Tortoises, Microwaves, Bees, etc.

Two nights ago I had another dream featuring Clint's sister, although this time, she wasn't really a major player in the dream.  I was in her classroom, and on the counter was a tortoise habitat, complete with a heat lamp, plant-life, and two desert tortoises.  Amanda was in a neighboring room talking to some parents, so I went over to the habitat and picked up one of the tortoises.  I held her for a moment, but then, suddenly, I lost my grip and dropped her.  She landed on the hard linoleum floor and her shell shattered.  Half of the shell cracked off completely, vertically, from head to tail.  I felt devastated.  The poor thing looked pitiful, with half of her tender, fragile body exposed to the world.  I carried the broken tortoise to Amanda to show her what I had accidentally done.  I can't recall her exact words, but I do remember that she wasn't mad, and I was surprised by her understanding.

Then, last night, I dreamt that my sister broke her wrist while changing some tubes in her microwave.  I never saw the accident happen, but I saw a facebook status update written by Shan.  It stated:

I broke my wrist while changing some tubes in my microwave.

Do microwaves even have tubes?  Anyway, that was the end of that one.  The dream was only about five seconds long.  But I did get on facebook when I woke up to check and make sure no one had broken anything.

In waking news, yesterday was my and Clint's 13th anniversary.  I actually forgot that it was even approaching until two days prior; Clint forgot completely until I told him.  We still managed to get his parents to babysit last night while we went out to a nice dinner.  And he brought me home a box of Lucky Charms, which was really cute.  It was my favorite cereal back when we first started dating, and sort of has an inside  story all of its own.  Yesterday I also went to lunch with Sarah, and we talked for over three hours while the kids played.  The time flew by so fast...it felt like it was only a half hour.

Despite how packed the day was yesterday, parts of it were actually a little emotional for me.  Shannon has been talking to our paternal grandmother, and she learned some little tidbits about our biological dad that she shared with me.  None of it was anything big, but compared to the little scraps of him that I currently have, it felt big to me.  After hearing what she told me, I felt so strange and off for the rest of the day.  Not in a bad way at all.  I can't really explain it.  Then when we went to pick up the kids from Clint's parent's house, Carey and I were talking about my Bible challenge, when he showed me a Bible that Clint and I had bought for him over ten years ago (I had long-forgotten about this book).  He had read the entire book in a year.  He started right before Clint and I moved to Wisconsin, and right before Shan moved to Oregon.  During that year, he had scratched things that happened throughout the year in that Bible, along with other notes and thoughts.  I read the things he had written, and it made me cry.  Well, I managed to keep the tears sucked into those shrimpy tear ducts of mine while I was there, but I was just about losing it inwardly.  The things he had written...I never knew how much he cared about me, or my sister.  And what a humble, spiritual man he is.

Eventually I'm going to give more details about the Bible challenge, but this entry is already getting long, so I'll just give a quick update. As of today I've completed Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and about a third of Deuteronomy. So far the most difficult chapter has been Leviticus. The easiest chapters have been, of course, Genesis, and the first two-thirds of Exodus (Exodus does get pretty challenging toward the end).

As far as my manuscript, I now have the majority of two chapters written. But, unfortunately, they are not the first two chapters. For some reason, my brain doesn't seem to want to piece this thing together in the correct order.

Today I took the kids to the park to go swimming, but it sort of sucked.  The pool was over-crowded, plus they had way too many rules.  I mean, I get the whole "No running/No diving" thing, but the lifeguards were blowing their ear-piercing whistles every time you splashed, carried each other in the water, "crowded" the stairs, etc.  They may as well have posted a sign that said "No having fun."  After swimming and lunch (we went to McD's dripping wet and reeking of chlorine), I made an outdoor habitat for Shelly, because she was starting to outgrow her tank.  This required shoveling dirt, and it was hot today.  Digging holes in the sun definitely does NOT build character.  It just makes you cranky and thirsty.

Oh, one more completely unrelated thing.  While we were driving to Soledad Canyon, we ran into an entire flock of bees.  I'm cursing myself right now because I know it's not called a "flock" when you are referring to insects, but I can't remember what it's called.  "Drove", maybe?  Anyway, we ran into a--SWARM, yes!!--of bees, and of course they all smashed right into our very large windshield (think RV windshield, here).  So we had hundreds of little bee carcasses plastered onto the glass right before our eyes, with no way of avoiding looking at them, because we're driving.  So (I know I keep saying "so", but I'm lacking other good transitions right now) Clint turned the windshield wipers on, pushing the button on the side to spray some fluid.  But the fluid refused to come out (even though he topped it off before we left on the trip), and the dry wiper blades ended up smearing bee guts all across the glass, with no way of washing it off.  At this point, we could barely see out of the windshield.  Basically a bad problem just turned worse.  We were still miles away from a gas station, so Clint ended up having to douse the window with water from a water bottle, and then use the wiper blades to wash the remains away.  Moral of the story:  Don't run into bees!  It is very, very gross.