outWORD by Matte Downey

Dean and I are on day 4 of our vacation in Manitoba. So far, the days have been full. Hours of travel time, a visit to the farmer's market, shopping for school clothes, reading stories and playing "hide Mr. Lion" with my niece, a brief overnight trip to North Dakota, and much, oh much too much, eating. This afternoon as we were driving into Winnipeg, I asked myself, "Is this really a vacation?" Yes, it is a change of pace, and it is good to see the family, but the list of activities to do and people to see is getting longer, and there are several tasks that I have to keep on top of for school, not to mention some reading and writing that I can't neglect. The thing that probably bothers me the most is that I am not as joyful, energetic, and passionate about life as I want to be. A vacation sounds exactly like what I need, and yet, I am finding that rest is one of the hardest things to do really well. Spending time with a 2-year-old makes one realise how young...

On Saturday night, my laptop succumbed to a malicious virus. After an hour of trying to identify it, delete it, and in the end, merely hoping that the computer would boot up and recognise who it was, I gave up. The sneaky bug had made its way into the registry and the poor machine didn't even know how to do something as basic as turn on. Fortunately, I had done a back-up a few days ago and all my writing and photos and contacts were safe on an external hard drive. Nevertheless, I felt stupid and helpless and wondered how I had let myself get into this predicament. I am usually very careful what sites I access and what I click on, but even though I tried to say no to all the pop-ups I got hit with after I went to a site I had not been to before, I now know that even clicking on the "No, thank you" button is an acknowledgement of some sort. Sigh. I went to a computer store to see what they could do for me and they recommended wiping the hard drive clean and starting over. S...

I went to see my osteopath yesterday because I have had a pain in the side of my chest for almost two weeks. It turns out that I have a cracked rib (and a few rotated ones) probably caused by a violent coughing spell or two. Oh, and she suggested that this nasty cold that I have been battling for the past month and a half is actually low-grade pneumonia. Really? That would explain a lot of things. Yes, that would totally make sense. Isn't it amazing how I continue to function pretty normally, or at least believe I can, when the symptoms are not screaming out loud. I will, of course, respond to blinding red lights and clanging bells and gushes of blood, you know, emergency situations...but an ache, a cough, some fatigue, a slight hint of fever. None of this is cause for concern or even a change of pace. I continue to do my work, stay up late to finish an assignment if I have to, fulfill all my commitments and make new ones, and drink a cappuccino if I am tired before going to class....

My friend had a fridge meltdown last week - literally. He called me to tell me that everything in his freezer had melted, there was water dripping over the food in his fridge, and the motor kept turning off and on erratically. Since he was on his way out for the evening, I told him I would come over the next day to see what was going on. I mentioned that if he kept the fridge door closed, his food should be alright until then. I like fixing small things around the house and enjoy the challenge of making something right that was not working before, so sometimes my friends call me up when they have a problem. When I got off the phone, I researched fridge issues on the internet and found that this particular problem might be the result of dirty coils which were affecting the performance of the compressor. There was an easy solution. However, if this didn't work, he would have to ask his landlord for a new refrigerator, which might turn out to be a bit of an ordeal since the corporat...

It has been quite a week. My school year officially ended last Friday with a bang: a 21-hour day which included a 3 hour exam and a 15-hour creative project. The next night we went jive dancing with some friends and on the way home, blew two tires out on a nasty pothole. Dean's car went into the shop on Monday for new tires and some minor body work. He commandeered my car, so I was without wheels for 4 days. Meanwhile, Dean had a business trip scheduled, so he drove to Vermont, parked my car at the airport, then flew to Memphis to oversee shipping and inventory at the new warehouse location for his company. When he got there, he encountered a bigger mess than he had bargained for. He called me yesterday to tell me he was extending his trip by 3 days. That leaves me in charge of leading the Sunday night church gathering and speaking. On top of that, I have had a house guest for the past 2 weeks who is writing three exams and dealing with some curve balls that life is tossing at he...

We are away for the weekend, visiting friends in Ontario. I have two papers due early next week, which explains my absence from blogworld as I have been trying to get them done before we took this wee vacation, and I am happy to say that the rough drafts are both done and packed in my backpack, waiting for me to edit them. We had a great home group dinner on Wednesday night, lots of food, good discussion, mulled wine, and of course, some silly dance moves. I got there early to help prepare the food and a few of us started talking about one's purpose in life. One of my friends had been asked the question at work by a colleague, "What is your purpose in life?" and now she wanted to know what other people would have said. Good question. It is easy to give a broad, vague answer and we came up with most of the usual ones: to worship God, to love others, to know God, to be everything I am meant to be, to make this world a better place, etc., but that's pretty easy to say a...

I sold my house yesterday. It is amazing what can happen when you knock on a door. Last week I wrote a letter to my builder and asked if he was interested in buying the house back from me so that he could do whatever he wanted with the property instead of having to satisfy the demands of a homeowner. He was at my door the next day and what started as a simply inquiry turned into serious negotiations and yesterday afternoon, I presented him with some options that made it possible for both of us to walk away satisfied. My readings in Jeremiah (which is where I am at in reading through the Bible right now) have been amazingly apropos during these past two weeks. On Thursday I read chapter 32 which is all about Jeremiah making a real estate deal that did not make sense under the circumstances, but it was what God was doing. Yesterday morning when I was asking God to make a way clear for a good solution for all, I read this: Call to me and I will answer you. I'll tell you marvelous a...

I climbed a fence yesterday, trespassing onto an old lady's yard (she wasn't home, we checked) in order to retrieve the bottle of Perrier I had knocked off a friend's balcony. All went well until I caught the sleeve of my favourite black t-shirt on a pole climbing back into the alley. Riiiiipppppp ! Oh well. Perhaps it would have been easier to just go out and buy another bottle? Oh, to have the wisdom to know when to spend my energy on rescue efforts and when to move on to something new. We are in the midst of negotiating a private sale on our house in which we will not make any money, but be able to walk away immediately. Part of me is saying, "Hey, I thought God wanted us to stay here and restore this house." The other part is saying, "The important thing right now is to move downtown in order to build community and invest in others." I don't know exactly what God is doing here, but I am willing to let go of my perfect scenario in which we sell th...

Pop. Hiss. For some reason, I woke up at 4:00 am on Sunday just in time to hear these muted sounds. The hissing continued, sounding kind of like the heater fan that goes on in our kitchen, but slightly different. I lay in bed for several minutes, wondering what it was and if I should be concerned. Finally, I got up and followed the sound down the stairs. I stepped into several inches of water in our basement and soon discovered that a pipe connection in our downstairs bathroom had come apart and was spraying water straight up at the ceiling. Dean and I were soon up mopping and drying and spreading every available towel on the floor in an effort to keep the damage to a minimum. Later on that morning at a more civilised hour, we borrowed a water vacuum from friends and gathered the heaters and dehumidifiers to speed up the drying. It is slow going, but things are getting dryer. It deflates me to see all the effort I put into fixing up that basement last summer be chipped away ...

No, this was not a dream. Dean called me yesterday to let me know that he had just been given tickets to the Foo Fighters concert that night at the Bell Centre (where the Canadiens play hockey). Arghghghhhhh , it was one of those days and I was tired and grouchy and weepy and discouraged and overwhelmed and not all in the mood for listening to really loud music, sitting with screaming fans, and then making fake chat-chat with famous people. You see, we had backstage passes since Dean knows one of the musicians who plays Hagstrom guitars, a product of Dean's company. Well, it seemed that Dean wanted my less than fun company anyway, so away we went. Our tickets led us to pretty much the best seats one could have - seats being the operative word here since we could have been closer, but it would have been in the fenced-in, free for all, herd-like standing arrangement on the floor in front of the stage. Thankfully, we were sitting on actual seats, stage left, second row up from the...

Jacques and Pierre came to see me yesterday. Jacques is a foundation specialist. He is kind and quick yet thorough and endearingly shaped like a pear. Pierre is his very French, mostly silent, but keenly observant assistant. In short order, Jacques' experienced eyes picked out several things inside and outside my home that told him that one side of the house has sunk several inches over the past 3 years and it will continue to sag unevenly unless the foundation is reinforced. He gave me the name of a colleague who was equipped for a job of this size and wished me a good day and left. So there it was, confirmed. I now officially have foundation issues. I was feeling slightly overwhelmed with the news and the giant wrench this was putting in the plans to sell our house for a reasonable profit and move downtown into a cool loft space. So I asked God, "Why? Why did we buy this house? Why is this happening to us?" And very quickly I heard a reply, "This is what restorers...