Country Drives

Okay so there’s this fund raising dinner for an African orphanage I’m going to and I waited till the last minute to ask a girl I have a crush on. There are these 3 sisters who live way up in the country and we are all crazy about them. All the guys go nuts over these girls. Any way I waited to the last minute to ask and I asked the oldest one (Let’s call her B) to be my date and she said she would have gone with me if I asked sooner because now she’s going with her female friend Dianna.

So I asked her younger sister (Let’s call her R) and she said yes. Now I just want to take a moment to mention, these 3 sisters are absolutely crazy-beautiful but most importantly, they are wonderful Christian ladies which is hard to find these days.

Saturday I worked in the morning and then in the evening I got ready and I picked up Kendra (when I have a car, it’s usually full of people that I drive around everywhere). We headed over to the banquet hall. Remember last year? It wasn’t easy to get there, I took the bus for about 2 hours then I walked a very long way, my feet were really tired after. This year was easier.

I’m not really a social person in general, I don’t know why. I think I used to be at one point when I was younger. My mom tells me I also used to be an avid break dancer. LOL. How times change. My date, R, and her friend Natasha showed up shortly after me. I purchased an entire table so I could have B to myself for the night but when that fell through I told R to bring a female friend.

It was my lucky night because we had so many people in attendance that we had to squish tables closer to each other. Guess who I was sitting back to back with? R’s older sister B! If you’ve read my December 2006 entry then you know I had about $1,000,000 cash on my coffee table when I was 17 years old and it felt good to me. But sitting next to these super gorgeous ladies made me feel a whole lot better. I don’t know how the heck their parents made 3 gorgeous daughters, but may the Lord bless them. Every time I see them together I think “Hot damn!”.

We had some guest speakers and food and overpriced drinks. For some reason, even though I paid for my own table, other people were placed at it. I guess it doesn’t matter, it’s all for charity. So also at our table was Moses and his wife who are pastoring a new church. Another lady and her 13 year old daughter who did a contemporary styled dance for us, it was really good! R told me about her job and a bit about her life in the country. She currently works at an Inn, her friend Natasha is currently in college.

Around 9pm the dancing started in one room while the cleaning started in another. I’m not a dancer by any measure anymore, but I do enjoy watching people dance, maybe I’ll learn a thing or two. I gave a flower E, the youngest of the 3 sisters who was working at the banquet that night and I asked her to make sure that R, B and Natasha each get a flower.

It took about 6 of us to clean up the place, we finished around 12:30am or later.

The next day I did my chores as is my custom, and around 7pm I left for the country, heading to B+R+E’s house. B was holding a farewell party for Johnny which is a very sad thing for me.

The beautiful old farm house can be considered an hour up into the country. I love country drives so it was fun getting there.

I pulled up around 8:15pm and greeted the remaining crowd. I walked around looking at the beautiful photos on the wall and the wonderful trinkets decorating the old and beautiful house. B’s father gave me a tour of the inner workings of the house, showing me some of the things he’d renovated over the years. I played with their dog tucker. I thought about the cozy winters there and the balmy summer evenings they spent together. Long quiet prayer walks looking up into the sky, is what I’d do. They probably see millions of stars at night.

A father, a mother, happily married, 3 children, a house up in the country, each family member serving the Lord in one way or another – if I had the whole world I would trade it for this.

B sat beside me on a sofa while tucker and I had a staring contest. After I helped them tidy up a bit and B said I could follow her home since she recently moved into the city for school. I had Kendra in the car as usual, chatting away and I was trying to give her hints to just be quiet and enjoy the beautiful ride home so that I could enjoy it to. This will also be the last time I see Johnny and will also put me in a slight transition also.

Gorgeous Girls Make Everything Seem Better

So Tuesday morning my 20gb hard drive crashed, after 5 years of good service. The data loss will set me back a few months, so add that to the years behind I’m already set back. I was so frustrated trying to backup my data. I took the parts to a pawn shop a few km away and got $10 for the parts. I purchased a $170 used computer with a 40gb hard drive. I spent the rest of the day getting it all setup.

I could barely get out of bed yesterday, I was to depressed. Anyway I got out of bed, did a spot of work and then prepped to entertain many children for Halloween outreach. One thing I’m proud of, I’ve kept up all my church related responsibilities during this time, although I can’t take on anything new.

I was running late and since it was for kids, decided to treat myself to a taxi ride. I’ll deduct the money from my food budget. My taxi took a long time to arrive, and when he came, he knew he was in the drug production district. He wasn’t an idiot. He took a good look at me before he let me in the cab lol. He was the chattiest taxi driver ever. He had a British accent, was white and kept asking me questions about technology – I have no idea what to tell him. Finally at my destination he was writing down notes about what mp3 player he should buy and writing down things like “ebay” and “paypal”.

Anyway, I got to the house we were doing a halloween fun night for kids and it was way better than I expected. I handled the fishing game, but there was also a bouncing castle, other games, cotton candy, hot dogs and other treats. It was fantastic. We gave away 400 bags of candy and probably entertained over 1,000 adults and children combined.

The highlight of my night was finally getting a chance to introduce myself to Breanna, a super gorgeous girl I saw last year and have been waiting to talk to. Also I found out that I’ve been calling her Rachel for over a year. She wasn’t impressed. Her mom introduced herself and asked me what I do for a living, and I realized that they wouldn’t be handing over their daughter’s hand in marriage to me at this stage in life, being that I’m pretty much a homeless bum with 2 pairs of clothing and no prospects. Still though, gorgeous Christian girls can make things seem a lot better than they are. I felt like a million bucks just chatting with her.

After we were all done for the night, around 11pm I walked a long way to the bus station, waited for over an hour for the bus. When I realized there probably wasn’t a bus coming out this way I started the long walk home. I’ve been doing a lot of walking, my feet have been sore for weeks, they are covered in blisters and sometimes bleed.

Broken wieners

When I was 15 I worked a construction job that was way outside of my skill set. I was a skinny weakling barely able to lift the tools we used on the job site. But I gave it my all and did a great job, however I was eventually fired for messing up an important project. If you ever go over to 255 Queen Street East in Brampton, you’ll see a building with various stores (as of the time of this writing). I used a machine called a Flaky Jake to pull up the old floors, I mixed the flooring solution for the new cement floors, and I helped to pour and level the new floors. On the outside, I held up the exterior wall material while another person attached it. At the factory in Etobicoke I built hundreds of the high quality wall materials. And I built (by hand) the crown molding that sits atop the exterior walls. Actually that’s why I got fired, I forgot to add sand into the mixture for the molding, and when the guy went to attach it, it crumbled. This happened on a Friday night and we all had to stay late and do it all over. It was for the best, I couldn’t pull my weight at this job consistently enough and this held everyone else back.

As far as I can remember this was about 12 hours per day, Monday through Friday and I was earning around $9 an hour which was a fortune to me at the time.

Any way during lunch at this job I would sit on the steps outside with my small cooler, eating my boiled eggs, peanut butter sandwiches, etc, and there was a hot dog vendor who worked nearby, who would talk to me when there was no lineup. Once in a while if I had enough money I would buy a hotdog but that was rare, because by this time in life most or all of my money would go into family expenses. He (the vendor) told me I should marry as soon as possible, because – as he said it, wieners don’t work forever, and if you wait till your old to get married then your wiener might not work by that time and you won’t have a happy marriage. He made it very clear to me that my own wiener will one day not work. He made this point every time I saw him. I’m not kidding! Now at the time I couldn’t imagine this ever happening since I was a teen and suffered the opposite problem.

Fast forward to today in 2002, close to Valentine Day I woke in a cold sweat thinking about this very early in the morning, and figured I need to get married soon just in case my wiener really does stop working one day. My friend Nathan and I listed the different girls at church I could marry and finally decided on one. It wasn’t easy because initially we had some differing opinions. I ordered the nicest bouquet of flowers I could afford and sent them off to her to break the ice. She teaches a children Sunday school class and we are both heavily involved in the lives of children and missions work so it should be a good match. And now to play the waiting game :)

And in other news, I’m watching a movie on video tape or dvd almost every day after work, this is a nice new thing for me, as usually I work until it’s time to sleep. What with all the children I don’t have a choice but to rest. Hopefully I can get some time to watch one of my favorites soon: Planet of the Apes.