Safe

Scary: my brother was involved in a car-truck accident last night. A reckless, careless "friend" of his hit the driver's side of my brother's truck last night while Ben was in it. The other kid's car is totaled...air bags deployed, front end completely smashed in, windshield shattered. Ben's truck sustained major damage to the side panel, but thankfully no one was hurt.

A little extra speed, a few seconds either way and the end result could have been much different. Seeing both vehicles today brought tears to my eyes, just thinking about what might have happened.

The fact is he's safe, they're all safe and I'm so very thankful. The incident proves that God works in mysterious ways and His timing is always perfect.

In other news: I accomplished a lot today. I got up, did the dishes and tackled a major project - cleaning/organizing our big walk-in closet. Took me almost three hours to haul everything out into the living room then sift through to see what could be sent to St. Vincent DePaul, what needed to be tossed/recycled, and what things we were keeping.

I re-organized the shelves and got everything off the floor, which is where things seem to end up when we're in a hurry. I found three of Mark's "missing" ties under a pile of papers and also uncovered some family photos I thought were lost. It feels so good to have the project done because it means that when (if?) we move, there will be that much less to go through.

Sometimes I look around our apartment and feel sick looking at all the "stuff" we have. Ugh. Big cleaning projects definately make me think twice about buying when I'm at the store. Do I really need this new picture frame? Nah. How about this candle? Nope. This Dvd? Nuh-uh. I think it's important that we all take some time to step back and look at our lives...throw out what we don't need and keep what really matters.

I'm feeling pretty good about my cleaning lately. On Weds. I cleaned out and re-organized our junk drawers. Yup that's right we have more than one. Or should I say had? We're down to one again, with the other drawers organized and nicely housing our spatulas and spoons as they should.

It's amazing some of the junk Mark keeps. Seriously there were reciepts in that drawer from 2006! I also found like 60 pens...just when I was about to go to Wal-Mart to pick up a pack! Pens seem to disappear in our house...though I've now found where they go...the junk drawer!

Anyway, the next project to tackle is our computer room. This room is really challenging because it's where we're keeping all of our wedding gifts that we're unable to use right now (because they're for when we have a house...ie garden hose, new towels and pots/pans etc). The room isn't exactly messy...it's cluttered. My goal is to try to find a way to organize it so it looks nicer and also to go through our papers and try to weed out things we don't need to save.

I also want to go through Mark's clothes and donate the shirts/pants that he doesn't want or doesn't wear anymore. I did this with my own part of the closet and dresser drawers a few months ago when my Grandpa was in the hospital and I needed something to keep my mind off his health issues. I tried to get Mark to do it then, but he's so weird about holding on to that stuff. He has shirts that he wore in 8th grade! He's going to have to do it though because when (if?) we move, I am not taking those outdated, waaaaaaaay too small clothes of his with us!

Ok, enough about my cleaning/organizing. Actually, I'm going to sign off and go scrub the floor. Mark went golfing and out to eat/to bars with some of his buddies so it's a good time to do the floors because he's gone. Whenever he's home he manages to dirty it up right away!

Later...