Black and Blue

It has been an interesting few days. Interesting, as in bad days…well, not bad per say. More like trying. Every time I turned around this past weekend something wasn’t working right or I was doing something dumb.

Friday night we went to a Lugnuts game. For those readers of mine who aren’t from Lansing, the Lugnuts are the local minor league baseball team. It was a decent night and they were free tickets–my daughter received them as part of an award for good citizenship at school. Pretty cool award for her. She makes me very proud. Back to the game…it is baseball. It was a decent night. We thought we were prepared–had a blanket and everything because it was supposed to get a little chilly. It got more than chilly. The last 5 innings were painful to watch. I was cold, we were losing by 10 runs. I was ready to go home. But we couldn’t. There were to be fireworks after the game. I endured for my daughter. Do you know how long baseball games go? So much stopping, waiting, scratching, and such. I endured…

Then, on Saturday, I had more problems. I’ve been working on a little renovation project for some friends. I was finally getting to the trim portion of the project. The window and door trim went in fairly well. not too much fighting, even with the tools that I had. When I went to start the baseboard, I came to realize that the saw that I was using didn’t have the clearance for the 4” trim I was putting in. I made it work for a few pieces, but then gave up. Progress halted. At least I got the windows done.

Yesterday was the bad day. When I woke up I was ready for a nap. You know those days, right? You simply can’t shake the sleep out of your system. I think I even fell asleep standing in the shower. That’s certainly not good. After I got dressed, I gathered my things and headed out the door. It was cold out, so I put on my jacket and walked out the door, neglecting to check my pockets for keys. As I walked down the sidewalk to my truck, I came to the realization that I was locked out of both my truck and the house. I did have my cell phone. “No problem!” I thought. I’ll call my wife, have her unlock the door and all will be well.

Understand, that at this point, it is about 5:45am. I like to get to the church by 6:00am on Sundays to get things ready, write in my journal, and so on. One would think a phone call at 5:45am would startle you. Dialed the phone and listened to ringing. Standing at the front door, I can hear my wife’s phone ringing in on the counter–through the door, the brick wall, and so on. Does it wake my wife? Nope. I start knocking on the door as I call again, trying to wake her, but not my 10 year old daughter. Knock, knock, knock. Ring, ring, ring. Nothing.

At this point, I’m warring with myself on the inside. How can she not be waking up? How can I be mad about this, since I was the one who locked myself out? Knock, knock, knock, ring, ring, ring. I even started adding the door bell with the knocks and the phone calls.

This went on for what seemed like hours. The sun rose while I was standing there. Then, finally, I awoke the dead…ok, it wasn’t hours. It was at least five minutes though. I’m glad there wasn’t a fire.

Unfortunately, the day gets worse. After worship at church, I was packing up my guitars and gear. The place I normally put my guitar cases to load them had stuff on it, so I balanced them on a stool. I’ve done this hundreds of times. If you get them just right, everything goes peachy. I should have known better.

I open up one case and put a guitar away, balancing and holding things just right to keep gravity from crashing everything down. I close the lid and grab the other guitar. Then I realize, I had put the wrong guitar in the wrong case. As I rewound the process, gravity got the best of me. This, on its own, shouldn’t be a big deal. There were no guitars in the cases at that point. I was holding the right guitar for the right case that I had part way open, when they started to shift. If they crash off the stool its no big thing. They are cases–they are made for crashing type events to protect the goods inside.

My daughter’s toe, however, was not built for a crash. Her foot was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her big toe took the full brunt of a falling guitar case. She crumpled to the ground and started screaming and holding her toe. I am the greatest dad in the world…

Unfortunately, life is like that, isn’t it? You have good intentions to do great things that simply don’t turn out great. Sometimes we are the culprits. Other times, we are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I told my daughter on the way to school today that if I could take her bad toe and give her my good toe I would. She understood, I think. The problem is, that I’m not God. I can’t intervene in this situation and make it better for her, just as much as I couldn’t magically make the saw I was using on Saturday cut the wood the right way, even though I tried my hardest to make it work. I simply need to come to grips with what I can’t change, and keep on living forward.

I guess I’m helping my daughter learn this the hard way. Luckily, her toe will quit hurting in a few days. I would guess that the nail will turn black and blue and look pretty gnarly. Good thing for her she’s a girl, and its socially acceptable to paint her toenails. When you see her this summer, comment on how pretty they are, so she can tell you how awesome her daddy is!