Not in the wind

I don't really have a lot to say tonight. Posting anyway for some reason.

I find that the still, small voice carries so much more weight than the earthquake. It's been a good but long day, I talked to my folks this morning, made a bakery run, and then settled in to deal with the day. I was cold today, for the first time. I mainlined hot water all day, along with the accompanying endocrine system-related trips that entails. We have this foreign language test that I have disparaged several other times on the blog. They goofed and didn't re-register our kids for our last test, so I sent a fairly intractable e-mail saying that they needed to give us a test date before the end of the month so our kids could test. Well, we got a date, tomorrow morning at 6:30 A.M. But guess what! As of now, our kids aren't registered! This makes me angry, but there's not a lot I can do about it, especially seeing as how it is Saturday morning in U.S. land, so I have no confidence that we're going to have registered kids tomorrow. But I'm getting up at 5:00 A.M. anyway to see if the kids got registered, and I'll go ahead and set the test up if they did. I don't know if we'll make the kids take the test then, but at least I'll have been ready.

Not in the fire. It hurts to see my friends hurt. I know folks from home that are encountering difficulties. My uncle's family is still adjusting to new realities. My friends here are facing struggles, too. One of my fellow staff members just had a death in her family. Joel still has to walk with a crutch because his knee isn't better yet. Seeing all these situations, I wish there was something I could do, some way to help. Some way to ease the load. There is, just not in the way I would perhaps like it to be. And while at times, this help, it feels like just words, nothing of substance, not in the fire, not in the wind, but in the still small voice.

Last night, I had people over for supper, I made (what turned out to be an insufficient amount of) spaghetti. Before the main meal, we broke bread together. Such a simple thing, such a reminder.

Not in the fire.