At church this morning our First Reading, which was listed as the Second Reading, was from Romans 12:9-21. Nancy was the reader which was awesome because I’m supposed to be in charge of getting readers, but I never do it. There’s always someone stepping up to get it done, mainly Nancy and Diane. They save my bacon a lot.

Pastor commented that this reading could also serve as another list of commandments because they share a lot in common. It’s true, they do. I just have one comment, then I will move along.

The lesson starts out just fine with “Let love be genuine; …” then fades right in to an area that I’ve been taught my entire life to avoid when it continues, “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; …”.

On the surface, the last part kind of evens out, but I’ve been taught to not “hate” anything. So, that’s a really harsh word for me to comprehend during church service. I can live with “don’t like,” and similar words of discontent, as can Diane. She just hates it when I say I hate something so I tend to not use it, when I remember.

The rest of the lesson is filled with flowery words that repeatedly state that we should just like each other, you know? It’s pretty simple stuff when you whittle it all down to the basics.

Yesterday it rained for the first time in the last year and a half. It was really refreshing. Cleared the air and settled the dust next to the garage where I’ve been moving rocks and dirt around for the last few weeks. It caused our new neighbors, Scott & Whitney, a little distress because they’re trying to paint their house. It was grey and they’re painting it a really nice green. Diane and I are really happy that I took down the trees between the houses because it’s easier to keep track of how they’re doing. Before it was all blocked by that huge overgrown hedge. What’s more significant about the rain was that none of it seeped into the old motor homes because I spent some time on the roof spreading around various kinds of sealant to ovoid that nasty mess.

In the process, because I chose to ignore the gloves laying next to my right knee, my right pointing finger suffered a life-threatening injury as I slowly smoothed out the sealant over an area of exposed aluminum roofing that did not want me to do it. It hurt a lot, but I had to do it because I felt the timing was just right for me to alter my finger print a little. Also, I couldn’t quit because I knew the rain was coming … the weather woman told me. Then, after filling all potential access points to the interior, I removed myself from the roof, picked up my tools, and put them all away. Then I went to work on my finger.

As you can see, it wound up a mess because I had to pick up some of the tools from the yard where I tossed them …

You can see the blood seeping through the grass stuck to my finger, but I ended that by scrubbing all the contaminated areas with turpentine. Although it hurt a great deal more than obtaining the cut, it served well to seal the leak in my body. After the first 15 minutes, or so, I was used to the pain of scrubbing the sealant that was clinging desperately to my hand. In all, it took about 30 minutes to make it all go away. In hindsight, I wonder if gasoline would have worked better.

Once I got the turpentine smell removed with soap and water, I was allowed to enter the house and relax a bit. I have no coherent memory of leaving the house again, so I guess I stayed inside and watched football the rest of the day. Being Saturday, I’m sure that’s what I did.

Today my finger is still sore, and it hurts to type but I was compelled to complete this missive so none of you would worry about me continue to leak, in case you heard about my mishap from someone with less knowledge about the incident.

Oh Ya … it really hasn’t been a year and a half since the last rain. It’s more like a couple of weeks. But, considering this is “rainy Oregon”, we’ve received surprisingly little rain. I believe Phoenix, AZ recently got more rain in a couple of hours than we’ve had all year. Interesting.