Just One of Those Weeks

It really has been "one of those" weeks. At the beginning of the summer I spent a good three weeks applying for and looking for jobs around the valley. I tell you, this is a hard place to find work.
As an art major I REALLY wanted to find a job at a framing place, like Michael's or Hobbly Lobby.  But there was no luck there.
So, one day mom and I were driving home when mom goes: "Hum... I know that Prince Gallery place is a long shot(because they're a family owned busyness), but why don't you just go in and try."
I just so happened to have a resume in my sketchbook, so I did not object.
Long story short, about 20 minutes later I walk out with the great news that he was, in fact, hiring.  Wow!
A few days later I get a call to come in for a five hour shift to see if things were going to work out.
Basically I got the job.

It was really great and absolutely perfect for the profession I'm going into in the future. Mostly I worked on making fridge magnets(we called them embellishments) for Summer Fest. I got a little experience with the frames and mat board cutting.

Unfortunately Summer Fest didn't go well for their booth, which was less than ideal. On the last day of Summer Fest I was sitting in the shop puttying a frame(one of my absolute favorite things to do) when Frank came in and took a seat. He proceeded to explain to me the negative turn of events and what that meant for the busyness and for him and that after much debating he finally decided that he had to let me go.
I kept my cool fairly well but completely broke down when I got home. All of a sudden every plan that I had made for the future, every certainty had just crumbled under me, and all of a sudden nothing was certain. I was freaking out.

So Saturday I was layed off and Sunday was Father's day, so I couldn't necessarily mope around all day. I fasted that day and then went and pranked my dad's car, putting sticky notes all over the front of it. He and the rest of the ward members got a real hoot out of that.
Monday everything was going fine. I had spent the day with my sister and her son and daughter at the pool when I went over to mom and dad's to eat lunch and start figuring out what I was going to do with myself for the rest of the summer.
And that's when it all started....
I ate lunch and then curled up next to my mom, who was talking on the phone on the couch. I waited for her to get off so we could talk, but after a while I fell asleep and then she left. When I woke up I was sick. We're not exactly sure what it was... Perhaps a 24 our stomach flu. Maybe Food poisoning. Something that I picked up from Summer fest. Who knew. So I was basically bed ridden, the rest of Monday puking my "toes up"(as mom would put it haha). The night was really hard, being in horrible pain all night long and the next morning was only a little better.
I woke up to my dad feeling my head around 2 relieved to find that the pain was finally gone. Then the neck pain set in. I couldn't(and still can't) move my neck hardly at all. So I was basically bed ridden with an ice pack on the back of my neck, unable to move at all because of the pain (and I couldn't take ibuprofen cause of my stomach).

On the bright side, I have an absolutely fabulous family who's done nothing but baby me (something I've missed while living on my own). And I've been awarded another scholarship for the upcoming school year.


There's still a lot of uncertainty but I'm hopeful.

Sometimes we are delayed...

I totally had this happen to me. 

It was a Sunday afternoon, I believe. I've been living at my sisters, but I spend most of my time at my parents, mostly because all of my things are over there. I was about to head over to a mini family party at my parents's early, when all of a sudden I could not find my keys.

They had literally dropped off the face of the planet.

When ever I loose something I say that the "deep dark black abyss of nothingness" has swallowed it. And this shourly was the case.

My sister came home, and I told her my predicament. She helped me look a bit, though our efforts were futile. I continually went up into my niece's room(which I share for the summer) and back downstairs looking around again and again.

Finally, I gave in and got down on my knees. 

It wasn't the end of the world that I didn't have my keys, but I really did want them because there were so many things I could do at my parents and so very little I could do at my sisters. 

I had the thought come to my mind as I was beginning to get angry, thinking how God was playing a practice joke on me and laughing while I frantically ran about like a chicken with it's head caught off.

"Joe'E" I said to myself(not really, I don't talk to myself.) "Calm down. There's always a reason for everything the lord does." 

And then the thought came to me. "There's probably some sort of serious accident, or other danger or problem that you are avoiding right now because you're here and not out on the road."

That calmed me down but I dismissed the thought and went down stairs, defeated. 

I sat, pouting, at my sisters kitchen "bar" I believe it's called, while she cleaned her kitchen. I suppose I was waiting for something. The Keys were just going to have to fall right into my lap because I had looked and they were no where to be found. Ether that or I was patiently trying to exercise my faith without bursting into fits of hysteria.

"Well," my sister said, as she was leaning into the fridge (if my memory serves me correctly), "You must just need to be here right now." 

My sulking shoulders perked up and lifted my head off my arms. "That's what I thought." I told her, and I'm pretty sure we shared an "Ooooohhh.... that's creeeeppy." moment. 

I don't normally get premonitions, or very obvious promptings in the forms of words in my own mind(or if I do I don't relize it) but having my sister have the same thought was proof enough that indeed, I was not supposed to leave the house at that time. 

So, accepting that I could do nothing but sit and wait for my keys to magically appear, I did just that.

To my great delight they did, indeed, magically appear. 

My sister was unloading the dishwasher when her little one-year-old son, comes trotting along pushing in front of him his toy train to see if he can in any way "help out" his mom with the dishes. 

My sister looks down and I hear her take a big dramatic gasp and exclaim, "No way!" 

A smile creeps onto my lips as I begin to assume the best. For some reason I thought she had found my keys in the dishwasher(weird), but as she bent down she pulled, from a hole in the top of the little toy train, my keys. 

OOHH!!! Jaxson had taken them! And as soon as it was alright for me to leave he had, though unknowingly, brought them right back. 

It was a pretty catching experience. I have no idea what would have happened if I had, indeed, been out on the road--if I was really being confined for my own safety--or if it was simply a test of my with and I had passed. Hard to say....

I Am Grateful.  :)