"He who sows hurry reaps indigestion." ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

 *****Our mom is supposed to go home from the hospital today and we thank God for His provision in her situation. She will continue the blood thinner regimen to deal with her blood clot issues. She also was treated for a touch of pneumonia. She is excited. Dad is excited. We all are excited. And we all are also thankful. Thanks for remembering her. Amen. *****


It's Thursday, June 26, 2014, and I think it is about time for me to tick off a few things that tick me off. Please don't make a face. It's not that easy coming up with phrases like ticking off things that tick me off. There's a recent development that really has me fretting myself into a frenzy. Okay. That one was an exaggeration. I admit it. At any rate, I get up early everyday and I drive in early to my place of work. Early. I'm typically on the road by 3:45 a.m. I occasionally meet a few folks along my journey, typically, some of those loud, obnoxious trucks that grab hold of dumpsters and empty them and maybe a few other early morning delivery trucks. There are a few folks like me who may not have the sense God gave a goose. (Granny Mac used to say that one a lot.) Back to being ticked off. On my way from home to work I must travel down a roadway that has many traffic signals. Usually that's not a problem. At that time in the morning they should be operating in automatic demand mode, meaning they don't change unless someone is on the sides wanting to go across or turn. But, oh no, that just doesn't work for the engineer overseeing those units. They must see us poor souls through those fish eye lenses on those monitoring cameras and chuckle as they make every light turn red. Okay. Someone must need to cross or turn. Not hardly. No one. Not even a deer or a coyote has asked permission. But, we sit. We wait. First for all cars to turn, left, then for all cars to turn right. Next, we wait for the cars to cross over. No cars. But we wait. Just waiting. I hope they get a kick out of it because it doesn't do much for me.

Please don't send me a note saying I should make some lemonade or stop and smell the roses. If I tried to stop and smell anything I would probably be hit by one of those loud trucks running around looking for dumpsters to bang around. It's not that I am in such a hurry because I'm not. It's the insidious stupidity of having everyone wait until every light cycles for no reason whatsoever. What's that you say? If that's the worst problem I have to deal with you think I should be able to handle it? Thanks. I'll try to keep that in mind as I attempt to track down the fellow sitting at the traffic control console who has decided to play games with my commute. And, I almost forgot. It wastes precious fuel. Just about the time you get up to speed then it's slam on brakes for another traffic signal change. I thought everyone was all in when it comes to being green. You know, the environment stuff. Maybe the green they are seeing from me has to do with the color of my face. Okay. You do know that I am putting it on a little thick. Does this seemingly harmless delay actually irritate me? It does. But not as much as I have put on. This doesn't mean I wouldn't like to have a little face to face with that console jockey. Just to say hello. Up close and personal like.

I'm not exactly sure how many minutes it adds to my travel time. But I do know it's a big number. Maybe 2 or 3 minutes. See there. I told you it was a conspiracy. Okay. I think we've all had more than enough of that rant for one day. I do have to practice my ranting skills lest they become rusty. There's nothing worse than having rusty ranting skills especially when you need them. You know that's not really true. God would have us to be longsuffering and kind. He would have us to love instead of lashing out. The problem I mentioned might be a computer issue. A clock issue. Or maybe an impatient commuter issue. And, finally, we should always be ready to overlook stuff that in the big scheme of life, they really are mostly trivial or even less. I'm not ready to start a campaign that says we should hug our traffic signal console operator yet. But, I still would like to meet that individual. You know. I would give them a hug all right. A really good one. You do know I'm kidding. I am. I really am. Think about it. Why should anyone be stressed over having to wait for all those invisible cars? Pretty silly when you think about it especially since it really doesn't bother me, ...bother me, ...bother me, at all. You know what I mean. I know you do. Take care and may God help us all including that individual operating those traffic signals. Amen.  ....More later.