The Kelsey's

This is Hannah Kelsey, the oldest Kelsey kid, and also the only girl. It’s a pretty hard life being the only girl. I mean, I’m not complaining or anything, but sometimes its hard. I still have my mom, and that helps a lot, but sometimes, I just feel really alone. All my best friends live pretty far away, so, as you can imagine, the telephone is my one of my best friends! I use it over time. But, I’m still the oldest! Witch has an advantage. I’m the Queen of three younger brothers. Joshua, the oldest boy, Caleb the middle kid, and Nathan the baby of the family. It’s also hard to be the oldest. Babysitting, changing diapers, dealing with Josh and Caleb teaming up against me, and, of course, setting a good example for them. That is the hardest job in my opinion. One of my gifts seems to be connecting and helping with younger kids. Some really younger, like maybe 1 or 2. And some a little older, like 4 or 5. Once I see a smaller child, I go over, start to play with her, and almost immediately, we start connecting. Hopefully, someday, I will have a little companion with me, to look up to me wherever I go. and with whatever I do.

I now have my account set up so that I can add blog entries as well.  This is really easy.

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While at work the fire alarms went off. Unusual, but not anything to panic over – the assumption is that it’s a drill. So everyone pops out of their cubicles to see if anyone else is going to be the first to head for the exits. We stand around discussing the idea for a moment and as momentum grows and people begin to meander outside – the alarm stops. So maybe it wasn’t a drill, it was a malfunction. I go back and sit down.

Then a voice is heard over the intercom. “There is a fire on the first floor, please wait for instructions on evacuation.” There is a very small second floor, but most of this building is on the first floor. So should we wait until there is an explosion, or flaming men go running past before we take this seriously? After having a good chuckle at the announcement, our boss proceeds to tell us a story about a fire alarm he once participated in during his army days.

He is interrupted by another announcement: “There is a fire on the first floor. Please evacuate.” So out we go into the early September heat. I grabbed all my things just in case we are told we can’t go back in the building – you see, I’ve had some experience with these sorts of things during the great St. Louis power outages of ought six, the summer one – not the winter one.

I put my things in my car and figured while I was out standing around, I’d call my wife to share the adventure with her. She reminds me that this is the 3rd and we still haven’t collected our rent. Now is a good time to call. So I call and ask if this evening is a good time to come by and pick up the rent check.

“I’m not going to pay your rent this month.”
“Why?”
“The rent is to expensive. We’ve liked it here, but we have to move.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“Well what about September’s rent?” You can see I wasn’t quite following.
“You’ll just have to take that out of my deposit, I need this money for my new place.”
“When am I going to get my key back?”
“Well, we’ll move today and the place will still be a little messy. I’d like to clean it up, that will take a couple days.”
“O.K., I’ll call you back on Friday.”

So, not only did my building catch on fire (they let us back in about 20 minutes later), but I lost my renter. It turned out to be a real banner day.

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Last night at dinner there was an exchange worth immortalizing.  I’ll bring you in in the middle, but it’s not hard to catch up with our meal time conversations.

I was looking over at Hannah (who was in Laura’s place – we’ve been playing musical chairs at the dinner table lately.  I think it’s because Laura wants to sit at the end now…)  and Hannah looked back at me.  We had a bit of a staring contest going on, but since it was dinner we stopped to grab a bite to eat.   That’s when I realized I had missed a terrific opportunity to make a funny face.  Those times just don’t come often enough, in my opinion.

So I said, “Hey, can you do this?” And I flared my nostrils a few times in rapid succession.  Hannah just shook her head and looked back down at her plate – she doesn’t really eat, she picks at her food which requires much visual inspection.

Joshua was intrigued and asked, “What are you doing?”  So I showed him and Caleb across the table.  Joshua started pinching his nose to make it move.

“It’s not as easy as it seems – in my mind I have to think: angry, relaxed, angry, relaxed.  It takes some concentration.” I instructed.

Laura interjected, “It is too easy, look.” And she fluttered her nostrils with ease.

I turned to see and replied, “Well, it’s not easy for me.”

At that point I had taken my eye off of Joshua.  He interrupted, “Well I know I can do this!”

I turned to see him burrowing his finger up into his nose.  Not quite past the first knuckle and he got the response he was looking for: An “eww” from Hannah, a giggle from Caleb, and the parental headshake and shrugging glance between Laura and me.

It’s times like that when I realize just how much my boy is just like me.  Why hadn’t I thought of that!

I was headed to church yesterday morning.  Laura wasn’t planning to stay the whole time because her back was hurting – so we took separate cards.  I had left in my own car early so that I could make some copies for handouts.

I was coming off of 270 over the big hill that starts the ride down 170 in towards the church.  What I didn’t hear was a bang or pop of any kind.  I just felt the car get suddenly sluggish and a whomp whomping sound.  I was in the fast lane so I was going to head to the left shoulder, but as I looked behind me and noticed that there was no traffic I decided to cross over and stop on the right hand shoulder.

I walked around the car to see if the front tire had blown.  David S. had told me at a church board meeting three weeks ago that my front tires looked low.  I had filled them up with air that night and thought everything was all better.  To my surprise it was the left rear tire that had blown.

I got back in my car and thought about what I was going to do next.  I called Laura to tell her about it, when she answered the phone I asked if she had left yet.  She hadn’t because she just heard from her parents that her grandfather’s health was declining fast.  I let that sink in as she told me that we needed to be ready to make plans to travel to Lincoln if the need arose.  Well I had to tell her what was up – so I just said it, “Well I’m sitting on the side of the road with a blown out tire.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked?
“Well, I guess I’ll be getting out there changing it.” I replied blandly.
“Do you want us to stop when we get there?”
“No.  You can just wave at me as you go by.”

I hung up and decided to memorialize the occasion by sending an update to Twitter.  For some reason whenever I send a tweet, it also goes to my wife’s phone – so she got a second notice.

It wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be to change the tire.  At least I got to take my tie off.  I see no purpose for those glorified scarfs.  So I sent a text message that I was done and I was ready to pull back out on the road when I saw our van slowing down and putting on her blinker.  So I put my blinker on to signal that I was done already and I intended to get going.  And with that we headed off to church.

Now today we had to figure out how to take care of this.  I ended up heading to Sam’s Club, getting my picture so I’m not carrying around a temporary card anymore and getting new tires.  If one blew out, who knew which one was next – so in typical style we said, “Just replace them all.”  How this is going to impact our brand new September budget remains to be seen.

It took about an hour to get it taken care of and I’m back at home.  Just another atypical day, but it’s not over yet.  I still need to go visit our renter if I can get a hold of her to collect the rent…  how will that fare?

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Time is running on.  Summer is in full swing, but signs of fall are approaching.  Home school started last week.  Pathfinders have begun for another year.  And all the events and programs for fall are lining up.  If you have any interest in what’s going on around here, then strap yourself in – because we’re in for a bumpy ride.

We’ll have a trip to North Carolina coming and this will mean the kids will be on their own for the first time in years.  Of course we’ll also have family coming to visit – and that doesn’t happen very often.  So we are looking forward to some fun and exciting times to finish off this year.

Just imagine what could possibly happen!