First, I’d like to say Happy 4th of July to everyone!! Please be careful with all of those fireworks! Those sparklers can be dangerous! Well, can you believe it? We’re already in the middle of summer! The hottest months of the year are upon us here in the US. Where I live,we’ve been setting records with our unusually high temperatures. Not too long ago, they declared a “heat emergency” because we had so many days in a row with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees! It’s on these sweltering, humid days that I say extra “thank you” prayers for our air conditioner. Ah, yes, that amazing, incredible, brilliant invention that makes life so wonderful! I don’t know how I could ever live without it. Hey, that’s a good segue into the story I’m about to tell you! So, last night I was just playing around on my computer, doing nothing special, when I started to feel a little on the warm side. At first I thought it was just my imagination. So I turned on the ceiling fan and didn’t think much more about it. A few minutes later, I noticed that the room wasn’t getting any cooler, so I started to get nervous.I took a walk around the house to see how the other areas felt, and I discovered that all of the upstairs rooms were quite warm. The AC was on, but it was just blowing hot air. I ran downstairs to alert my dear mother of the problem, and she came up to investigate. She told me that the temperature upstairs was registering at 84 degrees! She went ahead and turned the air off completely, and went back downstairs to call the AC repair guys. Of course, no one would be coming out to fix it until at least Monday. Such wonderful timing!“Why do things like this always happen at the beginning of holiday weekends?” I wondered aloud. I began to think of all the ways this was going to effect me over the weekend. I would have to sleep on the couch downstairs for the 3 nights until someone would come to fix it. I’d have to rearrange my life so that I would spend as little time as possible in my upstairs bedroom. Oh my, how totally inconvenient! Ggggggrrrrrrr!It didn’t take long for my normal happy self to be replaced by a pitiful, sad, cranky self. I imagined myself telling this tragic story to audiences world wide, and I wondered who would play me in themovie. A few minutes into my “poor me” parade, my typical happy self regained consciousness, and she tapped my disgruntled, pitiful self on the shoulder.“Ahem, excuse me,” she said meekly, “But, um, aren’t you the girl who tells everyone how to have a positive attitude, even when they’re in tough circumstances?”“Uhhhh…” Pitiful self said, her face turning a lovely shade of red,“Well, umm… That was before our AC quit working.”Happy Self grinned sweetly. (That little goody-two-shoes.) “And don’t you tell everyone to focus on the positive things instead of the negative? You can be grateful that at least the downstairs AC is working. And at least you have a house to live in.”Pitiful Self threw up her hands in surrender. “Okay, you’re right. ”My inner struggle finally over with, I lay down on the floor as a sign of surrender.“Okay, Papa,” I prayed, “Here I am. I can’t change the fact that the AC is broken, but you can. So, of course my first request would be that you please fix it for me. But, if you don’t want to, that’s okay. I know that I’ll be fine either way. Please grant me the grace to deal with whatever happens, moment by moment. It’s only by your grace that I am able to do anything.”By this time, Pitiful Self had packed her duffel bag and hit the road, and Happy Self was back at the steering wheel. A gentle peace floated through me, and I felt ready to tackle anything.“Sleeping on the sofa won’t be so bad,” I thought, “I’ll just pretend I’m camping out. Maybe we can toast marshmallows in the fireplace.” I went back to my computer and worked a little harder to ignore the sweat that was forming on my forehead. About a half an hour later, I had a thought. “Hey Mom,” I called, “Can we turn the air back on up here? Just to see if it might work?”A minute later, she turned it on, and…Yep! It was working! I’m not even kidding! It started blowing glorious cold air all over the place! You should have heard the hootin’ and hollerin’ that came out of my mouth! Woohoo! I suddenly knew how the Oceanic 6 must have felt when they finally got off that silly island on the show “Lost”! (Okay, so maybe not quite the same thing.) What a relief! It’s been almost 24 hours since then, and everything is still working great. So, what’s the moral of my story? No seriously, I’m asking you. Did you learn anything? Hey! Guess what! I’m on Twitter now! Check it out atwww.twitter.com/littleandblind
Posted by Julie 