The Absence of Brakes

I hope people are still reading this, because no one is commenting anymore.

Man, I've been so busy lately...but I don't know what I've been filling my time with. It's not busyness like in college, where every hour of every day was scheduled into classes, meetings, work, coffee dates, etc. Instead, it's a relaxed busyness, where I never look ahead or behind me to figure out what will take up or what has taken up my time. All I know is that I've had barely any chance to edit, write, practice guitar, or exercise, all of which I really, really want to do. I also want to spend hours hanging out in coffee shops with Isaac and Sarah, now that I know they both love sitting and reading/writing in comfortable silence, taking breaks for good conversations.... They've spent a ton of time at SBC the last few days, as usual, and it's been so frustrating just wanting to keep talking with but having to get back to work. We are planning to go camping Thursday, so that should be AWESOME. I know I keep saying stuff like this, but it's such an overwhelming blessing to know them, especially now that I'm realizing they want to spend time with me (almost) as much as I do with them. It's a beautiful thing to discover lifelong friends. The church they go to (I still think of it as "their" church, even though I guess I'm a part of it) has been crazy welcoming, too.

Our big news of the week is that our brakes stopped working. Jeanie was driving me to work Sunday, and she started pulling over to pick up Jose Zee on the side of the road when she realized she was pushing the pedal all the way to the floor and we were barely slowing down. We coasted along (thankfully there was little traffic), and luckily once we were going really slow, they kicked in. Our E-brake doesn't seem to work much, so that wouldn't have been a help. I had the worst day of work ever, worrying about poor Jeanie having to take care of the car stuff on her own, while I got scolded a million times by my supervisor for not following all these detailed procedures for making drinks and ringing up customers--she is stressed because the corporate office is putting a lot of pressure on her...don't get me started on how fed up I am with following stupid rules like "you HAVE to suggest that the customer get a large size." I'm such a bad salesperson, I firmly believe that if people don't want or need something, I'm certainly not going to push it on them. And they'll probably be happier for it, too. Anyway, Jeanie got an assessment at Sears, and they said the brakes would be $500 to fix...more than half the price of our car............. And then, HUGE relief, Retha's husband Jeff offered to fix them for free, if we bought the parts. How INCREDIBLE to be taken care of like that!!!! So we spent $60 and have a beautifully working car. I still can't get over it.

Tonight this customer (yes, a middle-aged man) told me I had really large pupils (which I've actually been told before...I hate that it's obvious when I'm full of nervous energy because of that and because I blush, too). I'm not sure if he was hitting on me or wondering if I was on drugs. Or just making an observation.

Oh my word, I have a confession to make. I just realized that I spelled "brakes" wrong ("breaks") through this entire post. I must be really tired. I'm so embarrassed.