more normal than not

The moon was behind the clouds this morning….so things weren’t quite as bright as they’d been the last couple of days when I went for my run.

I know the moon was back there….that’s what moons do…hide behind the clouds sometimes.

We drove up to Asheville yesterday to look at a car for my daughter.

Here’s the car we looked at:

It looks pretty good in the picture.

The owner was a nice guy who didn’t know anything about cars….but as I started asking him questions that he couldn’t really answer, I started to figure out things on my own.

You remember the movie “The Shining”?

Remember how that little kid kept saying “redrum” over and over?

We’ll call this car “redcar”.

It had issues.

After checking it out and then jumping it off to get it started, the owner asked if we wanted to test drive it….and mentioned that it didn’t have power steering and was hard to steer.

I don’t think that power steering was optional equipment on a 1992 Sentra.

I showed him where the empty power steering fluid reservoir was and told him it needed fluid….and that having some fluid might help the steering problem if everything else was still working.

In the ad, the car had been described as needing brake pads….but when we test drove it, the screeching was different than a worn pad would make.

I can’t describe it.

Maybe a bad hub? I don’t really know.

It was a really bad dry scraping/screeching sound.

So…it was a redcar that wouldn’t start or steer and that made horrible screeching sounds when it was rolling.

Oh…..and it didn’t have a driver’s side seatbelt.

That’s not a good car for your “little girl”.

I noticed that when we got home, the owner had dropped the price by a couple of hundred bucks.

Good luck.

That’s something to learn from this experience….or maybe I should say that it’s something to remember.

NICE GUYS WHO DON’T KNOW ANYTHING CAN GET YOU INTO AS MUCH TROUBLE AS EVIL PEOPLE WHO GET YOU IN TROUBLE ON PURPOSE.

They really can….if you let them.

That redcar was one left behind….thank goodness.

But enough about that.

Check this song out by Amy Helm….Levon’s daughter.

Good stuff from a good musical family….

“rescue me” Amy Helm

I’m running again.

I give myself credit for “running”….even though what I do is really kind of “shuffling”.

I move….and I don’t walk….so even if I’m doing it when no one else can see me….and it’s really kind of a shuffling sort of running….I AM RUNNING.

Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned my lack of proper form?

It sounds a lot grander when I just say, “I’m running. I’m putting in the mileage. I excel at life.”

I should gild the lily a little….talk it up.

Why not? Who would know if I stretched the truth and never got timed or let anyone see me doing it? Why not?

The moon was receding this morning….but even though it still wasn’t the giant blue moon of a couple of nights ago, on a cloudless early morning it lit up the night sky.

That makes it easy to run when I can see everything.

Stumps are still sometimes “bears”…..but the second look is easier when there’s some light to see that it was just a stump after all.

Ponder.

There’s some guys around here named “Ponder”.

What a great last name.

I’ll bet that’s something they never gave a second thought to, though.

They never “pondered” their last name.

Most of them don’t strike me as “that kind of guy”.

There is a time in between light and night when it is so quiet and so beautiful that I can’t help but…..what? But what?

Ponder.

I guess that I’m enraptured by the peace of standing in the middle of a quiet road….staring up at the stars and the partial moon….pondering….knowing how small I am but how much a part of all the bigness I am, too.

All the bigness.

People come to the conclusion somehow that there is “no God”. It’s science….historical explosions and aggressive DNA….random and vague, sometimes, concrete and understood, other times….atmosphere and weather and all the other explainable phenomena….ordered and common and, probably most beautifully, to some….with US at the center of it all.

The biggest bang of all….when we need to describe a miracle.

Who could comprehend the scale of a miracle?

A “man centered faith” doesn’t hold any interest to me.

There’s more than just “us”.

But….”us” is what we know.

It’s something we can put our finger on….even if knowing about “us” doesn’t get “us” any closer to treating each other well.

What I know is that I feel the breeze…see the stars….hear the birds waking up….and I can’t help but believe that something good designed this.

Maybe it’s just a “nice morning”….that’s enough, too.

There’s a lot to ponder.

All the time….a lot to ponder.

How do I show the thankfulness this all deserves?

“his eye is on the sparrow” John Medeski

Under the hood, it smells like gas.

Under some parts under the hood, this part may be leaking.

That’s a hard “easy fix”.

I better get it fixed soon….real soon.

Of course, there are other things that it could be….that’s the beauty of cars or anything in life, there’s other options as to what “could be wrong”.

Right or wrong, there’s always multiple possibilities.

It’s a frog on a log in the middle of the pond in a…..kind of situation.

But….traceable if you do the legwork and take stuff apart.

I’ll have to figure out how to get it in to the mechanic soon.

And….then….again…it could be nothing.

That’s important to raise that possibility….before I get everybody excited about something like that.

It could always be nothing….or not.

Smelling gas isn’t a good thing, though.

That’s the beauty of Google….I have about 5 different possibilities for leaking gas smell after doing some research….and the Grand Caravans are notorious for this problem.

Better get it fixed.

Oh, my gosh!! Click on this picture!! It gets even huger!! HUGE!!

I wrote about the moon yesterday….and my friend John told me that today’s moon was going to be one of the rare “blue moons”.

I told Jenny what John said….and asked her what a “blue moon” was….and she told me it was a second full moon in the same month.

“You remember? Like the song?”

Then she did her best high voiced imitation of the monologue that Nanci Griffith gives in the live recording.

Then I remembered.

Here’s the song:

“once in a very blue moon” Nanci Griffith

The moon was not quite this dramatic…..dramatic like the picture….this morning…but…it was huge….resting on a fluffy dark cloud like a Fabergé egg on a bed of black cotton.

That’s why I shuffle around in the dark….it’s so quiet….still….and I get to see things like a big moon that’s not supposed to happen again until 2018.

The thing about realizing that is that, until John told me what the big moon was and that it was special, I would have thought, “Hmmmmm…..what a big moon. That’s really pretty…” and left it at that.

Knowing that it’s a blue moon makes it even “cooler” somehow.

Here’s something cool about this day, too, that my friend Beth H. posted on Facebook: today is the 240th anniversary of the Post Office.

It feels like I’ve been there that long.

That’s the beauty of the Post Office….if you work there, it kind of extends your life….sort of.

It makes a lot of moments feel like an eternity.

At this rate, I should live forever.

Nah…I’m kidding. Driving the mail….listening to reggae…..is probably the coolest job a person could have.

Cool as a blue moon.

A bat dive-bombed my head twice this morning.

I think it was the same bat….in the darkness, it looked like the same bat.

He came down fast and did a fly-by…..and then I didn’t see him again after the second time.

It’s pretty dark in the morning when I run.

I’m sure that it must have been kind of confusing for him….seeing/hearing/sonoring me out there, plodding along.

I think that he must have been thinking something like, “What is that? It’s too fast for walking….too slow for anything else. What is that?!”

I don’t really know what a bat thinks.

I don’t know what my kids are thinking, most of the time.

I ran out and back this morning….kind of a change after only walking the hills on the way back for a week.

I noticed that the hills seem to get shorter every day.

Maybe they don’t get shorter…..maybe I’m just getting more used to them.

That’s the way it goes….something is pretty uncomfortable…like running up a hill….and then it either gets easier as you live with it for a while….or you just get used to being uncomfortable.

Maybe it’s all just callous building up?

I don’t really know.

It is kind of interesting how hard things make us stronger.

We could have been designed with a finite limit to the amount of “wear and tear” we could take.

We might go to the doctor early on and he’d tell us, “What were you doing? Outside playing again?! Well….it looks like you’re pretty close to being used up….worn away….you’re in the red zone. You better take it pretty easy the rest of your life….you won’t get a chance to make it right….you better WATCH OUT. No stress….no play….no hard work or conflict or it’s going to be all over for you. You should have planned ahead a little better. I’m sorry to have to tell you that.”

Those are harsh words for a five-year old to have to hear.

But instead, the conflict makes us stronger….if it doesn’t break us in two.

Resistance.

In weight training, what makes you stronger is the tearing and healing, tearing and healing…over and over.

You work a muscle, you tear the muscle a little, the muscle heals (hopefully)….and you get stronger.

That’s a crazy process….you have to tear it all down to build it back stronger.

Now….”too much” isn’t a good thing.

You can overtrain and spoil the whole process.

There has to be some balance….rest and work, repeat, rest and work, repeat…..etc.

But….we need something to push against to make us stronger.

That’s an amazing thing….that we have a store of resiliency that builds on itself….whether we’re aware of it or not.

We’re stronger than we think.

These hills that I’m running are getting shorter.

The reason they’re getting shorter is because I’m running them again.

I guess that I should learn to be thankful for the tearing…..AND the healing.

It’s a two-part process….thank goodness for both of them.