Praying for Patience (and Sanity?)

Whew. It has been a WEEK. (Is it only Wednesday?). I was just writing my sister what ended up being a really long email about our crazy week/lives at the moment, and it ended up a little too funny not to share. While I do believe in spiritual warfare, usually when things in my life start getting really frustrating or crazy I pretty much just write them off as normal, petty day-to-day frustrations. But I will admit that this has been an especially trying week, almost in a comical way.

First of all, it's been crazy to begin with because of trying to find a new house down in Randleman. We found a great one that we really loved, handpicked from our realestate.com list and confirmed when we saw it in person on our one-day blitzkrieg of a house hunting trip. It has everything we wanted, and it's cheap. It's cheap because the previous owners obviously smoked like chimneys, and you can literally taste it in the house. Luckily, my real estate advisors (that's supposed to be funny... Matt's entire family is in real estate) assure me that some painting, carpet treatment, and lots of cleaning, airing out, and glade plug-ins will fix it. So the stress is coming from planning all that, the how, the when, the how much, and the details. Our house here in Wake Forest closes on July 18th, and unless we get a new house figured out by then, we pretty much don't have a place to live... God is obviously having a chuckle over my control-freak tendencies and my never-ending to-do lists!

Monday, Matt called me about 10 minutes after he left for work because his car (my car actually, that he's been driving because it's been breaking down so much) was broken down in a McDonald's parking lot, and could I come pick him up and take him to work? The car has broken down twice before because the radiator has a leak that makes the fluid drain out and it overheats. This leak has been patched and re-patched twice, and currently the car only runs because it's literally glued together. I think that's funny, but probably only because it's not me stranded on the side of the road at McDonald's... and luckily, I have an amazing husband who would rather it be him than his pregnant wife.

This morning, Pontouf woke up around 4 or 5 am throwing up all over our bed, and poor little thing, she's basically done nothing but sleep and throw up for the rest of the day. I, being a total worst-case-scenario hypochondriac myself, googled her symptoms and am worried she has parvovirus, which I called the vet and she has not been vaccinated for... how in the world did that one slip? I thought they vaccinated for everything whether you wanted it or not. So basically we're watching her really closely to see if she improves by tomorrow, otherwise I'll be taking her into the vet to probably get blood tests run, I guess? I'm not sure how they check a dog for viruses. I admit my first thought was maybe it was the bread I had been giving her (Matt and I both don't like the very ends of the bread, so we give her the all-crust pieces) or the 3 sour patch kids she snuck from under the coffee table while we were watching a movie last night. Probably not so great for dogs. Anyway, we're praying there isn't anything more serious going on with our black bean.

(side note here... after more googling, I found this article about the supposed 4 types of dog vomit. I laughed hysterically when reading it, so hard that tears ran down my cheeks. Don't get me wrong, the potential for my dog to be deathly ill is about the least funny thing I can think of. But say yellow urka-gurka out loud, and I promise you'll laugh too.)

After we finished stripping the comforters, sheets, and pillowcases off the bed, we got an hour or so more of patchy sleep on our lovely beach blanket towel over the mattress. Matt headed off to work, and I got up to get ready. About 6 and a half minutes into my shower, right after I got my hair all nice and shampoo-y, the water turns off. No water at all, but they did leave a nice little note on the door letting us know that they turned it off because of a miscommunication over a bill that we did in fact pay. So I went to work with a soap ponytail and had to rinse it out in the bathroom in my office. Thank the Lord for a tiny little quiet office where I'm the only one there 99% of the time!

I've also eaten more toast than should be humanly possible and been drinking huge glasses of milk with every meal, which is odd since I've been lactose intolerant for at least the past 15 years of my life. Pregnancy is so weird!

So yes, a little craziness and a little stress. We're trying to focus on how excited we are about moving and starting this new job and new chapter as pastor and parents! Keep praying for us that we won't lose our minds before we can get there!