A day mostly for the living.

Enough and to spare. That is one of the promises we are made, if we tithe. When I woke up yesterday morning, all the checks and debits had cleared, and I had exactly $9 in my checking account, and $5 in cash. More than enough for what I needed to do yesterday. (I had more money in various saving accounts, a generous handful of quarters in the bag that holds the laundry detergent, that jar of chunk change which has been accumulating all year, and when I contemplate the balance in my 401K, I get positively giddy.) Most of the blessings that come from paying my tithing, would not show up on a balance sheet or income statement. That quiet sense of there is enough, and I will be OK? Priceless.

We had our monthly support staff meeting yesterday. Two and a half hours’ worth. I still managed to get quite a bit done during the day, and I took the hour of comp time I was awarded at said staff meeting and left early, spending part of the time downstairs at the Christmas party which the building management puts on for us every year. [Let the record show that we all were allowed half an hour or so to mix and mingle, and my office manager suggested that I only use half an hour of my comp time, and the other half later.] Building management alternates between chamber music and a jazz quartet. This was a jazz year. One of the young guys in the building (probably what we call a baby lawyer, which has nothing to do with the practice of family law) got up and boogied, all by himself. I was sorely tempted to ask if he knew East Coast Swing, but I was really more interested in the potstickers and eggrolls and dainty little bites of this and that.

After the support staff meeting, and before the getting-stuff-done and the party, we had this week’s lunch-and-a-movie. Which was something of a bust. One of my coworkers brought a ginormous crockpot of taco soup. I had a bowl and a half of it; lunch per se was not the problem. But the movie was National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, which started out tacky and went downhill from there. I picked up my bowl and my knitting about 25 minutes into the movie and quietly left the room. I will not be joining them for pizza and the other half of the movie today.

From the party, it was on to the temple, by way of the LDS bookstore, where I ran into friends from Irving whom I hadn’t seen in 16 years. We are friends on FB, but he lives in Atlanta, and her work recently transferred her back up here. Their family did “12 days of Christmas” for our family, back when the children’s father was in chiropractic school. Truly, the salt of the earth. We stood there and talked for at least half an hour, probably more.

I then drove a couple of blocks to the temple, hoping that I wasn’t too late to do initiatories. I wasn’t. And I will be back there next Thursday night, for more of the same. In three weeks I will begin training as a temple worker, and I am so excited about that.

I blasted Kenny Wayne Shepherd all the way home, playing the same 5:52 long song over and over so I could learn the words and try to sing along. [Alas, I have a folk singer’s voice, and not a jazz diva’s.] He’s a year older than Firstborn. Amazing.

Came home to find that I still had clean unmentionables and did not have to add Mt. Washmore to what had to be done before bedtime. I was in bed a hair after 10:00p.m., asleep in something like 15 seconds, awake again at 3:30, have written to the new guy and posted on Facebook and written my tithing check on today’s paycheck and am ready for some breakfast and some knitting.

I would embed a YouTube of Kenny Wayne Shepherd and his band doing “Everybody Gets The Blues”, but there doesn’t seem to be one. Southern blues rock loud get up and move your feet music.

Bliss.