from the ridiculous to the pissed off


i dropped my new mytouch yesterday for the first time. here is why...

we've had an ongoing debate, issue, etc. concerning the parking lot and pick-up, drop-off situation at the church/children's place (daycare) for seemingly forever. there are many concerns, some of them valid. some of them petty. some of them nonsense.

the major, valid concern is the safety of the children (and their adults) that are coming into and out of the church. during the busiest portions of the morning and evening, the majority of our 125 children and accompanying parents are trafficking through the parking lot at the same time. our parking lot is not set up well for this amount of foot/car traffic. we have a drive-thru portico that the church spent a bunch of money on several years ago that takes up most of the what little extra space we do have and protects lucky folks from the rain on those occasional and annoying dreary days. yesterday, in fact, was one of those days.

so, what to do about all the congestion?

the temptation forever has been for parents to pull up to the curb next to the chapel to take their children in. this serves two purposes for the parents. one, they don't have to cross the parking lot/thru-way and their children are not at risk by said crossing. two, as sarah has mentioned, there is something psychologically appealing to saving the ten-to-twenty step difference between a parking space and the curb when you are running late or short on time.

however...

this presents problems. people get blocked in. the traffic curb-side interrupts with the traffic in the parking spaces to make the already narrow thru-lane even more narrow, thus decreasing the sightlines and making that thru-lane even more dangerous.

if you aren't lucky enough to get a curb side (non) space, you get pissed off at the people who do. if it is raining and that curb (non) space just so happens to also win you a lottery ticket underneath the portico, then people are going to be super-put-out at you, because, inevitably, your kid is going to have crapped his or her pants when you go in to pick them up and your car is going to be underneath the portico for thirty minutes while my ass is getting wet stuffing two obstinate children into the back seat of my soaking wet car.

deep breath.

we've tried to solution-storm. really...we have. we've painted the curb yellow. don't you see the yellow curb??? that means you aren't supposed to park here! obviously, that hasn't worked. we've put up "no parking" signs. you see??? it says "no parking". that means you aren't supposed to park here. obviously, that hasn't worked. we've purchased traffic cones to try and block the way to the yellow-painted curbs protected by the "no parking" signs. obviously, that hasn't worked.

so, what are you going to do about the situation?

there has been a thought that says, "why don't we just rope/block that entire front section of parking lot off, making it "walk only". kind of makes sense in theory, but...

don't you then just push the congestion down to the lower lot making it just as potentially unsafe as your current situation?

um, yeah. probably.

long story, short. there's not a good solution...yet.

personally, i don't give a rip. i never got pissed off at the people that parked by the curb even if it didn't make total sense to me. then again, maybe i am just never in a hurry. the only time that i ever felt or feel annoyed at the "problem" is if i am not lucky enough on a storming-ass day to win the portico lottery, but, even then, i am not pissed at the person that won the lottery. i am just pissed that i didn't win it!

which brings us back to yesterday morning. same situation as i've described above. all of the above factors are in play. it is raining, but, for some reason, the traffic cones have been used as a barrier to prevent ANYONE from winning the portico lottery.

yesterday morning, this pissed me off.

we have this daycare that is borderline amazing at this point. we've just installed a security system that everyone is in love with. we have a waiting list for the first time in years. we have teachers that are happy. children that are happy. parents that, for the most part, are happy. and we spent this money years ago for a portico that, for a few lucky kids and parents on rainy days, could possibly keep them from getting drenched, and we are flipping blocking it off?!?!?!

we pull up to drop off caroline yesterday morning, and i see this and it drives me crazy. what is the message, exactly, that we are trying to send? i have my phone in my hand. i open my door and put the phone on my side, but it doesn't click into place on my belt. i walk, with purpose, over to realign the cones so that the next person that drives up will feel like their day is made because they just won the portico lottery, maybe for the first time ever on the occasional rainy day. i lean over and feel the phone slip out of the holster, but i am not enough of a ninja to do anything about it. it hits the ground. the protective shell bursts open. the naked phone lands, face up, on the surface. i have two small nicks on the back of my brand new phone. sarah reminds me that, with the shell on, i will never see them. she is right, though i am no less pissed off.

it is sequences such as these that we encounter every day. the moon and stars and sun and parking cones all line up so that my phone gets jacked up, or you get stuck in traffic, or you are late getting to work, or someone that is pissed off at their crummy life yells at you because they can't really yell at their boss. sequences such as these land punches to our midsections every day and it's our job to deal with it. catch our breath and swing back at the day.

but, what if something could have happened to change the end result of the sequence? what if we didn't care so much about where people parked at the church that we wasted money on cones? what if i had actually clipped my phone into place? what if it didn't rain? what if every decision we made was proactive and not reactive?

"what if?", indeed.

"we try to make the limbo as tolerable as possible."

yep.

my phone is fine. until another sequence of events presents itself seven months down the road that leads to my phone finding its way into the toilet of the girls' bathroom. we'll see how i choose to handle that then.

every day we make choices that lead to a realization for someone, somewhere that something is amiss with our world. we come to these realizations far more often than we realize that our world is someway, somehow a beautiful place.

"to love someone is to know the song of their heart."

obviously, that didn't work.

keep moving forward.

"limbo" goes into labor tomorrow morning.