Closed Doors, Open Windows

Hello friends! Well, it's been a crazy week. Remember in my last post how I said our heat went out on the first day we got snow? Well, it went out the day after that too. After having four technicians (all different, by the way) come look at it in the last two months, Isaiah called our property manager again. She sent somebody again...the guy took one look at it and said we needed a new one. Yay! So he and another guy spent the entire next day here working on it and it works great! Thank goodness b/c it was sleeting and 25 degrees that day on my way home from work. Tuggy's been staying inside on the really cold days so he and Murphy just laze around all afternoon and enjoy the free heat...just like a bunch of teenagers. (They really need to get jobs and help pay bills!)

Isaiah got up super early on Saturday and went to Plainview to meet his friend Tyler and a big group of his family/friends to go pheasant hunting. It was Isaiah's first time to hunt these lil' fellows and he had a great time and got one bird. I know that now that he's gone once....he's gonna want to go again. Interestingly enough though, pheasant season is only two weeks long, so it'll probably have to wait until next year.

Saturday afternoon I went to Wal-Mart to buy gifts for a family we adopted through the Salvation Army. My friends Becky and Brooke were so sweet to also chip in to help this single mother and her three kids have a great Christmas! I made out like a bandit and got several items of clothing for each of the kids (boys ages 10 and 7 and a 2-yr. old girl) and toys, as well as accessories like scarves, gloves, hats, slippers and lots of toiletry items for the mom. I got all emotional when I was walking out of the store, looking at my full basket and thinking about how blessed I am and hoping that this family has a wonderful Christmas.

That evening, I was to meet Isaiah in Plainview for his company party at the country club. The invitation called for semi-formal attire and I'd found a dress in the closet that I'd ordered several years ago for one of my work functions but never worn. However, just when I'd finished fixing my hair and makeup.....I tried to slip the dress on over my head instead of zipping it up b/c it has a super stubborn zipper even on the hanger, much less trying to zip yourself up all the way up the back. RIIIIIIIIIIIIP! That's right....I tore a huge hole in the seam along the back when it went over my shoulders. Ooops! Needless to say I was frantic and already running behind (imagine that). I luckily found a dress I hadn't worn in years and could fit into again (yay!) and booked it to P-View for Isaiah's company party, which went fine....except all the Tejano music. It was pretty strange, I must say, but it was nice to meet Isaiah's co-workers and put faces to names.

After church on Sunday, Isaiah was servicing our cars and asked me to run get some antifreeze, so I went to Wal-Mart again to pick up some and get some groceries for the local Boy Scouts to pick up for their holiday food drive. I walked out to the car, unloaded everything into the trunk and returned my basket to the basket return, just one car over. When I got back to my door I realized I'd left my purse in the basket so I walked back. Literally 15 seconds went by and it was gone! I think it was the people in the car between my car and the return b/c they were getting out and outloading their kids and I'm sure saw me leave the purse. Ugh, so I panicked and raced home to have Isaiah help me call the credit card companies and such. We also filed a police report but when the officer said if we hadn't heard anything in two weeks that we should call....I wasn't feeling too optimistic.

The next morning I spent an hour and a half at both my banks closing accounts and reopening new ones and ran home to drop off all the paperwork. As luck would have it, I was home when a police officer stopped by with my purse! It had my full checkbook in it and all my receipts and papers and such. Even if I didn't get the rest back at least I knew they weren't trying to doctor up my checks or something. Then when I got to work an hour later, my phone rang not 60 seconds after I got there. It was some guy with a local sanitation service saying they'd found my wallet in a dumpster and it had my business cards in it so they called my office! So his boss brought it by and with the exception of the cash and coins, everything was still there! YAY! God is so good. So really, all that's still gone is my makeup bag and my Blackberry, which I'm really missing. I'll probably have to go get a new phone later this week or weekend, but I keep holding out hope it will turn up somehow. A gal can dream, can't she?!?

Then today I went to a luncheon of a local organization for women in communications. Everybody went around the room and introduced themselves and there was a lady there that works for the Tech medical school that I realized I'd met at a conference in Nashville probably back in 2005! So I re-introduced myself to her after the luncheon and we talked for probably 20 minutes. I told her I was working part time at Lubbock Magazine and that I like my job but that I'd eventually like to get a job at the university if possible. Anyway, she said she'd be interested in me doing some freelancing for their magazine, so that would be great! And, if I can get my foot in the door, who knows what might happen!

So, things have been looking up. The reason I titled this post what I did was because I keep thinking of Sound of Music when Julie Andrews says something like, "When God closes a door, somehow He opens a window." That ole' Fraulein Maria....so wise!