It’s Saturday morning and the wind is blowing like crazy…but that’s okay, it’s ou
r air conditioning so as frustrating as it is dealing with having clothes all twisted and tangled on the clothesline and with the dust blowing (in a clean house and on clean clothes!), I’m not going to complain too much. In a few months, the winds will have stopped and the heat will have intensified so we are appreciating every single windy day we have. I realized it's hard to take a picture of the invisible...I can only try to show you the effects of the wind and each time the gusts were really strong, by the time I was able to click the camera, we would be on the down swing!We find we’re having longer and longer periods without water as the dry season continues. We have recently had 2-3 days at a time with very little water and several days without any. Thankfully, we do have the water tank but we still try to conserve as much as possible since we’re not sure when the water will be coming back on again. It’s been coming on at night but even that is getting later and later. Last night, it was after 11:00 when it came back on and it was off again by 7:30 this morning. That makes laundry and showers a bit more of a challenge in coordination. We shower at night right before bed and I often try to get a load of laundry put in the washer the night before I know I have a morning to hang it out. It’s all in the timing! Jim has turned the tank on for us so I can finish laundry, Margarita can mop the floors and Freddy can give the thirsty plants a good soaking. I guess we’ll see how long a tank of water will last. We are living hopeful that the water lasts a long time!
Jim’s been working on one of the upstairs toilets – again! I think we probably could have purchased a brand new toilet for all the pieces and parts he’s had to replace and re-replace in the time we’ve lived here. That means another trip back to Sinsa…which means another arm and leg left there! The frustration of not finding some things equal in quality to what we’ve been used to can get to where it wears on you but then I stop and think that at least we have an indoor toilet…so that helps to diffuse that frustration fuse. God really is teaching me how to look for the positives in the kinks of life…I’m far from a Pollyanna but I find I’m much happier if I don’t let every hitch or unexpected thing throw me for a loop.
Like the other day. It was Wednesday, New Year’s Eve day, actually. I was getting ready for our time with Miguel when Jim told me the coffee pot quit working. In our household, that’s serious business and can immediately equate to a breakdown in communication. I thought surely he must be mistaken. It had been working just fine without any problems. Well, of all times for Jim to be right… the coffee pot had quit working! But, it had managed to spit and sputter out about ½ of a pot which would ensure a homicide-free household for one more day. I tried cleaning it with vinegar…no luck. It had called it quits and there was no coaxing, coercing or chemical that was going to oomph it back in to commission.
I came in to get dressed and turned on the speakers to our MP3 player (both of which were extremely generous gifts from the Jenkins’ Sunday school class at our home church in Cassville). Nothing. Not a peep. So, I sat down on the bed, took the Zune out, put it back in, fiddled with pushing all the buttons I could find, unplugged and replugged…still nothing. Finally, I resigned myself to asking Jim to help me, thinking it was my total ineptness at electronics that was prohibiting me from making it work. Without any hesitation, Jim took the Zune out, put it back in, fiddled with all the buttons he could find, unplugged and replugged (sound familiar?) and…voila! Nothing. Nada. Not a note emanated from the obstinate little brown box. What a mixed bag of emotions hit at that moment. I really wanted it to work. It was new. It was a gift. It was music that was meant to soothe the savage beast inside of me that was still a bit cranky over being limited to only one cup of coffee! But…there was, and I have to say I’m admitting this with a bit of shame…there was this itty, bitty, teeny, weeny, miniscule, microscopic part of me that felt just a little bit triumphant that it wasn’t just me that couldn’t get the Zune to tune! Jim, the master fix-it guy, couldn’t get it even to hum to him, either.
That sense of self-satisfaction passed quickly. We were Zune-less and had no idea why. What a morning. A dab of coffee and even less music. What else could happen? Let me take this moment to issue a word of warning…don’t ever ask that question. Without exception, life will promptly answer with something to add to the list.
I sat down to e-mail Mandy and discovered that the “L” key on the keyboard of the laptop wouldn’t work. Okay, now this was just getting crazy. Again, I pretty much repeated most of the steps I tried with the Zune. No matter what I did, the “L” wouldn’t work. Once again, I resorted to calling Jim. He put his magic fingers to the keyboard. Zip. This day obviously wasn’t one of his best either. We both decided we should pray…not just for the keyboard, the coffeepot and the silent speakers, but also for our deteriorating moods and attitudes. We no sooner finished our prayers than I tried the “L” and it worked! Fabulous! We both headed in to the kitchen. God wasn’t about to budge on the limit of our caffeine intake. We half-heartedly tried the Zune one more time. We were apparently meant to be satisfied with the “L” being our Lazarus moment for the day.
I finished the e-mail to Mandy, detailing the morning’s events up to that point, and asking her to join us in prayer for the rest of our day. We still had several police points between us and Miguel and the way the morning had gone thus far, we were praying we wouldn’t be stopped. That was a concern on various levels but just the way the morning had gone up to that point, I instinctively knew that if we were stopped that morning, it wouldn’t be just to make new friends.
There seems to be a greater presence of the men in blue on the street these days and they also seem to be more intent in trying to find a reason to write a ticket. Here, they apparently can stop you for any reason, and it would appear, if necessary, to fabricate an infraction so that they can write a ticket. I’ve often wondered if they work on a commission basis of some sort. We’ve been waved over and told we didn’t stop before the stop sign. That was not true. We not only stopped before the line, we had to wait on traffic in order to be able to progress. And as politely as I could but also just as firmly, I disagreed in my hacked up Spanish. The policeman disagreed with my disagreeing but with a much better use of the language than I was displaying. I wouldn’t budge from my stance and the poor guy must have finally decided whatever pittance he would make off our ticket wasn’t worth listening to the brutal butchering of his beloved language, so he finally waved us off. No one was more stunned than we were.
And another time, while we had friends here, we were waved over. This time, we weren’t even told of a violation, real or imagined. The policeman checked our papers and then asked Jim to open the back of the car. He did. The policeman wanted to see our warning triangle. Jim showed it to him. Then he asked to see our fire extinguisher. Jim showed him that. (Both are required to be kept in all vehicles). Since we had the required items, our paperwork was in order and we obviously hadn’t committed any kind of traffic violation, he grumpily waved us off…I think he was a bit agitated that we were a wasted effort.
So, with that being said, the thought that morning of being detained by one of Nicaragua’s finest, was not at all appealing. Mandy sent out the prayer request and we cautiously went on our way. The rest of the day was fine…not exceptionally great but neither were we waved to the curb. Our quest for the day, after our time with Miguel, was to find and purchase a new coffeepot, which we were able to do and although it’s not quite up to par with my beloved red Mr. Coffee…it does what it’s supposed to do and that’s make a decent pot of coffee in the mornings.
When we got home, I tried the computer again…the “L” continued to function just like it was supposed to do. The Zune was still on the fritz. I was resigned to the fact that the music had ended and my worry then was what on earth was I going to tell those precious friends of ours who had sent us the Zune if they asked how it was working…that became a huge worry for me. I didn’t want to hurt or disappoint anyone, especially those folks who had done such a kind and loving thing for us.
The next day, while reading Google News, I happened across an article that said all Zunes that were the same model as ours, had shut done due to a kink with the programming for leap year! They gave a few steps to take and then indicated that there shouldn’t be any problem with starting it back up and it should work as designed. I am very happy to report that I am writing to the sweet sound of Michael Card as the Zune is once again working! And I can truthfully report that it works great and the speakers are awesome…no savage beast wandering these halls save for the ill-fated mouse which has already met his doom.
So, we now have a working coffee pot, a working “L” and a working Zune. The toilets still prove to be a challenge…the one in Margarita’s bathroom happened to start leaking while I was writing this! And we are now officially out of all water…the tank is drained…we do have clean clothes for the week, the floors are nice and shiny and smell like Pine Sol and the plants have perked up considerably. But, that still leaves us out of water. A friend e-mailed me one of those forward things that was all about choices of our reactions to circumstances. The things I’ve listed are inconveniences. There are people who live very close to us who never have running water, who don’t have indoor toilets, who will never have a coffee pot, a laptop or an MP3 player or even the electricity to run such items. Our frustrations come from being spoiled by a lifestyle of ease. God is teaching us so many things here…I think maybe one of the main things is we are to be thankful for what we have and to accept all things as gifts (whether we are able to have them for the moment or for a lifetime)…they’re all so temporal anyway.
There’s much to be said about living in the moment and enjoying the little things in life…after all, have you noticed that my “L” is working? And we now know that a tank of water won’t last through 3 loads of laundry, two leaking toilets, Margarita’s twice–mopped floors and Freddy’s abundant soaking of anything green! We might never have known how that capacity minus quantity x usage equation would have come out otherwise…now we know the answer is zero! Perhaps the water will come on early tonight…we are living hopeful here in Nicaragua!
No comments:
Post a Comment