Proverbs 27:15, scrap, job hunting

In the container, I thought I had only one leak on the four windows, but as I worked on putting cedar windowsills on the windows today, I discovered that three of the four windows have little leaks coming from the top sill of the windows – where the frame is cut into the side of the container. I got to discover all the leaks because it rained through the day. Not a heavy rain but a steady drizzle. Enough to give me a steady drip on two of the four windows and a steady trickle of water into the container on the fourth. 

Oh, well. It should be an easy fix and since tomorrow and Thursday are forecast to be dry, I will get to apply the remedy soon. Friday is forecast to be a rainy day, so I will get to test my fix and see if I chose wisely. If I did the battle is over. If I did not, we will try something else to seal the tops of the windows. But I felt confident enough in getting the leaks stopped, that I went ahead and did all the windowsills. Tomorrow, Lord willing, I will start trimming out the windows. I plan to do the trim in cedar as well. I will take some pictures when I am further along, but Mama and I are very pleased with the look of the windowsills I completed today. 

The barely leaking frames reminded me of a verse in Proverbs where a continual drip is compared to a contentious woman. I guess Solomon would know about dealing with a contentious woman. Since he had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines, I am sure not all of the one thousand women in his life were sweetness and demure humility all the time. Get that many women in one kingdom competing for the attention of a single man and there is bound to be drama. Thank God I have only Mama. One is enough.

Don’t get me wrong, Grandma and Victoria are still in the house with me and Mama, but Grandma tries to get along and Victoria tries to disappear. When she is thinking with some measure of clarity, Grandma is easy enough to share our home with. When her meds take over, there are some interesting and difficult moments. Those are few and manageable. Grandpa is a huge help in the difficult times. As for Victoria, it is not easy to tell that she is home most times. She largely keeps to herself and her interactions with us, when she does come out to join the larger group, are mostly fun. I say that with a bit of sarcasm, because I spend most of my time by myself – working on the container or farm projects or working on the computer. Mama always knows where to find me, so I suppose she is happy with my absence from the confab. 

Norman and Grandpa picked up all the metal pipe and roofing scraps stacked in various locations across the property. They gathered up all the baling wire I had wound and hung over fence posts or stacked in bundles near where we feed out the wire-tied bales of hay. They salvaged all the small pieces of rolled fencing, barbed wire and chopped up cattle panels and accumulated all that scrap into the dump trailer Norman is borrowing. That large dump trailer is now overflowing. Norman put together a heap of copper lines and wire, brass pipe and fittings and aluminum wire fragments I have been saving for just such a time as this. These were kept apart from the other metal scrap. They will be sold separately. 

I have resisted the task of compiling all these items because I have only a utility trailer to haul the refuse to the scrap yard. With the utility trailer, I would have had to handle all those items a minimum of two times. Once to get them onto the trailer and once more to get them off the trailer at the scrap yard. With the dump trailer, the handling was minimized. The items had only to be loaded then dumped at the scrap yard. 

This cleanup was not necessarily benevolent on Norman’s part, but it works out well for me and Mama. Norman desperately needs money and selling scrap is one way to get a few dollars. I am more than happy to donate all this scrap to his cause. Please pray for Norman as he looks for steady work. Finding a good job is not as easy as some make it out to be, but he is earnest in his quest. He wants to stay close to Grandma and Grandpa. That is wise. 

I am confident God will lead him in the way he needs to go – if Norman will allow God to do so.