What Makes Me Mad

Anger is a strange thing; one never knows what might set a person off and then there are varied levels of anger, such as frustration, irritation, rage, and of course “merely upset.” On top of that, there are varied levels of life circumstances that can initiate anger, not limited to issues with parents, job, politics and religion.

Well recently, something normally miniscule made me angry. I raced home between appointments to make some lunch; it is healthy-ish, good for the budget, and satisfying, right? I opened some extra sharp cheddar cheese and made a quesadilla. I hate it when there are dishes left out, so while lunch was heating up, I decided to clean up and put everything back. Time-efficiency is my long, underrated, middle name.

Everyone knows that cheese has to be wrapped up as tightly as possible so that it doesn’t get moldy. So before I put it into a Ziploc bag, I decided to first wrap it in plastic wrap and THEN put it into the plastic bag. That is when I got angry. The plastic wrap box normally comes with a serrated edge so you can tear off the plastic. But the box at my house had part of the jagged edge missing. Have you ever tried to separate a piece of plastic wrap from itself by just stretching it? It is maddening.

Please it is never THAT easy:

There is no moral to this story, no great ending, just proving the ridiculousness of humanity. We can create plastic so thin that it can be stretched, but for some reason we cannot figure out how to cut it. We think we know everything. But it is proven over and over that we are stumped by the seemingly stupid. In this case, I lost out to a box. What else do I assume I know? 

I wonder if this is ever how God thinks about us, people, humanity? Yes, I know, God is a God of love. But you can love and still be angry or upset, right? I just wonder if He ever looks down and sees the freaking marvel of what is the human body, and then sees the talents and goodness he has given to each person, and then sees it misused, abused, or even worse, NOT used. I am specifically referring to those that pretend they are not good at anything. We are so afraid of arrogance and pride that we don’t embrace the talents or giftings we have been given. Instead of excelling we hide that piece of knowledge we have, or we shrug off leadership and sit passively by.

I am suggesting we stop being falsely humble, embrace what we are good at to benefit others, and live in triumph. And before I really get on my soap box, I’ll end this soon-to-be-too-long entry and suggest that you get on with it! Life is too short to live in mediocrity!

What do you think?

 

Vermin Of The Worst Kind

While writing my last post, I realized I had yet another laundry story that needed to be shared, albeit  in the direct path of something darker and more sinister.

I was in Australia in 2007 and lived in a house that contained 17 girls and one bathroom…the bathroom has nothing to do with this story, but I felt it important to note, as it is somewhat of a miracle for that many girls to peacefully live together with just one commode. I use the word "peacefully" loosely.
I had some free time on a Saturday so I decided it was the perfect time to do my laundry. I carried or rather dragged a pile of laundry to the back of the house where the washer and dryer were located and began the process. Normally, you would turn on the water, add soap, then the throw in the clothes. This time it was not so. I turned on the water. I added the soap. Then I put in…BAM! Something to my left, on the floor, caught my attention; I thought it was a mouse. I WISH it had been a mouse. NO! No, no…the thing that caught my eye was a large, later to be known as “Huntsman”, spider the size of my hand.

I froze. That is my normal position when I see a spider of any size.

After an undetermined amount of seconds, or minutes, I started yelling for any roommates left in the house, I couldn’t leave because any sane person knows that if you leave the room after seeing a spider, the spider disappears, and then you have to burn the house down. I had enough mind-over-matter power in that instant to know that this was not my house therefore I could  not burn it down. So I had to wait. I heard that someone was on their way so I prayed that God would let me graciously pass out. But I didn’t. One of the girls that I shared a room with came out and shouted for me to throw her my flip flop….MY FLIP FLOP! I know I mentioned this already but it is important to remember that this monster was the size of my hand and my flip flop would only bounce of the sucker. So I did the only thing I could do. As soon as the girl began striking the nasty thing with someone else’s shoe, I ran.

During my stay in Australia, I found 4 more of the spiders in our house ("spi-dar" is not a gift), to total 5. I was told at one point that everyone knows Huntsman spiders travel in pairs. You read that right. P-A-I-R-S. I had seen 5; 5 divided by 2 …now you get it.

Every night I thought about how we supposedly eat spiders during our sleep and was paranoid that my time would come with one that I couldn't swallow. Welcome to my nightmare. I didn’t know until the end of my stay there, that someone had found the 6^th spider.

I really need to learn the art of deliberate fainting.

How to do laundry

I have decided to give this whole blogging thing a try. If this doesn’t work out, I will have only devoted hours of time to my online “diary.”

I feel I must first create the atmosphere of a writer, though for myself, I use the term loosely. Wine, check; Triple-cream Cambozola cheese and crackers, check; Fragrant candle burning, check; Singing in the Rain (musical) playing in the background, check. Apparently, I think “writing atmosphere” embodies a Frenchwoman from the 50’s who likes romance…ok, I can deal with that. Warning, you all know how my mind works from my Facebook statuses and tweets (shameless plug for Twitter, @adrienneyerzy), random and short. Let’s begin, 1^st blog, take 1!

A few years ago I had the opportunity to go to Indonesia with a small group consisting of 9 people, 3 ladies and 6 guys. The 9 of us willingly crammed into a very small apartment on the twenty-something floor. I do not know the square footage of the place, but to give you some sort of reference point, I will tell you that the 3 of us ladies shared a queen sized bed for 2 months…something reminiscent of the 3 Stooges, I think. Now you sort of get the picture.

While there are MANY stories to tell from this trip, I want to focus on just one. Like a first date, some mystery must be left for later.

When our team arrived at the apartment, we realized right away that we would need to purchase a water tank, which uses bottles similar to the large bottles that the Alhambra man might bring to your office or home. We tried purchasing normal liter sized bottles for a while (as we couldn’t drink water from the tap), but they were used up too quickly and after collecting a full set of empty, plastic bottles, we decided our collection, though impressive, was too large for our cabinets and that the water cooler was a better idea.

We also notice right away that our apartment didn’t have a washer or dryer, though this was expected and really not an issue as most of us had taken many international trips where we had to wash laundry by hand, no big deal.

 

We, the ladies of the group, took turns washing our clothes in the sink or tub. Whites, by themselves, dark colors by themselves, in small “loads” because there just wasn’t room to do everything at once, I will not bore you with the rest. One of the guys, however, had a different plan. One day I turned the corner to find him vigorously shaking a large water jug (I will add that a fellow teammate had procured a harmonica from a cereal box and repeatedly played random chords over and over…this was going on in the background). Of course, I had to figure out what was going on and to my surprise (followed by doubled over laughter) he had decided to put his laundry into the water jug so that he could do all his dark laundry at one time, to “save time”.

 

I am hoping you are picture someone using the “Shake Weight” only this is about 30 times bigger and heavier! I laughed with tears in my eyes for quite a few minutes, then sensing that the “show” was almost over, I looked again to see him pull everything out of the water jug…and then put them right back in again! I couldn’t figure out what he was doing, so I asked and his reply? “Rinse-cycle!”

 

I don’t know how else to end this other than to mention we only bought 2 water jugs to refill with water for the 2 months we were there…So we all experienced one man’s laundry, one way or another.