Sunday Sheep

Today's sermon at church was about sheep.  Specifically, about how we are like sheep.

Sheep are not the smartest animals on the planet.  In fact, they are about the dumbest.  They don't have much individual thought and they are basically one-track minds.  Eat-sleep-eat-sleep.  OK, two tracks.  But they aren't smart.

Sheep grow hair known as wool.  Wool can be very heavy, as it grows longer and longer.  So they have to be shorn, generally once a year.  They have to be washed first, because they can get very dirty.  The dirt makes the wool even heavier.  If they lie down on their sides, they tend to roll too far and then they get stuck.  On their backs, with their feet up in the air.  They aren't smart enough to figure out how to get upright without some help from the shepherd.  Even without the weight of the wool, they still need help.  The shepherd has to roll them over and then lift them to an upright position.  Then, he has to stay with the sheep and hold it up until it remembers how to put it's weight on it's legs.  And then, they will often do it again because they forget after a while.

Kind of like people.  People should do what is right.  But we seldom do.  Or if we do, we frequently forget.  And, like the sheep, we are weighed down by the weight we are carrying.  The weight of sin, in our case.

However, we have a Shepherd as well.  And He washes the sin away from the wool we carry, and then the wool is shorn away from us.

Just like with the sheep, we have to be helped to stand upright more than once.  We just have to trust the Shepherd.  Just like sheep.

(And if the wool represents sin, then I'm not at all upset about being allergic to it!). :)

OK, sermon over.  But I did get a lot from church today.

I took my car back on Friday and the mechanic gave it a more thorough check.  It's in the a/c system, but it's the 2nd of the 2 motors.  The first one controls the interior/exterior air and is the one that went back a few months back.  The current problem is the one that controls the warm/cool setting.  So it's the same problem, but not in the same motor.  However, this time it's enough that my warranty will cover it.  The warranty would have covered the previous repair, but it was lower than the deductible.  This one is harder to get to and will take longer, so I'm taking it back in on Tuesday and leaving it.  They'll get me to work and can come get me if I need a ride back in the afternoon.

We've been somewhat busy today.  The Big Lots stores ad featured some 5- and 7- drawer plastic units.  The 5-drawer is 5 of the same size drawer, the 7-drawer unit is 3 of one large size and then 4 smaller size drawer.  Otter wanted a 5-drawer and Bill wanted two 7-drawer units.  Except that I forgot that Bill wanted the 7-drawer size, so I bought Otter hers (purple of course!) and two black 5-drawer units for Bill.  They just barely fit in the car, but we got them home.  And then we went back for two 7-drawer units for Bill!  HE got white ones.  I'm keeping the first two 5-drawer units I bought.  They are now full of yarn, and my picnic basker & two large, plastic crates are now in Otter's possession.  She'll find a use for them, no problem there.  I was able to empty out the crates & picnic basket and still had an empty drawer, but then I remembered my stash of cotton yarn so it's in the last drawer.  The drawers are pretty deep, so I could still get more in them if I needed to.  I have some other yarn that isn't in the drawers, but it's the yarn for my afghan and it can stay on the shelves where the crates & picnic basket were formerly stored.  I have a few other craft/sewing/crochet items that are on the shelves but are a little crowded together, so I'll now have room to spread them out and organize it a little better.  The drawer units just fit in the back of the closet in the office, between the shelves on each side.  I told Bill he was enabling me, because he suggested I keep the 5-drawer units for my yarn.

The weather's been so nice lately.  It will still get to right at or just over 100 by the end of the week, but that's the normal temperature for this time of year and it most likely will NOT be like it was for just about all of July.  Otter's jalepeno plants are blooming again, the excessive heat caused them to stop blooming and drop what blooms they had, without producing fruit.  We were going to toss them, but decided to leave them for a while.  We're hopeful that we might actually get some peppers off of them.  We got a few early on, but then it got H O T.

We had a pretty intense thunderstorm Friday evening.  Not anything bad in our area, wind & lots of rain.  But Otter noticed that one of the rain gutters was overflowing again.  However, since it's the one to my rain barrel it didn't overflow because of leaves & crud like the last time.  It means that my rain barrel is full!!  Bill had to mow the grass today, which is the downside to all the rain.

It's going to be a fairly busy week.  The car on Tuesday, Otter's oral surgery on Thursday with Friday set aside as a nothing planned/recovery day for her and somewhere in there we have got to get her textbooks because college starts a week from tomorrow.  We'll probably go Wednesday, if not Monday.  She's done some online checking, but no luck for the books for her classes.  Probably because it's a smaller college and the books are specific to the school, for the most part.  We might go Monday, but I'm not sure if we'll have time because Bill has to work a board meeting immediately after work and we have to take him dinner in there sometime.  Otherwise, he won't have time to eat and the board meetings can sometimes go pretty late.  Tuesday, the car should be done early enough that I'll have time to come home and get her so we can get back to the school well before the bookstore closes.  We hadn't intended to wait this long, but with the car, etc., it just worked out this way.  Also, the book list didn't come out until just over a week ago.

I guess I'd better go see how much headway Bill is making in the living room.  He's got a work area there for his pachinko stuff, on top of the sofa table that is against the window.  It works out perfectly for him, I have my WIP crochet stuff on the bottom shelf of the table and he has the top.  The problem is that he also has piles & assorted stacks of pachinko-related stuff beside the table.  I mean piles as in debris.  That's what the 7-drawer units are for.  He put mine together first, they needed their wheels attached, and then he was starting to get his organized.  He should be able to get all his junk into the drawers.  Then, he just has to keep it all in the drawers!

Engineers and organization are two mutually exclusive terms.  They don't go together very well.  Or very often.