I’m thankful but not for the car dealership. . .

I’m thankful for lots of things, but I haven’t been doing the 28 Days of Thankfulness this year. I’m a little discombobulated  and that just felt like one more thing I’d have to keep up with and feel guilty if I got behind on. That’s not the intention, but that’s how I felt. I’m feeling some odd feelings lately, but the grief lady says that’s OK.

But today, I am particularly thankful for Donald and Kathy Robbins.  They take good care of me.  Today, they took care of my battery issue.  I needed a man to do a nasty job for me, not because I couldn’t do it, but because unfortunately, some places treat you differently if you’re a woman than if you’re a man.  (Just for the record, the Chevrolet Center in Winter Haven is one of those places!)  I had taken myself down there twice and called on the phone and every person I talked to told me something different.  No one wanted to be helpful and everyone just kept giving me the runaround. Unfortunately, I had to deal with them, since that’s where my battery came from. They were pretty icky  - and they made me cry.  I almost cried because I was so mad at them, and then I got even more mad because I almost cried.  Mr. Donald took my battery out of my car, took it back to them, and didn’t leave until they did what they could have done on Monday.  Then, he and Mrs., Kathy brought it back and he put it BACK in my car.  They even tried to give him a little run-around, but he just “out-stubborned” them.

It shouldn’t’ have to be this way, but I’m glad they took care of it for me. I’m thankful for them. They had other things they could have been doing, but they took care of me! I’m very grateful for them.

Puzzles–my new favorite thing

So lately I’m sort of stuck on jigsaw puzzles. It all started a few weeks ago when I bought a package of puzzles to use in Junior Church. I needed four similar puzzles that a group of kids could each work with and I found a Disney pack with 8 puzzles in it.  It was perfect for what I needed. 

Two weeks ago, I saw one of the puzzles in my bag. I thought, let me see that.  So I did it!  And then I did another one. So far, I’ve done six and I’m working on number seven. I’ve done them all except Belle and I’m still working on Snow White. All the animal faces are killing me. There are eyes everywhere looking at me!

See for years, I couldn’t do puzzles at my house. We usually did one on vacation but I couldn’t at my house, because of BubbaCat. His favorite thing to do was get right in front of whatever I was doing. When I was working on my Master’s degree, he often tried to sit on my computer keyboard, between me and the screen. I’m doing them on the coffee table, but if he were here, he’d be lying right in the middle of the puzzle. And every time he got up, there would be puzzle pieces stuck to him. He’d be shoving pieces off onto the floor, never to be seen again.

I tried to figure out why I was stuck on puzzles lately. I think there are several reasons why.  First, it keeps me occupied.  I’m just obsessive compulsive enough to keep working.  Next, I’m having a hard time sleeping. Mix that with the slightly obsessive/compulsive and it’s a good match. Last and most important, working on the puzzle keeps me from going straight to bed when I get home from work.  I want to! Oh boy, do I want to, but going to bed at say 4:45 every day is not a good thing.  

I just bought a set of Christmas puzzles. I’ll start them after Thanksgiving.