- Gotten my first flat tire (which was never a milestone I wanted to reach)
- Completed 40 (yes, FORTY) tasks for one week's worth of learning in my "happiness" class (yes, I put happiness in quotations because there is no happiness anymore. Only bloodshot eyes and senioritis and regret.
- Written about 10,000 words for Something New (which I wanted to do this week, but actually forgot my goal until I realized that I'd reached it....)
- Had a dental appointment with a new dentist (I hate dental appointments, okay? It was nerve-wracking)
Had three existential crises- Convinced one of my favorite barn cats inside because she has a nasty cut on her paw from something so now my mother and I are playing nursemaid to The Queen Feline
- Confirmed my eligibility for a scholarship I'm set to receive from my college (yay!)
- Set up another whole planner for writing because my other two were almost overflowing
- Got some Christmas shopping done (sorry bank account)
- Tried to get a head start on my class assignments for NEXT week because next week's going to be busy too (I only have 31 tasks though!...)
- ....Something else I was going to mention and then forgot.
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| Credit: Buzzfeed |
Current Projects: Something New and I'm also considering compiling a bunch of fictionalized autobiographical short stories or something into a small book of short stories/poems about a trip I went on 4 years ago. More on that later because I'm feeling nostalgic about it right now and in this case, nostalgia isn't good. A professor for autobiographical writing once said that doing so can be wonderful for healing. So if I work on it, this will be more of a therapy trip than anything else.
Current Bible Verse: Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43:18-19, NIV.
Things that can be learned from a dry-rotted tire:
So I have a very old car. '95 Toyota Camry. Because it's so old, I have to make sure to drive it frequently so that it doesn't seize up or turn into a bucket of rust. Well, I had been too busy to drive it since that 150th play I mentioned awhile back in June. On a whim, I decided to take it to church on my own instead of riding with my parents. I got there perfectly fine, and when the service was over I went to take it home. My parents were talking to another member of the congregation and I was going to wait until they left so that I could follow them, but something just told me I should just go ahead and leave. My air conditioner was blowing hot air because of the extreme heat we were experiencing at the time, and I don't really like the A/C anyway so I turned it off and rolled my windows down instead. A little over a mile from my house -- POP! fizzzzzzzz......zzzzzzzz.....zzzzzz....Which I wouldn't have heard if my windows hadn't been down (admittedly, I was playing my music pretty loudly). My car didn't swerve or start pulling towards the flat tire, so I probably wouldn't have even known anything was wrong if I had not had my windows down.
I decided that I needed to find a place to pull over, but on this particular stretch of road, pulling over is hard to do unless you want to end up in a grassy ditch. So I kept on going, rim scraping along like some wretched song of defeat. Now, there's always a lady that goes for a walk past this piece of road on Sunday mornings. She was out, of course, just in time to see the shock on my face when I heard the rim start to scrape (remember, this was the first time I'd had a flat so I didn't know what to expect, but going from having an old tire to dragging by on a hunk of metal within moments was not it). She stopped walking and we made eye contact through the windshield...and then she gave me the most sympathetic gaze in the world.
Nothing brings people together like vehicular problems.
Anyway, I got within a mile of my house and pulled into a church parking lot so I could text my parents. Pulling into a strange church's lot while their own church services have just let out and everyone is there to see you? I turned into the public spectacle for them! An introvert's nightmare! A couple of the churchgoers did offer help and several women were chattering with concern over whether I had help coming, so they were very kind. Thankfully, my parents were only a few minutes behind me and while my spare tire was very saggy and low on air (PSA: if you have a spare tire in your car, check the air!) it had enough to get me up the hill to my house.
So...lessons learned, you may be wondering?
Where God guides, He provides. If I had waited until my parents had left like I'd planned to, they probably would've been home before they could turn around and come back to get me. It was much more streamlined because I left first. If it hadn't have been so obnoxiously hot outside, I wouldn't have rolled my windows down, may not have known my tire blew, and may have ruined the rim. I could have caused a wreck, too, if my car had reacted poorly to the tire, granted that there were at least 3 other vehicles behind me and I didn't know how I should operate a vehicle with a flat. Lastly, remember last week when I said my laptop inexplicably began working again? (At least, I think I mentioned it. If not...my computer's working again!) I'd been planning to take it up to the shop to get it fixed that week, but since I didn't need to anymore, I had some money to burn. The exact amount I'd set aside for my laptop repairs just went for new tires to replace the two rears, which were apparently dry-rotted (which caused this one to go flat).
Sure, you could chalk that all up to coincidences, but...
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| Credit: The Incredibles |
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