Day #7, recruitment and real life, my holy U-haul

Okay, now that I have your attention!

It's hard to believe I have been gone for a week. I feel like I have been away for a lifetime. I love my husband, but I have not even had the concentration to miss him while I have been gone. What a lousy wife I am...I don't even know what to say about that. Sometimes life is like a wave and you ride it to wherever it takes you I guess. And during the ride you do not always have time to think about anything other than trying to stay on the surfboard.

I drove away from Magee Ms today and made it to Clemson ( Go Tigers!) in South Carolina. The last 2 hours were a pain...I had it in my mind to make SC by the end of the day, but Altanta traffic kept me from making it in any reasonable amount of time. I'm glad to have a bed and a shower. God is good.

On the way east, I saw a lot of Fema homes heading west , which I saw as a good sign that help is on the way. But with so many people homeless, even the convoy of homes seems almost insignificant. But we have to start somewhere. There is always a beginning to every new story, and for many families those trailers will be a new start.

On the way east I also rode alongside a State Farm Catastrophe truck heading for the Carolinas...which was a little discouraging. From one hurricane to another...Sometimes the Property and casualty business is laden with bad timing. We can handle it, but I hate to stretch our claims staff to the limit. Katrina will require months of claims staff, so I'm hoping Ophelia will blow out to sea asap. Hey, if we all make a collective blow in an eastward direction, it just may work. Ready? one...two ...three... Blow! Heck, it can't hurt.

As Shellye and I were talking about the events of the past week, it occurred to me that a lot of the things I did in Bay St. Louis come from my days of recruitment parties. You know, you have to take an interest in people and draw out the story behind the person. It's about asking an open ended question, waiting for an answer, and then working off of the material they give you. And you know what? It's even about bump groups. When I would have a client that needed to talk to an auto claim rep ( I was working home and flood claims) I would do the bump...and intro them with a few bits of human interest to the claim rep so that they could help them and have a pleasant conversation with them at the same time. I can't tell you how many people came over to thank me for being so helpful...and all I did was give them an intro. But it made a difference. Thank you sorority recruitment, thank you Phi Mu. I hated those parties when I was in school, I cannot thank you enough for them now. They gave me skills for conversation and listening I never would have developed otherwise. Even with a Masters in counseling, I can tell the difference between the two things...and most of what I did this past week in Ms was from recruitment.

So, now the U-haul story, I know you are all waiting.

You know the deal with the hitch problem I had the other day when leaving Hattiesburg. So today I want to pull out of Shellye's parking lot and no matter which way I directed the Uhaul to back up, it would not do what I wanted. It was really starting to piss me off because I was about to drive thru Shellye's front garden to get out of her driveway. If I still could have gone back into her house to leave a 10k check to cover the landscaping damage, I would have done that and driven out of the driveway, that is how ticked I was with the thing. But after trying to straighten it out for 15 minutes, I finally got out of the car and walked to the back to see what I could do to try and straighten it out some other way. And them I realized I had left the gas can I brought on the front of the uhaul near the hookup. It was off the ground and not touching any moving parts, so was not interrupting the mess I was making of the exit from Shellye's driveway, but I had forgotten about it and would have driven off and dropped it in her driveway spilling whatever gas was in it...
And as soon as I put it away in the truck in a safe place, you know what happened. The #^%&$#! thing did what it was supposed to do 30 minutes before that. God was just not going to let me drive away until I had the gas can properly stowed. And so I was humbled by a gas can.
Then I decided to go thru the car wash to wash off some of the "nasty, hideous, overpopulated, sticky, doing the deed" bugs that were splattered to heavily on my windshield that nothing would come off anymore. So after I had committed to the car wash I remembered I had the %#^&% Uhaul on the back, but it was too late to stop the wash from going. I watched and prayed while that machine moved up and down the car that it would not hit the u-haul. And you know what? It came within 1/2 an inch, but just cleared it. However the bugs were back on the car by the time I drove 50 feet, so what a waste of 5.00 on the wash. The real benefit was in the constant recurrence of grace amidst frustration. Apparently I'm a slow learner.

Thumbs up today:
Shellye's wonderful hospitality
God in residence in my uhaul ( who would have thought?)
Making it to SC
State Farm Claims folks, keep them in your prayers....
Fema trailers
McHammer on the radio~ it was my exercise for the day!
Safe travel


Thumbs down:
My aching butt. I told you it was going to happen....
Hurricane Ophelia. Go east ! go east!


Love in our Bond ( and I'm on time before midnight for those who are asking for today's edition...)
Audrey