A minute later, he was freaking out. Their house burned down last night. That’s the sort of sentence that you can’t help but read at least twice, but it is true. The rest of the morning was spent trying to get as much information from a distance as possible. Rachel’s sister Beka was on the scene fairly quickly, and they also got a good bit of support from their church and neighbors. Over time, we found out that the fire started with some creosote in the chimney, even though they hadn’t had a fire in their wood stove for about three days. Also, both dogs survived and were found, though both are shaken and one got burned on his face pretty badly.

We were thankful that we could love them through the worst of the shock today. We were in the middle of making Rachel’s Family’s traditional Valentine’s day breakfast when the news came in: Peanut butter french toast in the shape of hearts, pineapple rings, bacon, and parfaits made with frosted flakes, cherry pie filling, and vanilla ice cream. Rachel and I roused ourselves from our melancholy after a while and finished preparing these things, and we sat down to “breakfast” at around 11:30am. By the end of the meal, Rachel’s folks were beginning to make wry comments about the situation, and everyone was feeling a little better with food in their stomachs. Rachel’s sister Jennifer took them clothes shopping, and we had dinner at her house this evening with a few mutual friends from church.

All in all, it was a very surreal day but it ended tolerably well. Indeed, the whole situation could have been a lot worse. In their house, the wood stove had been at the foot of the stairs to the second floor, where Rachel’s little brother Nik usually slept. If they had been home when this happened, it would have been highly likely that someone would gotten seriously hurt or even killed. As it is now, we all have a lot to be thankful for. Rachel’s family got many offers for a place to stay from families in their church, and her dad’s work associates will be putting together a collection for them. They’ve often talked about building a house on a more scenic part of their property, and now Rachel’s Mom can get the new kitchen that she wanted but couldn’t do without the old kitchen long enough to get. You never want something like this to happen, but the love that can flow in the aftermath of such a tragedy is truly a wonderful sight to behold.

• an across the board 5% cut in pay for everyone,
• a termination of 401k matching for the rest of the year,
• and the company is telling everyone when to take their vacation days. If one’s PTO gets used up, then the mandatory days off will be unpaid leave.

So that was nice to hear on my first day back. I was kind of thankful that I had only come in for a half day.

In the afternoon, I drove Rachel and Baby Nora to Baby Nora’s first doctor’s appointment. Jack fell asleep in the car, of course. Instead of wake him up, I carried his entire car seat into the doctor’s office, propped it back against the wall with some seat cushions, and let him sleep comfortably while I filled out Baby Nora’s doctor paperwork, fiddled around on my iPhone, and generally tried to not reel from the bad news of the morning. I pulled my health insurance card out of my wallet so that the office assistant could make a copy of it, and then stuck it in my pocket when they gave it back. Jack slept the whole time Rachel and Nora were with the doctor, and also while I carried him back to the car. He only just stirred as I was pulling out of the medical center parking garage.

When we came home we all assumed our newly-typical positions. Rachel nursed Nora on the couch, Jack was playing in his room, and I sat down to the computer. I think I may have thought about buying something online, but when I felt for my wallet, it wasn’t there. I got a little frantic, and after a while Rachel called the doctor’s office. They hadn’t seen a wallet. When it occurred to me that I could possibly have dropped it in the parking garage somehow, I decided to drive back to the medical park (Yes, without my driver’s license. I did the speed limit the whole way.) I checked the parking garage floor, walked into the doctor’s office, searched to no avail, and the office lady called the medical park security officer, and I filed a report with her. I went home feeling pretty bad (but still doing the speed limit), and I decided there was nothing else to do but cancel all my cards and figure out how to get a new driver’s license. Thankfully, there is a DMV office open in Lexington on Saturday, and my Mom offered to drive me over there the next and take Jack with so that Rachel could feed Nora undisturbed.

So yes, it was a pretty bad day.

I came home at lunch to pick up something and found a nice dogpile that Katdog left in the kitchen. Poopy.

I got home from work in the evening, and Rachel told me that Jack had gotten his pants dirty two more times that afternoon. Poopy.

Trying to help out a little bit after dinner, I advanced the laundry from hamper to washer and another load from washer to dryer. When I pulled the laundry out of the dryer at about ten o’clock, I found brown streaks all over the clothes and the inside of the dryer. Poopy?

It turns out that when I had moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer, some of it fell on the floor. When I picked it up to put it in the dryer, I accidentally picked up a pair of Jack’s soiled pants that Rachel had hurriedly left there in the afternoon. Poopy!

I told Rachel about it, and we figured out what happened. She graciously offered to clean out the dryer with bleach water, and I reloaded the spoiked laundry back into the washer with an extra soak cycle. We finally got to turn out the lights at eleven o’clock. I can’t say for sure, but hopefully tomorrow won’t be quite so… Poopy.

So God was most merciful in taking little Noël when he did. I’m still looking forward to meeting him.

Last week, we got into a new routine with Jack at bedtime. He gets his milk while we change him into his pajamas, and then he goes into his crib and his dad reads aloud until he falls asleep. The Lord saw to it that we happened to read the following passage from George MacDonald’s Adela Cathcart. Jack’s dad didn’t read this without weeping, but it expresses the solid Hope that we have in the midst of our mourning.

“…the broad-browed [preacher] began with something like this:”

“It is not the high summer alone that is God’s. The winter also is His. And into His winter He came to visit us. And all man’s winters are His — the winter of our poverty, the winter of our sorrow, the winter of our unhappiness — even ‘the winter of our discontent.’”

“Winter,” he went on, “does not belong to death, although the outside of it looks like death. Beneath the snow, the grass is growing. Below the frost, the roots are warm and alive. Winter is only a spring too weak and feeble for us to see that it is living. The cold does for all things what the gardener has sometimes to do for valuable trees: he must half kill them before they will bear any fruit. Winter is in truth the small beginnings of the spring.”

“The winter is the childhood of the year. Into this childhood of the year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all descend. It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need: My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with my son, this blessed birth-time. You are growing old and selfish; you must become a child. You are growing old and careful; you must become a child. You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child. You are growing old and petty, and weak, and foolish; you must become a child-my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.

But one may say to me: ‘You are talking in a dream. The Son of God is a child no longer. He is the King of Heaven.’ True, my friends. But He who is the Unchangeable, could never become anything that He was not always, for that would be to change. He is as much a child now as ever he was. When he became a child, it was only to show us by itself, that we might understand it better, what he was always in his deepest nature. And when he was a child, he was not less the King of Heaven; for it is in virtue of his childhood, of his sonship, that he is Lord of Heaven and of Earth-’for of such’-namely, of children-’is the kingdom of heaven.’ And, therefore, when we think of the baby now, it is still of the Son of man, of the King of men, that we think. And all the feelings that the thought of that babe can wake in us, are as true now as they were on that first Christmas day, when Mary covered from the cold his little naked feet, ere long to be washed with the tears of repentant women, and nailed by the hands of thoughtless men, who knew not what they did, to the cross of fainting, and desolation, and death.”

“So, my friends, let us be children this Christmas. Of course, when I say to anyone, ‘You must be like a child,’ I mean a good child. A naughty child is not a child as long as his naughtiness lasts. He is not what God meant when He said, ‘I will make a child Think of the best child you know-the one who has filled you with most admiration. It is his child-likeness that has so delighted you. It is because he is so true to the child-nature that you admire him. Jesus is like that child. You must be like that child. But you cannot help knowing some faults in him-some things that are like ill-grown men and women. Jesus is not like him, there. Think of the best child you can imagine; nay, think of a better than you can imagine-of the one that God thinks of when he invents a child in the depth of his fatherhood: such child-like men and women must you one day become; and what day better to begin, than this blessed Christmas Morn? Let such a child be born in your hearts this day. Take the child Jesus to your bosoms, into your very souls, and let him grow there till he is one with your every thought, and purpose, and hope. As a good child born in a family will make the family good; so Jesus, born into the world, will make the world good at last. And this perfect child, born in your hearts, will make your hearts good; and that is God’s best gift to you.

“Then be happy this Christmas Day; for to you a child is born. Childless women, this infant is yours-wives or maidens. Fathers and mothers, he is your first-born, and he will save his brethren. Eat and drink, and be merry and kind, for the love of God is the source of all joy and all good things, and this love is present in the child Jesus.

I know now today, that sadness can be like a wound: the only way to keep it clean while it is healing is with tears. Without tears, a sadness can become infected and unhealthy. So we will be nursing this wound for the near future. And I suppose every Christmas from now on will have a certain amount of sadness for us, as this one will leave its scar. But it will be countered by the hope that we have that Jesus will take good care of our second child until we meet again in the next world, where it will always be Christmas and never winter.

His fever broke this afternoon, and he seems to be more or less back to normal this evening.

To counter-balance the bad news, I’ll put up some pictures and a video or two this week, barring any paranoically-foreseen circumstances. (I’m feeling slightly better about things, having put away a certain amount of provisions against hardship. Whatever happens, I’ll definitely feel better on the 23rd, I’m pretty sure. Yeeesh.)

I went to the Young Men’s Bible Study held at the church by Dr. Ferguson and Duff James on Tuesday morning, and since it was for young men, I brought Jack. They’re going to be skimming through Proverbs, and the first one this past Tuesday was pretty good. It was supposed to end at 7:45, but it went a little long.

So i was running a little late to “Aunt Ellie’s” house to drop off Jack, and I got pulled over and given a ticket for going 38mph in a 25mph zone. She gave me a break and made it out for just a little more than half the maximum (Probably because I had Jack and was trying to get him to Ellie’s) But I was pretty late for work.

Speaking of work, someone from our team is moving on to another job in about a week, and I’m taking over most of his duties after he leaves. So in my aforementioned condition I had to try to absorb a lot of information this week with only limited success.

All this, and Mercy has been relieving herself on the livingroom rug all week, probably out of jealousy of Jack.

So yeah, it has been a hard week. But today is being particularly nice to me to make up for it. I’m feeling a little bit like I’ve turned the corner on my cold — I think the Zinc lozenges I bought on Thursday evening helped in that respect. And it’s raining softly outside, so I don’t have to mow the lawn until later. And Rachel made muffins with blackberry filling and fried eggs for breakfast. And my music is playing, and it looks like I might have time today to buy a new pair of slacks, and/or try the video capture box I bought a few weeks ago, and/or continue to catalog my coin collection.

It may be going crazy out there, and the world may or may not be about to irrevokably change, but there’s a cool breeze blowing outside in the middle of August in South Carolina, and that’s a miracle. And if one miracle can happen, why not another? And if miracles can happen, then Love exists. And if Love exists, then everything is going to be all right eventually.

It’s been a fairly bad week. For some reason, even though Jack is sleeping about six hours a night, something about our sleeping pattern this week has drained me of all my gumption. It’s been all I could do to keep from slipping into a coma at work this week. My boss noticed, and I told him that I would try to do better. I guess we’ll see.

Rachel held him on her lap and cleaned him up okay. For a few minutes anyway, everything seemed okay. But a whole bunch of white stuff went all over the place again, more than the first time, and it was in his mouth and his nose. He didn’t make any noise, and Rachel cried out in shock and dismay. “This isn’t good,” she said. She immediately started the anti-choking measures that the nurse showed us before she and Jack were discharged from the hospital. “Where’s the phone? Call 911!” I found the phone and typed in those three digits. Just then Jack let out a good wail, so I didn’t press the green button that would actually call the number. “Get the nasal aspirator!” Rachel said. I got it, and Rachel sucked out his nostrils. He wailed once or twice more, and it was apparent that he was breathing properly. Rachel got Jack’s wet clothes off of him, and I held him against my chest the way he likes me to, careful to keep him upright in case anything else came up. He burped, sighed, and promptly fell asleep on my chest, wearing only a diaper.

Rachel called the pediatrician on call and he said it was too soon to tell if it was the new formula itself or that we just gave him too much. So I guess we’ll try again with less formula and some pumped breastmilk and see if that’s better. With lots of hugs and cuddles and a few tears and prayers of thanks, we should hopefully make it through the rest of the day quietly. Between this past week with Nik here, the spit-up incident this morning and spending this past weekend up at the farm, we have a bit of laundry and chores to do today. Jack’s waking up in his swing now. I think I’ll go hold him for a while.

I heard Jack crying back there, but he sometimes does this before he settles down to feed, so I didn’t think anything of it, until I realized that the crying had been going on longer than usual. I went to the back of the house and found Rachel crying too. “What did I do wrong??” she said. I took Jack from her to give her a few minutes to calm down, and I asked her where the bottle of milk she pumped was. It was already in the freezer, apparently. She tried to get the bottle warmer to work but couldn’t. She took Jack back, who was still fussing pretty bad, and tried to get him to feed again. I found the instructions for the bottle warmer on the maker’s website, and got it working. I finished my half-melted ice cream, and then took the bottle out of the warmer. It was too hot! I stuck it in the fridge for a few minutes, got its temperature down a bit, and took it to the back of the house. Jack had slowly calmed down and was feeding tolerably well. Rachel thought the bottle was still a bit too warm, so it was put aside. I suggested that Rachel call a friend, L., who has a few kids, for her perspective and for a friendly ear, and she eventually agreed. Jack took to the bottle pretty well, too, so he was doing better. I called up L., and she asked if she should come over. “She can come over if she wants to,” Rachel answered. “For her, that’s a “yes”,” I said to L., passing on the message. L. said that she would be over in about ten minutes.

By this time, it was almost 9pm, and Rachel suggested I check up on Nik, who I had almost forgotten about while trying to help Jack and Rachel. When I came into the den, I found Nik crying. All the crying had frayed his nerves, I guess, and he was feeling a little homesick, too [Nik is Rachel's 8-year-old brother and is staying with us for the week for VBS at our church]. I hugged him, asked him to forgive me for forgetting about him, and suggested that I read him a book. We sat down to Shel Silverstein’s book “The Giving Tree”, and about halfway through the story, he had stopped sobbing, and by the end of the story, he was smiling again. Rachel’s friend L. got there about that time, and Nik and I left them in the living room to talk, and went into the den to read “Runaway Bunny”, which Nik hadn’t heard of but liked very much. He also enjoyed a couple of silly Homestar Runner toons, too.

After about 40 minutes, L. went home, Rachel was feeling better, and Nik was ready for bed. We battened down the hatches for the night, and Rachel thanked me for being there for everybody.

All I can say is, tomorrow should be better.

Rachel is recovering, and it will be a slow process. My amazing wife has come out of the ordeal of birth with flying colors emotionally. A cooler character during contractions would be hard to find. She blew out hundreds of “candles”, and hardly made a sound but what was completely understandable under the circumstances. I told her, “Tom Cruise would be proud of you,” and she smiled and rolled her eyes.

Physically, however, it is going to take her a while to recover. My adrenalin-addled brain all of a sudden can’t remember the complex terms, but I do remember the acronym H.E.L.L.P., the last two letters of which stand for “Low Platelets”, and that it has something to do with a weird slight malfunction of the liver that the nurse told me is treated with the birthing process, sleep, and magnesium sulfate. And yet I still can’t remember the name (anyway I probably couldn’t spell it even if I knew it). My mom and/or my father-in-law probably know exactly what I’m describing, and should feel free to leave a comment to that effect on this post if they wish.

Between that and a hematoma, she has lost a good bit of blood. Her pulse is fast and her blood pressure is low, but even in a few hours since I noticed that, they both have improved a little bit. So she isn’t out of the woods yet, but she has a map, a compass and a sherpa guide of a very good doctor. It may take time (possibly as much as a week? Who knows…), but I will have my whole family back safe at home again, Lord willing.

I have palpably felt your prayers fill the room and strengthen all of us.

…And I got to watch just about a half hour ago as the nurse gave Jack his first bath ever. And as he warmed back up on his warming table in the Special Care Nursery, I got to talk with him and sing him to sleep. Oh Heavenly Father, what have I done to deserve such gifts??

Also, the nurse is having her lie on her side to help keep her blood pressure down some.

Keep praying…

Please, Lord, give the medical professionals wisdom so that Rachel can get some kind of rest and relief. Please destroy the infection in Jesus’ name.

UPDATE: 3:30am – Things have finally settled down a bit. Rachel is lying down more often than not, and it seems like we’ll both be getting some sleep.

5:10am – Rachel wakes up and calls the nurse, saying that she is having some discharge. The nurses check her out and take some fluid for analysis. They also take her temperature: 98.2!!! It could be that the fever has finally broken! She has been hovering around 99-100deg F, even with countermeasures in place, but I think things are finally getting better. Rachel’s average temperature is usually about 97.5 deg F, so she is still a little warm by her standards, but I think the prayer-enhanced medicine is finally having an effect! Praise the Lord!!

So we haven’t actually been moved into a Labor & Delivery room yet, but we are on the Maternity Ward. Feel free to leave a comment on any of these posts if you would like to send us an encouraging message.

~3:00am this morning – Rachel can’t sleep because she’s in pain. She takes her temperature — 101 deg F — and we call the doctor. He said we should come into the hospital because it is likely an infection that can only be treated by intravenous antibiotics. We drive to Lexington Medical Center [with pre-packed bags, just in case] sail right through the Emergency Room waiting room and right up into the Maternity Ward, pretty dazed.

~6:45am – After the nurse and doctor talk with and examine Rachel, there is finally some good medicine flowing into her veins. The doctor says that she may only be here for about a day and will probably get to leave tomorrow morning. I call both sets of parents to let them know what is going on and a fellow tenor in the choir at Church to let them know that I won’t be in church this morning. I also call Rachel’s sister to put our dogs out and feed them.

8:30am – We still get to hear the church service, because our church recently starting streaming all its services over the internet. It’s almost as good as being there, what with the pastoral hymn-singing solos, and the one-sided pastoral small talk from our senior pastor leaving his microphone on at the end before he realizes what’s going on.

9:30am – Rachel finally gets some breakfast. The nurse tells us that the place has been busy: They’ve had four births in one hour! We can’t help but wonder if one of them is the Andersons’ baby (a couple in our Sunday School class), who has been due to be born for about a week.

11:00am – They move us to another room, and Rachel declares herself hungry again. Almost as if on cue, her lunch comes in at around 11:30am. While she eats, I find out that the Lexington Medical wi-fi network blocks Blogger. One more reason not to like blogger.

12:20pm – I decide to get home to take care of the dogs and get a few things that Rachel would like from home. I get out on the road and realize that I probably shouldn’t be out on the road, because its raining cows and horses. I keep my hands on the wheel, my eyes on the road, and a prayer on my lips [having experienced driving foolishly in the rain in Columbia], and take it real easy driving home.

1:20pm – I make it safely home, find my poor dog Mercy without the sense to come in out of the rain. I bring her in and towel her off, and just to let our other dog Kat know that everything is okay, I have a glass of Ovaltine and scratch her ears thoroughly.

3:00pm –Back at the hospital, Rachel and I watch Law & Order reruns, and Jennifer shows up to visit.

5:00pm –With Jennifer there, I feel able to duck out and attend vesper choir practice and participate in the evening service. The choir practiced “Love Never Fails” by J.A.C. Redford [5MB mp3 file] and, as usual, I choke up a little bit while hearing it. That song is very intertwined into our marriage. I sung the solo of it on the day that Rachel and I started “going steady”, The Chancel choir sung that as the anthem at our wedding, and LOVE NEVER FAILS is inscribed on the inside of our wedding rings. To top it all off, the vesper choir will be singing it next Sunday, which is Mother’s Day, which is Jack’s due date. It’s like God is conspiring to get me to break down and bawl my head off for joy. But besides the emotional reaction I’m pretty much doomed to have, He is also constantly, continually, and powerfully reminding me that His love is so powerful and infinite that it has to manifest itself in many, many ways, so as to make one’s head spin for the wonder of it all. In particular, tonight I thought of all that my wife means to me, and how she loves me so well its almost frightening how little I deserve any of it. I also thought of my son Jack soon to be born, and how heart-rending it is to see my beloved ill and prayed all the more fervently for her to be healed and for Jack to come out easily to meet us, strong and healthy.

6:00pm – …Anyway, I help sing the offertory with my fellow choir members, stay for an excellent sermon that kicks off a promising series on the book of Jonah, the “runaway prophet”, but I don’t stay for communion, because I want to get back to Rachel. I get there at…

7:20pm – …and find the hospital cafeteria already closed. So I walk across the street, and get some dinner at the Atlanta Bread Company, then I come back to share some of my chocolate chip muffin with her and watch an episode from Due South, season 3. I tell her, “I love you. Call me tomorrow… and don’t forget to call me tomorrow. I love you…” until she smiles, and then (what the hey?) I drive down the highway through more cows-and-horses rain at 45 miles an hour with my emergency blinkers on to finally come home at around…

9:45pm – …much to the relief of our poor dogs. But for me time moves ever and ever slower, and I will have no relief until my whole family is back home safe and sound. Good night, strange world. I will be back in your face in the morning, however early that may be.

Mrs. N. called later that day and invited us over for lunch the next day after church. We ended up staying for about four hours and hardly even noticed the time go by, we had such a good time talking. God is good to us.

We arrived at our gate at the airport about an hour early, like one is supposed to. After we had sat there a while, though, the gate attendant got on the PA and told us that the plane was going to be about half an hour late. This worried me slightly, because this meant that our layover in Saint Louis would be one and a half hours instead of two. After the plane finally arrived, the gate attendant got on the PA and said that the plane had maintenance issues, and that he would keep us informed of any new developments. (Strangely enough, through the window i saw that our plane was painted a non-descript white, and had no discriminating marks of the carrier, which was USAir.) Just about then, it started to rain. I did a quick estimation on my notepad, and realized that we would probably not make our connecting flight in St. Louis, which was with Frontier Air. I called my dad to get the 800 number for Frontier to see if there was anything that we could do about this. Around this time, the gate attendant announced that the flight was cancelled due to the aforementioned maintenance issues. The crowd gave a murmur of dismay and went to the special services desk a ways down the terminal to recover what they could of their travel plans.

Rachel went to find a power outlet to charge her cell phone, and i waited in the customer service line and called Frontier to determine our connection options. Sadly, Frontier had no other flights from St. Louis that day, so we were going to have to come up with an alternative to our original plans, which was to fly to San Francisco to visit Brother Tom for a few days. The Frontier flight did layover in Denver, so I determined to try and get a flight there if we couldn’t get to STL.

Someone behind the service desk asked if there was anyone in the line trying to get to St. Louis, and most of the people in the really long line raised their hands. The desk agent told us to go back to our gate because they were going to try to get us a new plane. I followed the annoyed herd back to the gate, but I realized that most of these people may be able to get to St. Louis in time for the NCAA tournament game that evening (You don’t know the meaning of “March Madness” until you’re in an airport with lots of people all trying to get to the same city on such short notice), but Rachel and I still were not going to be able to connect with our other flight and pass through to San Fran, so I went back to the service desk, also realizing that i no longer knew where Rachel was, because i didn’t see where she went while i was standing in line the first time. Her phone went straight to voicemail, so I just stood in line waiting to see what would happen next.

I got to the front of the line and explained the situation and asked the lady behind the counter what was possible. Apparently the way i had arranged things was to our disadvantage in this case, because USAir was only contracted to get us to St. Louis, and was not willing to get us to Denver. (This was not the last of the little rules i was to come up against in trying to salvage this vacation of ours.) Not knowing what else to do, i rescheduled the flight to St. Louis for Tuesday, which was to be the day we were going to return to St. Louis from San Fran anyway. This way, whatever we did with ourselves in the intervening time, we would still be able to keep our reservation with Bluegreen in Branson, Missouri for the rest of the week. (That’s right, folks, Bluegreen is tangled up in this, too!)

About this time, Rachel showed up again, so I told her what I did. She agreed it was probably the best we could do under the circumstances, and we went to find a place to sit down and assess the situation and charge my phone, which was also about to fall asleep. I called Frontier Airlines to cancel our flight, and the nice lady on the other end told me that she couldn’t refund our money because the tickets were non-refundable, but that we would each have a non-transferable credit for the cost of our tickets, less a $100 re-booking fee for each of us when we used these credits. We had to rebook by December 11th, 2005, and we could book our tickets up to 11 months ahead of time. I got off the phone and told Rachel all this, after which we both proceeded to denunciate all involved: USAir, Frontier Airlines, and Bluegreen for whose sampler points’ sake we had done all this in the first place.

We finished our venting, and then I realized that we hadn’t yet retrieved our checked baggage from the ill-fated flight to Missouri yet. We split up: Rachel went to the gate to find our bags and i went to the service desk again to try and make lemonade out of these lemons by extending our time in Missouri. I realized that I was going to have to arrange any new flight time and accommodations in Missouri pretty much simultaneously because i didn’t know what airplane seats or rooms in Branson were available until I asked the respective service agents. So while I was in the USAir service desk line, I called the Bluegreen customer service number. I told the Bluegreen agent what i wanted to do, and he put me on hold to see if he could do it. Somewhere along the line, i realized that our reservations were to check out on Friday morning, but our flight back to Charlotte wasn’t until Saturday, so i was going to have to see if we could extend that back end of our reservation as well as the front end. (Somehow, the person who took the original reservation all the way back in January misunderstood me when I asked for “Tuesday through Friday”. Strike two, Bluegreen.)

When I got to the front of the USAir service line, i was still on hold with the Bluegreen service agent. The USAir lady just shifted me over to the side and took care of other people waiting until i was ready. To make a long story short, between these two agents of the market, this is what i found out:

• Bluegreen would waive the three-night minimum this once and could add two nights in a smaller unit on Sunday and Monday, and then we could finish out our time in the unit that we originally reserved.
• No, USAir didn’t have any available seats to St. Louis on Sunday, but they did have seats on Monday.
• No, Bluegreen couldn’t tack on just Monday night at the beginning, they were stretching it already adding two nights instead of three.

So Tuesday night was going to have to be it for the beginning. What about the end of this?

• No, Bluegreen couldn’t tack on Saturday night at the end, because it would be adding just one night, and besides our unit had already been reserved on Saturday night by someone else.
• No, USAir couldn’t move our Saturday return flight back to Friday, because that leg of the flight wasn’t the one that had been affected by the plane maintenance issues (Editor’s Note: YET).

(Remember what i said about annoying little rules?)

So we weren’t going to make it to San Francisco because a plane broke down, and we were going to have to find accommodations elsewhere on Friday night, somewhere between Branson and St. Louis, because a telephone agent and I misunderstood each other all the way back in January. It’s a crazy world.

While i had been on the phone, Rachel kept trying to call in to tell me where she was, but for some reason, my call-waiting would beep once, and then disconnect her. This had happened a couple of times. So after all this rigmarole, I called her back and agreed to meet her in Baggage claim. On the way there, I stopped at an ATM and got $20 cash on a whim. I found her sitting in the baggage claim looking somewhat despondent and threw myself into the seat next to her. We just sat there taking time to recover, wondering what to do next. I called Tom to tell him that we wouldn’t be making it out to San Fran, and while i was talking to him, my cell phone went dead. Rachel and i both burst out laughing.

We walked out the the parking lot shuttle stop. Rachel told me that she didn’t really want to go home, because hanging around at home wasn’t really a vacation, because there was always something that needed to be done, and we hadn’t been out of town for so long before that, anyway. A light bulb appeared over my head, and i said, “Why don’t we go to the farm?” Her face lit up just like I hoped it would, and she called home as we got on the shuttle bus to confirm our last minute “reservations” at the McCune Homestead. While we drove north to Virginia, we discussed how we might be able to use our credit with Frontier Airlines, which is mainly a western concern and doesn’t come out as far as South Carolina. The next day, i put the $20 bill in the offering plate at church to acknowledge the out-working of God’s Providence in the events of the weekend, and to thank him for caring about each and every one of our steps on this earth.

This week i saw another instance of an acquaintance making it into the news. This time it was under less happy circumstances, though perhaps more joyous.

Christopher Seeling was driving a train as it went off on the wrong track, due to the negligence of another. His train ran into another train parked on this side track, tanker cars derailed, and the lethal chlorine gas within them leaked out. Nine people nearby including Chris, succumbed to the gas and went to meet their Maker.

Though I didn’t know him very well, I do have a vivid memory of him. Rachel’s family was in town and we were all at a fellowship lunch at church. Rachel’s five-year-old brother Nik was told that the stocky fellow sitting over there at the other table drove trains. We were all taken aback and very amused at how quickly Nik — who is usually quite shy — went over to ask him question upon question about his profession.

I mourn his passing, but i hope to speak with him again. Though we are sad that he has left us, those that knew him best knew that he was a believer, so I am entirely confident that the music that he heard when he slipped behind the scenery was much better than this [Expired Link]. [5.3 MB MPEG-4 file of "Train Wreck" by Sarah McLachlan] Rest him well, Lord Jesus.

I was approaching an intersection on Main Street in Fairfax and another car was in front of me. The light had turned yellow, and the car in front of me stopped as the yellow light ripened to red. I blinked and didn’t put on the brakes hard enough, I guess, and Rachel made a noise of alarm as i slammed down and swerved as much as i could into the left lane. Our corners still bashed together, and i sat there vexed and stunned. The other guy pulled into the entrance of the housing development to our right, and i did the same. Sometime while i was doing this, Rachel said, “Oh Ben, i wasn’t wearing my seltbelt!” I put the car in park and noticed with amazement the spider in the upper right part of the windshield that Rachel had made. We got out of the car, and i asked the other guy if he was okay. He said he was okay, as i saw that the left end of his bumper had come loose.

A guy and his wife were standing on the sidewalk and he offered the use of his PDA cellphone to call 911, which i did. I called Mom on my own cellphone next, but had to ring off as the police officer drove up. The policeman took everybody’s legal documents, gave us each a small information form to fill out, and while he sat in his cruiser processing those things, all i could do was hang my head and wish that I could start this day over.

The police officer sent off the other guy, and then talked to us about tickets he wrote us: one for me for “Failing to maintain proper control of vehicle”, and one for Rachel for “failing to wear a seltbelt”. His grasp of the finer points of traffic law and friendly voice was strangely comforting to me. We got directions to the nearest hospital, and after he drove off, talked to my parents again, who said that they would meet us after church at the Fairfax hospital. We had decided to take Rachel to the emergency room since she had bounced around a little more than she should have.

I drove the few block to the hospital with my emergency blinkers on, dropped Rachel off at the entrance and parked in one of the lots. We waited the first of many interminable amounts of time in the room of the same name, and then got called back. The more time passed, the better she felt, and the worse she felt about coming in at all. Practically speaking though, i said, she was in a car accident without a seatbelt, so it was only right that she get checked out. We both had our own regrets to ponder as we waited through those hours together. My parents made contact, and came through the curtain with a “knock, knock”, and we split up to do more useful things: Mom waited with Rachel, and Dad and i walked out to the parking lot to assess the damage and report it to the insurance company.

My parents had graciously offered us the use of their car to drive back home to Carolina that day whenever we were done with our self-inflicted tour of the urgent medical bureacracy. So while i called in the car accident to the insurance company, dad switched the baggages of the two cars. After this was done, we went back in to wait with Rachel and Mom.

The doctor came in, and kicked my parents and I out into the waiting room. The Steelers/Redskins game was on the TV, and I had my book, but the wait was pretty maddening. All told, it took us about five and a half hours to get out the doors. We were all frustrated, but relieved that Rachel was okay.

Rachel and I followed my folks to the body shop, and I parked my Corolla, filled out a form and put the key in the envelope, and slipped it through the slot in the door.

We went back to the condo for turkey sandwiches, hugs, and sendoffs. We left Arlington around 6pm. The traffic was pretty awful for the first hour or so coming out of the DC area. Given the events of the day, I was extremely careful to follow that rule taought to all of us when we first learned to drive: for every 10 miles per hour, stay that many carlengths behind the car in front of the car in front of you. And my adherence to the rule did actually come in useful a few times.

We landed on our driveway around 1:30am, accomplishing a sort of mirror image of how we left Columbia. All this and work the next day, too.