned me before leaving my own home to be careful while using those books.  And I was.  I think my respect for all books comes from being respectful of that set of encyclopedias.  If you looked at my shelves now you would find that many of the books I own are in the same condition I bought them in.  That does not include the second-hand books I own, just the ones I bought new.  If I order a book from Amazon and it arrives damaged in any way it goes back.  I make it a point to complain because Amazon used to treat books with respect, now they just throw them loosely in a box or a puffy envelope with nothing to ensure no damage is done.  I have Amazon on speed dial because of this.

I took a detour here but research is very important to me.  I never want to present to you anything that is a fact that I haven’t checked.  My mind holds a lot of wonderful things but the details are always sketchy.  I have an Amazon Echo device that sits next to me at my desk.  The device can usually help me with dates and spelling and sometimes information that I’m missing. Using the Echo device gives me the feeling of being on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and just asking the computer for information. Science Fiction has become science fact.  The Echo can’t give me quotes or other longer facts those I have to do a general internet search for.  I am truly grateful to Google for that.  You can find almost anything on the web.  Maybe I should try to find a recipe for lemon chiffon pie?

I feel like at least a part of all my blogs are research papers and out of respect to you dear reader, I want my facts to be accurate.  Especially when talking about my health or any other branch of science.  To give inaccurate information about anything is just wrong and if I ever do that and you catch it please contact me immediately.

This is the blog that almost wasn’t because again I don’t have a topic this week.  I have topics for future weeks that I am working on now or at least thinking about now.  We celebrate Superman’s birthday in June and the character turns 94 this year.  I hope I am around for his 100th birthday.  Judy Garland would have been 100 years old this year in June if she hadn’t died tragically in the 1960s.  Those are two of my upcoming topics.  I don’t know what else there will be.  But, there is always something exciting on the horizon or at least I believe so.

I rambled a bit today but it was good for me to remember Aunt Mary and Uncle John.  In the future, I will introduce to you various other people from my past.  My cousin Joanne, my first best friend Charlie, and my next best friend Joe.  And maybe you’ll meet my cousins and aunts and uncles all of who played and still play a big part in my life.  One day too, I would introduce you to my family, my parents, Pat and Vince Roberto,  my sisters Patty and Susan, and my brother Vince and tell you about my childhood all so long ago.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Why Culture POPS for Me

I have been in love with pop culture for as long back as I can remember.  I guess that it started with the Batman TV series which began its run in 1966.  Even before that, I loved Lucy and Jack Benny.  I grew up watching cartoons that are now forgotten Beanie and Cecil, Tobar the 8th Man, Rocket Robin Hood, and Marine Boy.  All of these fascinated me and I continually wanted more.

After a certain age, I became a walking TV guide.  I knew everything that was on and whether it was worth watching or not.  In the first grade, I fell in love with comic books, and many nights my collection of comics sat next to me in my corner of the sofa while I watched TV.

My mother loved musicals and so I was thrust into the worlds of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loew and many others.  While reading comics I found that the characters would quote old movies or books and so slowly I began to watch old films as they showed up in the TV listings.  This was years before you could record or stream anything so if it was on that was the only chance to watch it.

I also began to read.  My mother read to me as a child.  Before bed, she read me all kinds of things until I was old enough to read for myself.  As I stated before comic book characters would quote books and I wanted to know what the quotes meant and where they came from.  I developed an early interest in Shakespeare, Greek myth, and Arthurian Legends.

I was reading well above my grade level even though you couldn’t tell that from my grades.  I began to blossom as a student when the emphasis was changed from grammar to reading classic literature.  It was then I could shine.

I don’t know what draws me to pop culture, both past, and present.  I  have written on it extensively.  Book reviews, movie reviews, and history.  In fact a couple of years ago I wrote a fascinating story about a forgotten show called The Goldbergs.  Not the new one but the show that was on the airwaves from 1929 until the 1950s.  The show was a radio show, a tv show, a play, a movie, and a musical.  And every script was written by the same woman Gertrude Berg.  She was pretty interesting too.  You can read her story here, https://pcmworldnews.com/news/2021/01/the-goldbergs-debuts-on-television-january-1949-2/.

I like to list all I could about my love of pop culture.  If you walked into my apartment you would be greeted by a bookshelf filled with books on show business of one kind or another.  The shelf is decorated with pop culture icons of the Golden age and the present age action figure of Green Lantern and The Flash.  Going further in you would find sculptures of the main characters from Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows.  Looking up you’d find peaking out of teacup Jacque and Gus the two mice from Disney’s animated Cinderella.  In my office, there is a replica of Sleeping Beauty Castle from Disneyland and it is surrounded by every character you could ever hope to meet in that place.  Even on my desk, staring at me is a small animatronic Yoda that talks when I push a button.  A small Starship Enterprise also sits on my desk right next to a Tardis from Doctor Who.  On my walls are movie posters, an authentic replica of Bilbo’s and Frodo’s sword sting along with a map of Middle Earth.  In the hallway, one wall is devoted to a map of The Magic Kingdom and the other is displayed all of the celebrity autographed photos I have collected over the years.

I have a Mickey Mouse wall clock, a Superman wall clock and on other shelves, I have a set of action figures that are the great authors including Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens.  In my bedroom, there is a collection of 7-inch vinyl figures that depict most of the Justice League of America.

And that is truly only a partial run down.  Most of this stuff will mean little to those I leave behind but it does give great joy to me.  I think that is what pop culture is.  Pop culture is a bringer of joy.

Most of pop culture starts with a story.  The Greek and Norse myths as well as Arthurian legends are all stories most of which were handed down verbally until someone decided to write them down.  We wouldn’t have Grimms Fairy Tales if the two brothers didn’t travel extensively in Germany collecting the folk tales that were there.  In many ways that is the whole of pop culture.  It is the handing down of stories from one generation to the next.

The first question I have about my definition is what about music or poetry?  They are part of pop culture too.  In many ways, songs and poems and paintings and sculptures all tell stories or they are part of a story.  So they fit in the definition.

That brings me back to us.  What draws us to the movies, to TV shows and novels, and all the rest?  What draws us to stories?

The answer is simple.  We are also all stories.  Every event in our lives is a story and every moment of our lives makes up our story which is intermingled with all the other stories of the people we know.  Whether they are family or friends or even enemies we are part of their stories and they are a part of ours.

Then there is the big story.  Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage and we are but players on it.”  Shakespeare was absolutely correct.  We are all part of the biggest story ever written and it begins; “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

That statement is the beginning of all the great stories that ever happened or that ever will happen.  In some sense, it is a myth but unlike the myths of the Greeks or the Norsemen, this myth is true.  It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the big bang theory or not God,  in the beginning, created the heavens and the earth.

What does this mean for us?  It means that we are part of God’s story that we were meant to be here and that all of our lives have meaning even if we don’t see it.  It is for this reason that we go-to stories.  That we go to pop culture.  We go to these to find the meaning to our own lives and that meaning is in those stories.  I didn’t realize that The Lord of the Rings could speak to addicts until I did some digging and found that Frodo and Gollum’s passion for the ring ate away at their wills until it possessed them the way an addiction possess the addict.  Scrooge’s adventures with the three ghosts of Christmas is a mini version of therapy where you look at the past and the present to try and change the future.  The Wind in the Willows teaches us the need for solid friendships and The Secret Garden is a story that makes it clear that hard work, a solid spiritual life, and good eating cab restore health to both mind and body.

I could go on and on.  Batman is an example of the unlimited potential in every human being. Superman says it best in his slogan he is the embodiment of truth, justice, and the American way even if the American way is under scrutiny at this moment.  Our stories, our myths, our pop culture is what makes us who we are and helps us find who we can be.

CS Lewis was an unbeliever until one fateful day he was having a discussion with his friend JRR Tolkien and another and in that discussion, Tolkien pointed out that Lewis loved the old stories the myths of the ancients but he said that The Gospel was a myth too.  Only it was the one true myth.  The one true story, the one true part of pop culture or any culture that makes sense of all the rest.

If you don’t know who CS Lewis is…well, that’s another story.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

To Everything, There is a Season

Solomon says in the Book of Ecclesiastes “To everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under Heaven.  Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.”  Stephen Sondheim wrote in Merrily We Roll Along, “It’s our time breathe it in worlds to change and worlds to win.”  And I am writing today it is my time.

After writing last week’s blog about letting go of people in my life who had become toxic for me I felt a new freedom.  The freedom to relax and be me but also to get on with life.  It has been said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  While I was feeling the need to constantly ask forgiveness from three people that had stopped caring about me, I was examining my life through their lens.  Seeing me as I thought they were seeing me trying to live up to something that didn’t exist.  After breaking free of that bondage, and bondage it was, I was able to see myself more clearly with a better lens and make the corrections in my life that needed attention.

And I did that.  I started going back to meetings that I had been neglecting.  I made phone calls to people whom I hadn’t been talking to but should have.  These folks encourage me and I can encourage them.  It becomes a give and receive, relationship as all relationships should be.  If you are in a relationship where you are always giving or are always receiving it’s probably an unhealthy relationship.

I have had a more peaceful life.  It’s amazing how much you calm down when you stop worrying about what someone else is thinking about you.  It’s good to feel calm.  I have also been able to read and concentrate on my reading.  Reading has become joyful again.  My spirit is lighter and I am smiling more.  I am in a much better place than I have been.

That’s not to say that I don’t have issues that need to be dealt with.  I saw my doctor today and he is sending me to another specialist to deal with my foot.  I fractured several of the bones in my foot back in April and though the bones healed the pain and swelling have not gone down.  It’s very difficult to walk but I do what I can.  Going to the market has been an achievement but I do it when I have to do. 

The saga with my ears continues and I need to see two doctors about that.  An ear doctor and neurologist.  All of the appointments are made.  I don’t know if I have written about my ear in this blog.  Let me get you up to date.  My ear has been leaking fluid for about four years.  The big question is what the fluid is.  The infectious disease doctor thought it was an ear infection and what was leaking out was a byproduct of the infection.  A doctor whose title I can’t spell but we’ll call him a super Ear Nose and Throat doctor thinks that what’s coming out of my ear is spinal fluid.  This guy tested the fluid in my ear and the test came back inconclusive.  He wants to do a radical surgery on me where he will cut a hole in my skull and dig down to where he believes there is a crack in my skull and patch the crack up.  Needless to say with a test that has come back inconclusive I do not want this surgery done.  I have been dodging seeing him until I can get another doctor to run the test on the fluid.

So as you can see life isn’t easy but it does have its moments of joy.  These come from friends that visit me or unexpected phone calls.  These come from the things that delight me like the latest Spiderman movie which was awesome or finding some of my favorite TV shows from the past are available to watch for free on YouTube.  These shows include Here Comes the Brides and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Joy comes unexpectedly and it really should.  If we were full of joy all the time how could we possibly know what Joy is?  There will always be sorrow and sadness in our lives.  It’s been that way since Adam and Eve left The Garden, but if any of us only experience sorrow and sadness we will go mad.  We’d have to.  Or we would become angry and bitter a true Scrooge as Dickens describes him at the beginning of A Christmas Carol.

So when joy comes we take it to heart and remember it.  Our joy whatever it is will get us through the tough times if we remember it.  So write down what brings joy to you.  Journal your joy moments so when things do get black you can look back and maybe smile through the hardship.  Auntie Mame says, “Life is Banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”  Eat the banquet that is in front of you.  Auntie Mame echoes Jesus who said, “A thief is only there to steal, kill, and destroy.  I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better than they ever dreamed of” (John 10:10 The Message Version)

And now an announcement that I was to make last week but had to put off because my doctor had to cancel my appointment due to Covid in his office.  I can make it now.  Since starting my new eating regimen on December 6, 2021, I have lost, drum roll please, 22 pounds.  What I am doing is indeed working and I intend to stick with the program.  A big thank you to everyone who has encouraged me.

Until next time may God bless you all.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

And The Changes Continue…

The last two years have been rough on all of us.  I don’t think anyone in this country has not been affected by the Covid 19 virus.  It caused the deaths of loved ones and it has also caused those we love to separate from us.  This has been the hardest part for me.

Politically I am neither a full-fledged republican nor a full-fledged democrat.  Both parties have a lot to offer that this country needs right now and yet instead of seeking a balance we keep going from one extreme to the other.  Heaven help us all!

This blog is not about politics.  I hope it never will be.  This blog is about loss and change.  The first friend I lost was not even over an argument.  I corrected a post he put up on Facebook in the comments.  The post was political and inaccurate.  It doesn’t matter what the issue was.  He got mad at me for pointing out what was wrong and stopped speaking to me.  The second friend I lost I have known for over 40 years.  He texted me early one morning telling me of a situation he was in.  He felt threatened.  I offered the best advice I could at that hour and the texts kept coming.  Eventually, he told me he didn’t like what he was hearing from me and he too cut me off.  I got angry at this and probably sent a text or two I shouldn’t have.  The third friend just stopped talking to me for no reason whatsoever. He just stopped returning my calls.  He was a mentor to me and I relied on his wisdom for many years and now he is just gone.

Now, after all of this happened I did everything in my power to win these three back.  I asked forgiveness, sent ecards on holidays, left messages asking how I could make this right or how I could be forgiven.  I got stone silence.  It began to make me sick as I kept going around and around in my head about how I could make things right.  Everything I tried failed.  And the silence continues.

I was doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result and that is one of the definitions of insanity.  I was making myself insane trying to win back the friendship from three people who didn’t want me back.  They had control over me as long as I continued to beg for their forgiveness.  Something had to break and it did.

I finally realized that these guys were renting space in my head.  Space they had no business being in.  I called on a good friend who talked with me for a long time.  He asked me very direct questions if I was angry or bitter towards these three men and I’m not.  I’m hurt but I can honestly say that  I would welcome them back if they reached out to me but it is time for me to stop reaching out to them.  And I have.

The freedom of letting these three men go is amazing.  I feel better about myself and my life.  I no longer feel guilty about the situation because I know I have done everything I can to make it right.  The ball is in their court.  All three of these men are Christians I am looking forward to the day we reunite in heaven and can talk these things out and forgive each other there.  If it happens here all the better but I know it will happen one day.

This marks the end of the first month of my efforts to try and lose weight.  I will reveal at the end of this blog how many pounds I have lost.  I truly hope I lost something.

Starting a diet at the beginning of December may not have been the wisest course.  December has more food traps than any other month of the year.  I was able to maneuver through most of them.  I didn’t say no to all treats but I cut back and ate less of my favorites than any other year.  In the past, I would have gained a pound or five over the holidays.  This Christmas I think I lost.

One thing that stands out is I got in the car the other day and found it very easy to get my seatbelt buckled.  This has been difficult for quite a while now and yesterday it clicked with little to no effort so weight must be coming off or at least inches.  I’ll know for sure on Tuesday when I go see my doctor.  I have not weighed myself at home at all, only there.  When I see what his scale says I’ll come home and calibrate my scale here so I can weigh more often.

The original diet plan was to have two Slimfast shakes and a piece of fruit a day.  One of each for breakfast and one of each for lunch.  I found early on that I didn’t get hungry at lunchtime and so began skipping the second shake and fruit.  I seem to get hungry at about four PM and so I just plan dinner for five.  Sometimes I feel like my blood sugar may be dropping in the afternoon.  At those times I will eat a healthy snack.  My sister sent several bags of roasted and shelled chestnuts.  I love those and they are a good form of protein.  The whole bag is only 200 calories.

Dinner is for the most part meat, potato, and a vegetable.  Sometimes with a little sweet treat.  Last night I had eggplant parmesan and a nice multigrain roll with Land O Lakes butter mixed with olive oil.  All I drink anymore is water.  I have had some juice in small amounts on occasion but it has mostly been water.

Before the beginning of December, I lived at Fast Food Restaurants.  I love McDonald’s and a standard order would have been two triple cheeseburgers a medium fries, a Hi C Orange Lava Burst, and two apple pies.  I would have this several times a week.  I also frequented Arby’s, Burger King, Popeye’s, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried, and Wendy’s. Some days I would get breakfast lunch and dinner from these places.  I craved it.  I even felt I needed it but I was wrong.

Since December 6th I have not been in a Fastfood restaurant or used the drive-thru. The closest I got was a small popcorn at the movie theater when I went to see Spiderman No Way Home.  I figured going to the movies is not a regular habit for me so I could treat myself there.

Today is Sunday and as most of you know I publish on Wednesday morning.  I will finish this blog up when I return from the doctor on Tuesday.

It’s now Monday and my doctor’s office just called.  It seems there has been an outbreak of Covid amongst the staff and my appointment has been moved to next Tuesday so the weigh-in is postponed another week.  Seems like Covid is again changing our lives as I also heard at least one college is going back to Zoom classes when the semester starts and one community theater just shortened its schedule by eliminating two shows.  I find it inspiring that people are taking the correct precautions now.  No matter what life will go on and one day we will be out of this mess.

Posted on by mikebobsworld

Moving Day

This weekend began and ended the short journey from Secane where I’ve lived most of my life to Swarthmore.  To be upfront I know moving is hard but it should have never been like this.

It started badly from the very beginning.  My friend Bill arrived on time to help me at 8 a.m. the same time the movers were to arrive.  The movers did not show up until 10:30 they were two and a half hours late.  But wait let’s backtrack.

The trouble started with the initial phone call.  I  was hiring this moving company, one I had used before, both to move me and pack for me.  The main area of packing was to be my books.  I told the person doing the intake what I had to move and I specifically stated that I had seven bookshelves filled with books.  When the packers arrived they had nowhere near the number of boxes they needed for my books.  They called for more but it took about forty-five minutes for those boxes to arrive.  In the meantime, they put my books in boxes too large for them.  More on that later.

Bill, who was devoting his day to me, only had until 4 p.m. to help me.  It was generous of him to give me eight hours.  With the movers being two and a half hours late that made the time that really needed him on the sight of my new home that much shorter.  The loading of the ruck was uneventful it was the unloading that there were major issues.

My feet and my legs are very weak.  And quickly became painful when I am standing or sitting up.  Right now, my left foot which was injured in April is throbbing as I write.  This meant I knew I had to be very specific with the boxes as they were packed so that they would end up in the room they were destined for.  So every box was labeled accordingly.  I planned to sit near the door have the movers read me what was on the boxes and then let them be placed in the right rooms.  I even labeled the books as to which shelf they were to go.  This should have been easy and clean cut.  It became chaos.

The movers were bringing four boxes in at a time.  They barely read the boxes and when they did only the box that was on top.  Some boxes that were clearly marked, they asked “where does this box marked bathroom go?”  I told them which bathroom to put it in but it ended up in the far corner of the office.

At one point I noticed a gouge in a triangular shape outside the apartment door, in the wall that had just been freshly painted.  I asked the mover if he did that and he admitted it to me.  I then asked if he was going to report it and he said he would when they checked out at the end.  I was there when they called the supervisor and the damage was not reported.  I knew I was going to have to report it myself

Bill was doing all he could to help me.  But he ended up helping them by running up and down five flights of stairs with some of the lighter things.  It was during this time that he notices something strange.  One of the movers kept disappearing.  I thought the guy was unloading the truck but it seems that was not the case.  More on this later.

Between the bedroom and office furniture as well as the boxes I became more and more confused.  The one thing I did get out was where to place my bed and dresser.  I was in the room when the dresser was placed, I was not there when the bed was placed.  I had shown the mover where the bed was to go and it was made doubly clear by where the nightstand and lamp were placed.  When I finally got the chance to look in the bedroom the bed was in the wrong spot.  Not at all being able to move the bed I had to move the nightstand and find a way to power the lamp as there are no outlets on that wall.

I felt things were moving awfully slow.  I blamed it on the elevator.  It took less than two hours to pack the truck and four and half hours to unpack it.  Bill, as I said earlier, had to leave at four but he felt bad going.  I started to tear up.  Towards five o’clock I heard an argument between the two movers taking place outside the apartment in the hallway.  The one was telling the other that he had to stop and pray.  The other one said that he shouldn’t stop now as there was still a lot to do.  The first one said that it was past dusk and he had to stop.  The other guy came into my apartment and I asked what was going and he said, “that the guy had gone to pray and it had been happening throughout the day.  That explained the disappearances.

Eventually, it ended and I was left alone.  I first went and looked in the office and almost every box was packed in the office.  I couldn’t move any of them.  Then I looked in the bedroom and saw the bed in the wrong place.  Then I looked at the box in the bathroom, which I thought was the bathroom box it turned out to be a box of linen.  It was then that I lost it.  I called my sister and was talking to my brother in law, I started to cry uncontrollably because I couldn’t do a thing by myself to straighten the mess out.  My sister and brother-in-law live in Tennessee and he couldn’t help me.  In my mind, there was no one to help me.  I couldn’t begin to figure a way out of this mess.  I sobbed hard tears and cried out to God to send someone to help.  Then as God does on occasion I heard a still small voice say, “call Rob.”

Now Rob had been my wingman on packing day making sure the boxes got labeled correctly in one room while I was in another.  Rob is the leader of the Christian men’s fellowship that I was an active member of before Covid.  I hadn’t been back to the group but Rob and I stayed in touch.

It was a short call.  Rob said he would round up a couple of guys from the group and they would be over the next night.  Then the still small voice came again and said, “Call John.”  My cousin John had given me the past three Tuesday mornings to help me move in.  He was great to me and had told me if I need him again to just call.  So I did.  John promised he would come over on Monday morning.

From then on I just did what I could.  Which wasn’t much.  When I woke up the next morning I was determined to go to church but realized the bathroom supplies were in no box that I could even see.  So I had no soap or shampoo or toothpaste.  Somehow my little men’s traveling shaving kit was where I could get to it.  I had my razer, a toothbrush, and a travel-size bottle of Pert, so I made do.  I shaved, brushed my teeth with no toothpaste, and washed my hair and my body with Pert Shampoo and Conditioner, in the long run, soap of any kind is still soap.

I went to church, unpacked some small boxes that I could handle, and at 5:00 Jerry, one of the first men to come from the men’s fellowship, arrived.  He quickly got to work by tackling the wardrobe boxes.  These were four huge boxes filled with my clothes and coats.  They had been placed in front of my closet so I thought I could empty them myself but they were all placed backward with the side that you open the box on facing my windows.  These boxes have a rack inside of them.  Had they been facing the right direction, I would have opened a panel on the box and taken the clothes, still on their hangers, and placed them in the closet.  It should have been easy but I couldn’t swing the box around.  I tried opening one box on the opposite side and the whole rack collapsed.  I couldn’t pick the clothes up at all.  Jerry, moving like the wind, had all four boxes unpacked and all the clothes in the right closets in half an hour.

At 5:30 Rob and Travis, my other volunteer arrived.  Quickly the three of them had all the boxes in the right rooms.  It was at the ned that I found my bathroom box in the far corner of the room sitting all alone.  I thought that was going to be it.  I was wrong.  Though Jerry had to leave, Travis and Rob stayed and they unpacked and filled 5 of the seven bookcases.  I struggled not to cry at the ned.  These men gave me their time and their energy.  They were good company too talking while they worked and I directed.  They were happy to help.  It was a blessing given to me by them through the grace of God.

I felt like a tone of weight was off my shoulders.  Because the boxes were in the right places I stayed up until two a.m. emptying boxes and putting stuff away.  6 a.m. I was shocked when my alarm went off but I knew John was coming and I shook off the cobwebs.  At 8:30 John and much to my surprise and delight, his brother Nick showed up.  They made quick work of the rest of the books and helped me with some other stuff.  Again another blessing.  When John and Nick left I had a home.  There were still boxes to unpack and stuff to put away and pictures to be hung but that could be done over time.

I got a call that day from the moving company asking for an evaluation of how things went.  I held back nothing. The information I relayed was sent up the chain and I got a call today from an administrative person.  He listened to the whole story and told me that he would get in touch with the building about the wall repair and I would hear back from him later today about what they would do for me.  So far I have heard nothing and the workday is winding down.  I fear I will be disappointed again.

I have been told that moving is one of the most stressful things anyone ever does.  I never felt that way before but that turned out to be true this time.  However, every black cloud has a silver lining and my silver lining is all the people who reached out to help me, the people who took time to listen to me and to support me emotionally.  These people are the stars of this show.  It is my prayer that God blesses all of those who helped me and it is also my prayer that each of you, when you hit any snag in life, that there will be good people around to help you. Jesus said, “What you did for the least of these you did for me.”