Tuesday morning thoughts

I'm still feeling super grateful and relieved over the (apparently) 100% good news in re: my health. I didn't realize how desperately I needed some good news (and also, how quickly my brain spun up the worst-worst possibility possible, even if the rational side of my brain was yelling at me that 'all the evidence seems to point to this being within the normal range of variation, especially for your weird body')

I know I tend to make everything into a symbol, which is bad, but it feels more like 2020 is....less-ominous? now. Like maybe this "it was nothing after all" will help set more of a hopeful tone for the year.

My concentration is better. I can tell that; it was much better last night at Bell Choir than it was LAST week. (Though last week - well, that was less than an hour after the message from my doctor suggesting maybe I STILL needed the ultrasound, which made me think she thought something big was wrong. And I think if something big being wrong was still a suspicion, she'd have hurried and given them orders yesterday and they'd have called me to schedule it. I'm not ruling out that she still might want me to get one but it looks a lot less likely now)

And it helps having stuff to look forward to this weekend, instead of just grinding away more. (And in the service of having time, I started a bit on next week's material this morning, and will continue after lunch this afternoon). And my paycheck hits in a couple of days.

(The only drawback to going out this weekend? It's a payday weekend AND it's the day before a very large and usually-food-oriented-party event, so I expect the grocery store to be slammed. I am half considering just going to the local stores right after my class Friday that ends at 11 and just planning on "fun" shopping on Saturday. Or maybe I get the essentials locally and go to the Green Market, where I have not been for quite a while; I suspect they would be less full of people)

The person I work with and I will be feeding the college student ministry tonight. I nearly forgot that but luckily we had planned on "make your own sandwiches" so I ran out Sunday afternoon and bought an assortment of deli meat and cheese and a couple loaves of bread. It cost $65....granted, I bought better than the minimal-quality bread (but I would wave my hands and say "but hospitality" in the service of that: I would prefer to be served nicer bread if I were going somewhere for a meal). I may have overbought on meat BUT sometimes people want more than one sandwich, and I know some of these students aren't rolling in money, and sometimes an extra sandwich helps. (We also encourage that if any food is leftover, if people want to wrap it up and take it home,, to do that). All the meat and cheese and the bread is down there already; I brought it last night at Bell Choir (and left notes on it so the day care that meets there doesn't some how magically think "o someone left us food for snacks" because they have their own budget for snacks and I'm not fond of the idea of making a quick run back out at 5 pm for more stuff. I do have a plan that if we realize there aren't enough condiments I'll run and get them, or if anything else is forgotten, I will, but I hope not.

I will note that the soup we did last time was HALF that price. I guess that's a lesson: if you can do home cooking, it's cheaper than prepared food. (I'm glad though we decided on sandwiches, even if the guy who leads the group was kind of hinting about how good the soup was. Well, maybe next time we do it. It would have been A LOT for me to tackle along with being worried over the whole health thing AND with having my class at 3 pm today).

Also, the chili supper: we raised nearly $1000. That's AMAZING, considering that not a huge number of people belong to my church and not all of them came to the supper - I would estimate there were maybe 25 people there, tops. (I think though some people who couldn't be there handed checks off to friends to drop off). I think the service said they estimated they still needed to raise $20,000 (hence the request for chili suppers) so I guess we did 1/20th of what they needed....and if some of the bigger churches in town raised even more money, well, they are well on their way, which makes me feel good.