Kelly's DAY FOURTEEN

Late last night, I made a grocery run to get some strawberries for breakfast this morning. 

Leann and I went to her home church in Manhattan (C3 Manhattan).  It was SO amazing!  (I was so looking forward to this morning because last year, when I visited her church, I was FLOORED...and it happened again this year)  Anyhow, I mean, think Praise Band teeming with ACTUAL Broadway singers (I'm pretty sure they compose their own worship songs).  Yeah...it's kinda like that.  The pastor actually had to dismiss the Broadway stars ten minutes early because he was running over a little bit and they had calls to get to.  Anyhow, he was talking about the HOLY Spirit this morning (in his FABULOUS Australian accent), when he made a minor detour to...DANIEL...where he talked about Daniel's fast for a millisecond, at which point my jaw dropped, and he moved on.  HELLO?  BUELLER?  WAS THAT JUST FOR ME, GOD?!  DID THAT ACTUALLY HAPPEN?!  I'm pretty sure all the beautiful stars in that room disappeared, and it was just me and the Aussie preaching right at me (in that fabulous Aussie accent).  Amazing.

After church, it was officially raining cats and dogs.  We snuck into a diner and ate lunch.  I felt bad, because Leann really wanted to go to this burger joint for burgers, fries, and shakes.  OH, how I wanted to go there!  She had a salad, and I had French onion soup (hold the cheese, hold the croutons), a baked potato (hold everything), and the avocados and cucumbers off of Leann's salad (which looked so good it hurt, but when stripped down to something I could eat, would only consists of lettuce).

After lunch, I hopped on the NJ Transit train and headed home (ate some peanuts for a snack).  I jumped in my car and got on the highway (in the torrents, remember), throw my window wipers on, and watched one of them fly off into the horizon (cars dodging, rain falling, me...well, blast it!  I was hosed).  I pulled over (per Dallas's instruction on my cell phone which was on the verge of dying) and searched for Autozone, but I had about 6 feet of median, and the car is like 5 feet 8 inches wide, so I pulled over as close to the guardrail as possible.  Make yourself a mental note right now:  Do NOT pull as close to the guardrail as possible!!!  I repeat (you get the point)...YOU WILL SIDESWIPE THE GUARDRAIL ALL DOWN THE SIDE OF YOUR HUSBAND'S CAR!!!  And, IF YOU'RE SINGLE, YOU WILL SIDESWIPE THE SIDE OF YOUR OWN CAR!!!  I made it to Autozone, where I said, "My window wiper fell off."  I could tell the guy wanted to laugh, but my facial expression probably let him know that if he did that I would burst into full on ugly cry, so he didn't.  I looked him in the eye and asked, "Do y'all install these?  I don't know how to do it."  He looked back and said, "Only in nice weather, but I can try to sneak out to help you."  See?  Jersey boys can be gentlemen!  Haha!  Read on.  He snaps that bad boy in place in about 0.3 seconds and I was on my way.

For the record, GPS doesn't really help in New Jersey because of all the jughandles.  For those of you who have never BEEN to Jersey, just keep reading.  It's this whole, you-have-to-turn-right-and-loop-around-and-go-through-a-stoplight-to-turn-left thing.  So, when your Aussie lady comes on and says "turn left," you have to remind yourself to merge into the righthand lane.  It's a big ugly mess, Jersey, but whatever.  I digress.  I finally make my way back to the NJ turnpike, but it was out of order or something, and I freaked out for a minute  because if you don't take a ticket  when you get on, you're fined like $25 or something ridiculous.  Then, I exit, and the cashier guy asks me for my ticket.  How do I EXPLAIN THIS?  I told him my windshield wiper flew off...blah, blah, blah...(He's a Jersey boy, mind you...he didn't CARE what HAPPENED...he just wanted my darned TICKET!)...he asks me for my license (DANG!  He's going to slap me with a ticket here...is that even POSSIBLE?  Could this day get any WORSE?!!!)...he asks me where I got on the turnpike!  HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?  I JUST TOLD HIM I ONLY STOPPED BECAUSE OF MY UNFORTUNATE LUCK!!!  I tried to explain.  He charged me $3.60 (yeah, I drove that turnpike for a good half mile...that was an expensive 30 seconds).  BUT, I DID find the PA turnpike, and only had to do two jughandles and a little back street to get there.  However, at this point, I couldn't see through the tears AND the rain, but was thankful for the window wiper, and that angel of a man at Autozone (I should shop there more often).  I had 3+ hours left to drive home.  Stopped for dinner:  Strawberries and OJ.

The point in telling you about these stressful events is this:
After all this happened, I passed a Starbucks and another Starbucks, OH, HOW I LOVE STARBUCKS!  I'm beginning to think they put an addictive substance into their drinks...oh, right.  They do!  Anyhow, I realized that my body actually NEEDED a Starbucks to "recalculate" and decompress after that stressful event.  WHAAA?!!  I drove right on past those bad boys.  I ran to the cross for my "recalculation and decompression." 

...and THAT, my friends, is what it's all about.

Cue hummus and celery and carrots for dessert, a nice bath in my AHAVA salt (you can check out my blog post about our Dead Sea experience for more on that), and I'm off to bed.  Monday is going to slap me in the face since I've been on college student AND toddler schedule all weekend (ie. up until 2am, up by 7am).