Today is a good day - I'm stuck on you

“Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.”  

~Henry Longfellow

The first entry to an account as such that I should have been accounting for since somewhere between two and five years ago, will not be an introduction to the concept that has taken years of Labor to reach the cringing moments leading up to Birth, the transition - instead, a summary of the Weekend. . .
We'll begin at Thursday.  My friend Matthew and I took the batteries from the bus to be charged over-night.  We picked up a fridge that was given to me for the bus.  I bought some more epoxy for the bus window project.  We had dinner at Earth Fare, the local health food store chain - which on Thursday nights has kids eat free. Three kids and one adult eat organically for $5. . why shouldn't that be good news?  Mercury had a friend come home with her and Daniel from church photographed them for a couple of hours after school with a sweet 8x10 camera.
Then.
We get home and Mercury has a fever - 102.6 - out of nowhere.  
Her friend asks me if she can spend tomorrow night, also, because her father (a single parent family) is having open heart surgery and might die.  
Samson wants to sleep with his older brother, but his older brother wants to sleep alone.
Ezekiel has homework he has 'forgotten' to tell me about, at bedtime.
The night ends without tragedy, enter Friday.
Matthew and I finish painting the bus - finally - it has taken nearly 5 months, but all the dehydrated-yellow is finally covered with some glowing white rust-O-leum.  We take it easy with Mercury and the night is un-eventful, save for some thoughts provoked by a documentary on Jim Jones, more on that later.  
Saturday needs to be a day devoted to the bus windows.  I flake and spend the day inside with the kids. . .we go out at night to redeem some coupons for an arcade in the next town over, and indulge at the eatery next door to the arcade, the place that makes "real food".  I have a beer and invite my friend John to indulge me in some distraction or process to relieve the dismay I still carried from knowing so much of The People's Temple history. . . more on that later.
Like a gentle reminder, a signal, a blessing - a man whom I've talked with and have been told to talk to about the bus - runs into us at the restaurant.  This is the second 'reminder', fated meeting, sign from God I've encountered with this certain oft-mentioned individual in one week.  Well, maybe ten days, who's counting?  It served to re-direct my energy towards better things, not failed or mis-led pasts.  Learning from mistakes. . .
Enter Saturday night, I lay restlessly with Samson under the sheet fort I'd built in the living room.  He lay asleep, I watching him amazed that anyone could possibly sleep well in such an environment.  The sleeping bags kept sliding off the sleeping pads, the sleepers kept sliding out of the bags, the pillows.  I was half-conscious when Mercury went to the bathroom and considered not checking on her.  I re-considered and her temperature was 104.7.  I was up all night.
Enter Sunday - on Plan A's agenda was measuring the bus's interior and figuring an amount needed to buy the metal studs for framing on Monday, when Matthew will be available to pick them up in his truck.  
Instead we visit the ER.  Sinus infection.  Then a leisurely tour of the Rite Aid.  Then another nap in the living room fort and alot of lounging.  And dishes.  And I hung up laundry inside.  We have no dryer.  More on that later.  And cooking and lounging and manicures and a shower, more dishes, and everything but anything to do with the bus.  More on that later. . .


The quote at the beginning of this post doesn't deter me, nor waiver or discourage me, or fill me with guilt because looking at the post, at the diary-entry on a blog devoted to The Bus - it doesn't give me much credit at pressing forward on the bus, does it?  Or does it?  Perhaps there's more to this, dear reader, then removing our everyday struggles and conundrums and dramas and blessings from any certain goal or project or game - but the answer, the way, dare I say - the reward - lies in the balance of Life and Life's calling.  Jesus still had to eat and sleep and use the toilet, deal with relationships and money or at least barter in some form.  We can't separate the physical (or the mundane) from the spiritual quest (the Bus, for me and mine).  Not yet.


Welcome to the Parting Family.