A few Sundays ago, I had what I think will go on record as the klutziest morning of my life.
I woke up and discovered there was a slight chill in the air, so I stumbled over to my dresser and opened the second drawer from the top in order to retrieve my lightweight black sweater, which I had not worn since last spring. In my morning zeal, I pulled out the drawer too far, too fast and the entire drawer fell to the floor and landed on both my feet. I considered crying, but Marlboro Man was outside filling the water trough for a load of cattle we’d received and the kids were still asleep upstairs. And what’s the point of crying if there’s no one around to hear it, so I just shrugged off the pain and headed to the kitchen to make my coffee, leaving the very heavy drawer on the floor of my bedroom to deal with later.
Once in the kitchen, I turned on the Keurig and set it to brew a single cup of coffee while I grabbed a glass of ice water to wet my whistle before I caffeinated. When I returned to the Keurig to grab my cup of Joe, I discovered that I’d neglected to put a coffee cup under the machine and that, since the drip tray has long since gone missing (don’t ask), coffee had pooled all over my counter and was dripping down the sides of the cabinet below. I considered crying, but there was still no one to hear me so I wiped up the mess and brewed another cup, this time incorporating the actual cup that had been missing from the previous scenario.
It was a quiet Sunday morning and I wasn’t going to let Satan disrupt my peace. So I headed to my comfy spot on the sofa and opened my Bible to Psalms, which is my favorite part of the Bible to the point that Marlboro Man has to occasionally remind me that there are other books in the Bible besides Psalms, but I can’t help it. I was just nearing one of my favorite verses—”I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence does my help come?”—when I reached for a sip of the hard stuff and knocked my cup right off the end table and onto the floor. Coffee splashed everywhere: on the sofa, on the chair next to it, all over the floor, and on a stack of books I had sitting next to the sofa. I said one of the four-letter words that is permitted on some TV networks but that isn’t appropriate when one is sitting with an open Bible on one’s lap. Then I went to the kitchen, made another cup of coffee, and resumed my morning.
A little while later, after the kids were up and around and Marlboro Man was back inside, I headed to the bedroom to hop in the shower. Carrying a load of my folded clothes from the laundry room, I walked square into the large drawer I’d left on the floor earlier and stubbed my big toe on the drawer guide on the side. I said the same four-letter word that I’d said earlier, only this time with more vigor. Then I set the pile of clothes on my unmade bed and headed over to the bathroom to turn on the shower, because in our house you have to turn on the shower four minutes before you get in so the hot water has time to find its way. There was a wire clothes hanger sticking out (don’t ask) from under my bathroom vanity, which I have to pass to get to the shower, and I caught a corner of it with one foot, then somehow got my other foot right in the path of the hook, which scraped a long, deep scratch along the top of my foot.
This time I screamed another four-letter word loud enough for everyone in my house to hear: “OUCH!”
I managed to shower, put on my makeup, and get ready for church without incident, but I knew before I went to church that I needed to swing by the Lodge and replace the batteries in the automatic drip watering system so that the flowers and plants into which I’d sunk my life’s happiness over the summer wouldn’t shrivel and die an untimely death, and I’d noticed the day before that they’d started looking a little dry. I took a deep breath when I remembered this, though, because I knew I had to first find batteries in my house, which is the same thing as finding a needle in a haystack. And yes, I have a designated drawer where batteries go. But the problem is, the batteries are never there when I open the drawer looking for batteries.
Miraculously, after standing on a stack of books to reach the top shelf of our homeschool closet, I was able to find a half-empty package of Double A batteries before the top book on which I was standing wobbled, which made me panic and grab onto the top shelf, sending a neat run of vertically-stacked books falling over and knocking down everything in its path. Still, victory was mine! I’d found the batteries. So I set them on the kitchen counter so I could gather up my things before heading to the Lodge, then heading to church, where my husband and four children, whom Marlboro Man had by now driven in to Sunday School, would be waiting for me with their Sunday smiles and their moderately clean jeans.
On my way out the door, I grabbed my purse, my Diet Dr Pepper, and the batteries and headed out. Unfortunately, I picked up the open package of batteries upside down and they spilled everywhere, rolling under tables and chairs and forcing me to get on my hands and knees and pick them up, one by one. I can’t remember exactly what I uttered during this battery pickup period of my life, but I think it was something along the lines of “Begone, Satan.” Finally, I found them all and did what I had tried to do in the first place: Walk out the door and head to the Lodge.
Once at the Lodge, I drove around to the back of the house where the timer is and started to remove it from its mount so I could replace the batteries. It was then that I noticed that the battery gauge on the screen showed almost full battery strength. What the heck? The batteries were just fine. Then, after five minutes of checking connections, I discovered that the faucet itself had been turned off by some phantom faucet-turner-offer. I turned it back on, pushed the “Start Watering Now” button on the timer, and sure enough, abundant, nourishing water began flowing into my beloved, happiness-hinging plants and flowers. It sure was a good thing I’d found those batteries!
I walked back to my pickup just in time to see Charlie, who’d followed me to the Lodge from the house, running down the driveway toward my pickup with his ears flopping as they’d never flopped before. Ugh! Charlie! I don’t have time for this! I didn’t want to leave him alone at the Lodge when I went to church, so I determined I’d have to take him back down to our house (rather than go out the other way, which was a shorter route) and drop him off before I went. So I opened the tailgate, called Charlie, and leaned down in my high heeled wedges to pick him up. And then, in order to get him into the pickup, I had to do a deep knee bend and hurl him in sideways since he’s heavier than dead weight. And in doing so, I pulled something in my back or sciatic nerve or hip or coccyx or bottom or one of those things that gets pulled when you lift a Basset Hound and hurl him sideways into the back of a pickup while wearing high heeled shoes. Then I closed the tailgate and saw that I’d gotten thick dust all over my black top. This was turning out to be a really good day!
When I finally got to church seven minutes late, I tiptoed in and tried to slide into the pew quietly, but I stepped on a ballpoint pen that was on the floor in our row and slid forward, almost plummeting to my death in front of the whole congregation. I thought, but did not say, the same four-letter word I’d said twice already earlier that morning.
But by then it was just about time for the Prayer of Confession.
So it all worked out fine in the end.