"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"  Thoreau

      I saw this short film and was reminded of another day, many years ago.

     July 2, 1997

     We were just kids, excited, apprehensive, headed to the maternity ward to have our second child. The elevator doors opened and a young man stepped off pushing a woman, apparently his wife, in a wheelchair.  Their expressions were grim, her face ashen and devoid of emotion.  As we were getting Tina set up in her room and wondering aloud what had happened, the orderly filled us in. They had just left the maternity ward. She had had to come in to deliver her almost full term baby who had died in utero.  For a moment I gazed into a chasm of empty hopelessness and was very afraid.  Then the moment passed, and we were back to the business of preparing for the arrival of our little one.  It has haunted me for years.  Their child would be 16 this July.

     Our Samantha will turn 16 this July 2.

     It has been one of those weeks.  Rebekah, finally big enough to ride one of the racing bikes, was practicing in the neighborhood behind us, and fell, getting several nice scratches from the teeth of the sprocket down the inside of her thigh. 

^This is a pic we took when we were fishing on a windy day when the family was up for Granny's funeral.

Below are Rebekah's battle scars.  The stripes on the right leg are from the chainring on her bicycle and the bandage covers her recent stitches.

      I worked Wednesday and Thursday, chipping off a piece of one of my molars during that route.  I interviewed Friday morning, then had to go back in to learn to route the next day's trucks that evening.  I had a nice bicycle ride around BWI airport after routing.  The trail around the airport is just over 10 miles, but I continued riding for another 8 and was rewarded just before getting back to my car with a very rare sight, an almost completely white deer. I used the iphone to get a pic, so I couldn't zoom in, but it was an amazing thing to see, and he stood there and let me take his picture.  I rode off and he was still standing, eating grass from the meadow.

The little white speck is the white deer about 50 yards away.

     I slept in one of the trucks at work Friday night and headed out on my route Saturday morning, only to find that a filling had fallen out on the other side of my mouth.  Already had an appointment with the dentist for this coming Tuesday, so no worry.  I made two uncharacteristic mistakes on my route, and I had to go back and fix them, adding over 100 miles to my route, but the bosses prefer that to having to send out another truck, so they typically give you a pat on the back for finding your own errors and fixing them.   I rolled back in to our yard just in time to do the routing for Monday's routes, then jumped in the car and headed home.  Today, as evidenced by the bandage in the picture above, Rebekah fell off her scooter onto a piece of metal which scooped out a nice little divot of skin, so it was off to the urgent care to get stitches, then out to Cracker Barrel for dinner with just she and Tina and I, just  as a little comfort for all her trouble this week. (She, too, lost a filling yesterday, and will accompany me to the dentist tomorrow.)

     Now, it is a waiting game.  I have to continue to practice routing the trucks two days a week and cover my regular routes until they hire a new team leader within the month.  I'm sort of hoping that team leader is me, but either way I'll at least know where I stand in the company and what my chances are of moving up.  Also, when the process is over, I'll be back to doing just one job, either learning to run the transportation department or being a delivery driver.  This waiting is killing me, though.  I'm really trying not to get my hopes up, but the team leader job would mean not only steady pay but also most weekends off, so it is a difficult thing to suppress the rising tide of hopefulness.  As with any other endeavour in life, time marches slowly on, and the process will end whether in my favor or that of another candidate.  Though I will be disappointed if they hire someone else, the process has been a real joy.  I have loved the challenge and the intense effort of learning quickly how to write a resume.  Enumerating the things that would make me a good leader has been an enlightening exercise and if nothing else has given me a confidence I did not earlier possess.  Also, the interview process is a huge challenge to me and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.  When your turn comes, you have one chance to get it right.  Every word and expression counts and can't be undone.  It is a heady experience.

     Yes, times are exciting at our house, but we will be glad for them to calm down a bit.  How is spring 2013 treating you?

    I have been off Xanga for a while.  Haven't even had a chance to sit and read blogs.  Through a series of unfortunate events we lost our team leader and an assistant team leader (that's what they call our transportation manager and his assistant.), which left our department's management team at one assistant manager and one secretary.  After a couple weeks of holding down the fort, they called to see if I would come in and train to be able to provide some relief when it was needed.  Meanwhile, I spoke with our facility director to see if it would be worth my time to apply for the team leader decision.  He replied neutrally (as would be expected considering there may be other in house applicants), but recommended that I apply. 

     I went home and proceeded to attempt a resume.  As DOT regulations indicate the information necessary to apply for a truck driving job, most truckers go their whole career without ever needing a resume, and up to this point I was no exception.  I proceeded to scour the internet for  ideas.  Meanwhile, between working in the office and running my scheduled routes, I was on the road two days at a time for my normal routes twice a week and then in the office the other days. Today is the second day off I've had in the last fifteen days, so researching ideas and creating a resume was pretty difficult, but I finally got it submitted last Monday.  I have been trying to keep it on the down low in the office, but today in a phone meeting with the facility director I spilled the beans not knowing that he had me on speaker phone and the rest of the management team was in the room.  It's going to be a little awkward, but I'll just have to deal with it.

     Tina quit her job recently to have more time at home and (this coming autumn) to have a crack at going to college, so now that I finally got a day off, we got all the kids off to school and took our time getting ready, then headed off to Easton to get some lunch at Panera and run some errands.   I had to drop a bicycle off at WalMart.  Whoever built the bike had cross threaded and completely stripped one of the pedals and while Rebekah was riding it the pedal fell off, so I'm trying to get it fixed or replaced.  We had to pick up some supplies for the pool, too, so we ended up making a day of it. After we got home and the kids got off the bus, we were sitting in the living room and my phone rang.  It was the human resources lady to inform me that they'd like to schedule me for an interview for the team leader position!  I'm still not sure if it's just a gesture, "Well, he does work here, so at least we should give him the courtesy of an interview" or truly an interview based on my qualifications as laid out in my resume.  I guess it doesn't matter.  I've got a few minutes of the boss's time to convince him that I'm the man for the job, and that's more than a lot of people who applied have at this point.  I'm very nervous, not knowing what to expect, but I know I have the experience to do the job, so I think I have at least a long shot.  I'll definitely keep you posted. On a more practical note, I'll be glad for the selection process to be over, no matter how it turns out because it'll mean I can go back to working a regular schedule and see my family regularly again.  Hope you all are well.  When I get back to normal I'll catch up on all your blogs.