Lamb Eats Crow

     After a happy, but harried week of herding kindergartners through Vacation Bible School, I needed to stop at the bank and store on my way home. I usually go to a small drive up branch, but I do not actually use the drive through. I park and go to the three window walk in area. The reason--the drive through line was driving me crazy. Drive up transactions should go like this:

   1.  Greet teller
   2.  Insert check or deposit in the container, put in tube, push send.
   3.  Teller verifies what you want to do, completes transaction and sends container back.
   4.  Remove contents, say thank you, leave.

However, this is seldom the process for the drivers in front of me. By the length of their transactions and the number of times the container goes back and forth, I can only conclude the other drivers are unfamiliar with English, math, or playing some sort of ping pong with the teller using the plastic container. While speculating on possible reasons for the delay is interesting, actual waiting is frustrating, so I skip the drive through and go inside. Since there are only six parking spots, the line cannot be very long and, if some customer has a lengthy transaction, at least I can overhear the reason.
     But, as I said, that branch has only six parking spaces and one of those is for handicapped.  So when I pulled up Friday there were no empty spots but, almost immediately, a woman came out of the bank and got in her car. I waited for her to back out. Waited. Waited. And waited. Apparently she was using one of those five precious spots to balance her bank statement, check phone messages, or give herself a manicure. But that was no problem because another woman came out of the bank and got in her car. She could not possibly fail to notice my car hovering there waiting for a parking spot, but she also decided to day camp in her car. I couldn't honk. The Lord won't allow me to have a working car horn because He knows my husband would use it to blow his testimony. Frustrated, I decided to buy groceries first and return to the bank afterwards. How could those drivers be so clueless?
    I was still mulling over the injustice of it all, and had almost reached the door at Super One, when I realized I didn't have my car keys. I was afraid in my distraction I had locked them inside the car. When I went back to check, my keys were in the ignition, which is where they should be when the car is running. I had forgotten to shut off my car. How could I be so clueless? Call it instant karma or a humility lesson. I call it--Lamb eats crow.

Has Bean

     I have been trying to build up a tolerance to coffee, as if it was poison because, at my age, what I lack in energy, I need to make up in caffeine, but it was just too bitter. Back when doctors considered coffee drinking a health hazard--bad breath, warts, tumors, etc. were all caused by coffee (unlike pregnancy, which is caused by alcohol)--I felt virtuous about my coffee intolerance. Why should I force myself to drink something that's not good for me anyway? But now the same doctors say all those problems are caused by not drinking enough coffee. Three cups a day is optimal. It is truly a bitter pill to swallow. I like frozen, blended coffee drinks like frappes, but they are more like coffee bisque, like a barista waved  a coffee bean over the mixture and then threw it away, or fed it to the real coffee drinkers. Eventually, I drank enough frappes to qualify for "perks" at a nearby City Brew coffee shop. That's when the experimentation began. I moved from frappes to the hard stuff--granitas, a frappe without the milk. I had established a liphold on cold drinks, but I knew true coffee drinkers like it hot.
     Then one day I got a text from my City Brew pusher offering a half priced Cafe Bianco and, in a fit of frugality, my cheapness overcame my coffobia and I ordered one. Bianco means white, the white in this case, meaning cream. Lots of cream. I discovered I liked it. Then I discovered that when it is not half price, it costs $4.35. I don't have enough green for that much white. It is like staying at a luxury resort. Nice place to visit, but you can't live there.
     Right now I am visiting Portland while my husband is here for work. We are staying at a Hampton Inn that offers 24 hour Royal Cup coffee. On a whim (and because it was free) I tried it, and discovered that with enough half and half and a shot of creamer, it is not bitter. It is also not commercially available, so my non-bitter end will be check out time tomorrow. But I have also heard that real, from Columbia, coffee is not bitter and that they sell it at Trader Joe's. All I know about the store is that when Montana friends see a Trader Joe's bag, they get excited, even envious. I would like to be he object of bag envy, so I bought a bag and even found some coffee to go in it. All their coffee is whole bean, and I obviously do not own a grinder, but they had one at the store. Getting to use their coffee grinder, made the experience even more fun, like a kid playing with a new toy. I'll have to wait till I get back home to taste the coffee because the room coffee maker only uses odd sized packets, but who knows where this may end. I may become a coffee drinker and finally feel like a grown up. My grandparents, who regarded refusing coffee as a breach of manners, would have been so proud. This never was/has been almost has bean.

Late Check Out

     One of the perks we get because Reed travels for business is hotel points. We have silver status at Hilton hotels and gold status with Marriott. And one of the perks of having hotel points is priority for a late check out. Most hotels require you to check out by 11 or 12, but occasionally Reed's schedule doesn't fit that time frame, and I shamelessly flaunt our points status to push our departure out until 1 p.m. That's just the kind of power pointers we are.
     Segue to my day's Bible study of Job chapter 14. Verse five says, "Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed." Admittedly, Job's life has been a comfortless catastrophe when he lists our lifespan in months, but the teaching that God determines the length of our lives is Bible wide. Moses called it number our days, Hebrews calls it an appointment, David says all the days ordained for me, but the idea is the same--God decides.
     That is hard to accept in a culture that believes we control our lifespan by our lifestyle choices.  There is nothing wrong with Christians following food or exercise fads or making a living will, unless we believe that by doing so we are changing the length of our lives. Believing that means you've hopped from the Hubris to the Heresy Hotel. Would we even want the power to alter God's eternal purposes with kale and/or cardio? We depart this life at the precise moment God has appointed. Not one minute before, not ten seconds after. No matter how many points we think we have earned in our long-term stay on Earth, we do not have the option of a late check out.