Musings...

 Several years ago when I decided to write a blog, I set a goal for myself to write at least two posts per month.  Most months I have been able to accomplish that because there is always something to write about.  The second blog I wanted to post this month was about a really great experience I had a few weeks ago when I met two really wonderful women.  I wanted to write about that.  But my days in the last couple of months have been filled to the brim with so many "have to" jobs that I didn't take the time to sit down and let myself tell the story of our encounter.

Then my husband Louis and I went on a short trip, and I decided some down time in the evening at our hotel would be a great time for me to write that blog.  I took my little ZAGG keyboard and my tablet to work on it.

It has been a long time since I pulled the little keyboard out and worked on my tablet, but I was making really good progress relating the details of the short time Laura Munroe and Heidi Lynn popped into our lives.  As it got later and later in the evening, however, and I wasn't completely finished with my narrative, I decided to save what I had written to begin again at another opportune moment.

Only... as I was reaching over the keyboard, I accidentally did something that erased all but the first two paragraphs!  I was stunned to see the work I had completed during the previous hour just disappear.  I don't even know what I had done for it to be deleted.  Knowing that most things that are captured like this are still "out there" in cyber space, I spent the next half hour trying everything I could think of to retrieve the missing paragraphs of my tale about a chance meeting that was truly serendipitous.  Never happened.

Tonight, I am on the eve of yet another little trip.  There will be no time tomorrow or Saturday or Sunday to rewrite the experience I want to share on my blog.  So, I started leafing through some of my journals and notebooks for something short, but significant to me, that I could share in a last-minute post.

Funny me!  I can NEVER just find something appropriate quickly.  I still have to read, re-read and determine if that particular piece would be meaningful.  Plus, I always have to muse over and remember again the impact something I've saved had on me when I first read it.  But I think this short quote might fill the bill.

Right now, in a scripture study class I am taking, we are discussing why bad things happen to good people.  This quote from Henry Ward Beecher touches on these unwanted experiences and how they can refine us--even as they devastate us.  This is a quote I have shared often with others who are struggling with some "Why me?" trials.  I think of it as a balm for the grief we sometimes have to bear in our lives.  It has certainly eased my own pain from time to time.

"There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God and fixed inexplicably in the quivering heart.  They are meant to be borne.  They were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike.  But the moment an ill can be patiently borne, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain."

 Until next month...

WHAT'S IN A WORD...?

 

MEANDER or WEAVE

When we moved to our little town in Northern Colorado a couple of decades ago, it was still pretty rural. Small towns dotted the landscape far off in the distance from the interstate which intersects the entire state north to south.  Even though each of those small towns had begun to expand from their original four- square block downtown areas, there was still plenty of farmland and open space to make it feel roomy and inviting.

However, in the last few years more and more planned neighborhoods have popped up, as have building after building of apartments which string their way among all the new houses and strip shops which invariably have joined the march of progress.  Sadly, the "rural" part has pretty much disappeared.  

Obviously, the next step would be to add a bigger infrastructure of roads to handle all the additional traffic which seemed to go hand in hand with more people.

So, we have endured road construction of some sort or another for the last five years as CDOT scrambles to relieve the congestion of too many cars on too few roads.  First, it was new interchanges at every exit to those small towns.  Now it is adding a new HOV lane as a toll road which will soon connect Fort Collins to points south through Metro Denver. 

Even though most of that toll road has been completed, there is still an incomplete section a little south of us that has to join the two systems together.  Despite the fact the whole proposed toll system hasn't been finished yet, that sizable length is ready-to-go with all the proper signage.  It's like this new section is an opportunity to "practice" for the real deal.

Though there are also signs in place that say no car can drive over the solid white lines without incurring a fine, there is a bright orange strip slapped onto each one of the big green freeway signs that says, "TOLLS WAIVED". 

It didn't take long for cars to begin using that new HOV lane as just another traffic lane to switch back and forth as they literally sail down the road at speeds quite a bit above the posted 75 MPH.

Next thing that happened was a message on the lighted programmed traffic boards:

MEANDERING BETWEEN LANES AND CROSSING THE 

SOLID WHITE LINES INTO THE HOV LANES IS ILLEGAL

 AND SUBJECT TO FINES

That didn't change anything at all.  Cars were still "meandering" in zig zags across those solid white lines into the HOV lane and out again into the regular lanes to get any advantage they could to surge ahead in the traffic.

So, someone must have decided that telling drivers not to "meander" wasn't a serious enough warning if they didn't want to get fined.  A new message appeared on the programmed traffic boards:

WEAVING BETWEEN LANES AND CROSSING THE 

SOLID WHITE LINES INTO THE HOV LANES IS ILLEGAL

 AND SUBJECT TO FINES

Apparently, nothing will scare motorists into thinking that "tolls waived" means anything more than just that.  And that they can drive wherever they want without monetary repercussion.  In fact, people ARE getting fined.  Big Time!  The news is full of snippets about individuals who have been fined HUGE amounts of money--like we're talking nearly a $1000.00 plus for repeatedly crossing the lines.  Still, there are those that think perhaps they won't get caught.  Not sure.  But until then I make sure I cross into the HOV lane on the DOTTED WHITE LINES.  And exit again on the DOTTED WHITE LINES.

I don't have money to play games on the freeway.

MEANDER or WEAVE?  They both spell money wasted, to me!

So....What's in a Word?