I'm back again... -ish.

Greetings, Readers.

Long time no see, eh? Almost two weeks now? I can explain.

First thing that threw me out of whack was the return of my wife and daughter. Of course, one might think it would make me so happy and I would just love to blog all about my feelings and how my wife and daughter had changed while they were gone. Part of the problem with that is so much has changed that I've just needed some of this time to adjust to it.

My wife has a new pair of glasses and new haircut now. A small thing by most measures, but a change that has so unexpectedly brought out more of her natural beauty to me upon her return. (either that, or maybe the 6 weeks of sexual deprivation has something to do with it - I guess I'll never know for sure ;-) )

The really big change, however, has been with my daughter. She's walking now! Everywhere! All the time! And she's eating solids! I don't mean baby-solids either, although she does have those from time to time still. I mean true solids. Just about anything we eat, chop it up into smaller pieces and she'll have it. So, a lot of my time has been spent getting reacquainted with my "new" wife and daugther.

Sleep schedule also has a bit to do with it. I requested Saturday-Sunday off for the weekend that Jami and Tiffani-Anne came back, so that I could spend time with them right away. I had originally wanted to take a full week of vacation pay out of the bank, but we didn't have enough people to be able to cover me. So, for Saturday and Sunday, I swapped over to a "day-dweller's" schedule, to optimize my time available with my family. Then on Monday, I had to re-adjust so that I could work while still going to cell group that night. By Tuesday, I was so thrown off that I had to call off from The Living Room, in order to catch some extra Z's and be able to work that night. So, none of that helped at all.

Then comes this weekend. I've been going along fine, since I got re-adjusted to my "usual" 3rd-shift schedule. But right before bedtime on Friday (about 1400) I got a call from my mom. I have grandparents in South Carolina, and my grandmother up there had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Since nobody was sure how things would turn out from this, Grandma wanted to make sure she got to see all the family as soon as she could. Mom couldn't afford to take any extra time off, but she did have Sunday-Monday off on her regular schedule, so she made plans to drive up after work Saturday, stay all of Sunday, and drive back Monday afternoon.

I called my job to let them know the situation, and that I would need Saturday-Sunday-Monday off for the family emergency. No one there was happy about it at all. (My manager is still running with no days off most weeks, 12 hours a day, and would have to cover if no one else would, and she'd just had a new hire pull a no-call no-show on the shift that was running at the time I called. The third-shift worker that had to cover Saturday has kept a relatively consistent Friday-Saturday off schedule for the past 16 years, and always throws a fit when it is disrupted. The other lady that had to cover Monday (I had Sunday and Tuesday off on this week, oddly enough.) wasn't happy due to her medical conditions which are supposed to limit her workload. (Monday nights are truck nights and she has a bad back.) The bottom line in the latter case was that my co-worker seemed to believe that I was lying just to get out of working a truck night. But I'll not go further into that ugly bit of workplace politics right now.

So, I've spent half the weekend on the road, and the other half in South Carolina, seeing family I haven't seen in over 5 years. Grandma seemed to be doing well enough Monday morning that the doctor was expecting to release her from the hospital today. I will be posting some pictures of the visit, along with more pictures from Jami and Tiffani-Anne's stay in Illinois, later on as they come in and as time allows.

Another thing that has slightly hampered my drive to post is this keyboard situation. I'm still running off the old backup keyboard I dug out from the closet in the hall, and the "B" button and spacebar are pretty finicky to work with. Half the time, I have to double-tap the spacebar to get one space out of it, or smack the "B" key a few times to get it to punch something out. Also, the springs on this keyboard are more tense than most, making typing more arduous than usual. It actually disrupts the flow of my typing so much that I constantly am having to backspace over errors that typically I shouldn't be making. So, I'm pretty sure I know where a small piece of my tax return will be going next year, if this isn't fixed by then.

So, there you have it. A brief, and somewhat abridged, update on my life from the past two weeks. Also thanks to Butterfly for the e-card, reminding me that there are people watching me out here that do care.

Oh, I also read a good book by Kenneth E. Hagin, reccommended to me by my brother, while I was on the road. The book is called "The Believer's Authority". Paperback versions can be found for $5 or less, depending on where you look. It only took about an hour or two for me to get through it, but it holds powerful information on how Christians can (and should) take authority against the Devil, in ways that most don't even realize are open to us! Maybe I'll post more on that later, but for the time being, I have to go and eat the good food that my wife has prepared for our dinner, and then get ready to go to The Living Room, and work afterwards.

See y'allz later.

- Iszi