Marathon

October 17, 2006
Yesterday, Angela called to let us know about another birthmom situation, and we agreed to have our books shown. This mom is due November 9th. Then we realized... "Hey, we're almost finished with our *new* books; why don't we just rush a couple of them up to the office?" And thus began the marathon of our next 24 hours.

As soon as I got home from work, I parked myself in front of the computer, and cranked out the new pages, as the printer ink dwindled, and my hot tea intake increased. For awhile, Calvin kept me company by playing his guitar, but at about 12:30 in the morning, we decided that Calvin should get some rest, so that he could actually see to drive these books to Portland.

At 2:00 am, I crawled into bed, after printing half of the pages, with the intent to continue in the morning... if the printer ink would hold out. At 5:00 am, the alarm went off, and it began again. We filled out our criminal background check forms to put in the mail this morning, and I turned the computer back on. (Why did I turn it off?)

I printed off more pages until the printer ink supply was non-existent. Then I turned to my Plan B: the internet. Our local Staples supposedly has a handy system in which you can download your files, and they will print them for you at their copy center. Unfortunately, the estimated download time for each of my pages was 30 minutes on our slow dial-up connection. (Hmm... 30 min. x 10 pages = more time than I have.) So I quickly burned them to a CD, and went in to the office early to make use of the snazzy DSL to send in the files.

Then the ugly reputation of our local Staples reared its head. After multiple attempts to utilize their "easy, professional" copy/print program, I discovered that it was conveniently eliminating the bottom inch or two from all of my pages. I called them up for assistance. To make a long story short, they were unable to help, due to their many "lunch breaks" (how many does a person get in a day?) and a "quick print job" suddenly took a personal visit from an obnoxious customer: ME.

I finally garnered a promise that our copies would be ready by 2:00 pm in time for Calvin to pick them up and drive them to Portland. (He only had a short window of time between getting off work, and going to his evening class.) When he arrived, they had to search for 15 minutes to find the pages, and they needed reminding to return our CD.

Calvin raced up to Portland, and made it to the office before Angela left. He dropped off the two books, and headed back. He arrived at school just a couple minutes late. We found out that the pregnant mom hasn't scheduled her next appointment with her caseworker yet, so we don't know when/if she'll recieve a copy of our book. Regardless, it was nice to give ourselves a "self-imposed deadline" toward completion, even if it's not for this particular mom. Now we need to print off the rest of the books soon, so all the offices have the same copies.

Meanwhile, please be praying for the birthmoms we've mentioned this past week. They're each facing difficult situations right now, and could really use God's loving peace & direction.