Old age or just expensive lemons?

Well, hello again! It's been a while since I've been here. If you remember right, I began this blog by stating that I would not use it just to waste people's time, but to use it to share my thoughts. Thus the reason I've been away for a while.

As many of you know, my father-in-law (Junior "Jay") is not doing well fighting emphysema. I have been praying for him and was concerned that my wife Sharon would not get to be with him as his illness progresses. Finally we made the decision for her to go to the States and spend some time with her daddy. So, on January 14th Sharon left Rio and went to Wichita for three weeks.

Now, I've always considered myself to be a guy that could survive if he were faced with the sudden loss of his wife. So I felt pretty comfortable with being the solo-dad as she headed up north. After all, our children are no longer babies, the oldest one at home right now is 18 and the youngest one's 12, so it's not like I'm stuck trying to figure who gets formula when. I'm fifty years old now, so I thought that I ought to have this parenting thing down by now.

OK, Sharon leaves on Tuesday and Friday I leave to pick up the kids from school. One small problem, I locked the keys in the house. Now for any of you who have been in Brazil, you know that houses here are not like most in the States. Here the houses have bars on all the windows and locks on all the doors. No problem! I have kids at school that have keys, I'll just go pick them up and we'll get back into the house. We all laughed when I told them what I had done. After all, we've lived in this mission house for 4 1/2 years and this is the first time that this has happened to me. Lesson learned, let's move on.

The next day, Naaman and Willa-Ann were with their Youth Small Group, Priscila and I had picked up a new Chinese friend to have her over for dinner. I realized that I needed some lemons (actually in the States we would call them "limes", but here they are "limões") to make some sour cream (yes, we have to make our own sour cream in Brazil). We were going to have baked potatoes with the roast I was cooking and the sour cream was for the potatoes. Anyway, I'm all ready, Hilary (the Chinese friend is ready) and Priscila is ready. Priscila says, "why don't we take the dogs?" Good idea, let's get them ready and let's go! I've got Daisy (our boxer) ready, but Priscila's having a hard time with the harness of Madeline (our dachshund). I stop to help Priscila, we get the harness on, head out the door, closing it behind us and I reach for my keys. It's then that I discover that the keys that I was sure that I had with me, I had set down on the coffee table to help Priscila with the dog harness.

Now, I'm in a pickle. Priscila has no keys, I have no keys, the only other set of keys that I'm aware of are with Naaman and Willa-Ann which is across town at their Youth Group, the cell phone and car keys are in the house. Well, thankfully, the car was left unlocked and the garage door opener was in the car. We decide that since we already have the dogs ready to go for a walk, we might as well head on out. I buy the lemons/limes that I need and we head back home. On the way there I hatch a plan of leaving Priscila and Hilary at the house, I'll flag a taxi, find Naaman and Willa-Ann and return home with, once again, my children's set of house keys.

The plan works pretty good, except that the Youth Group decided not to stay at the original site, due to painting of the apartment. So I am in a taxi with the meter running, traveling around Rio, looking for a group of adolescents and their adult leader. Sure enough, I see them down by the lake, getting ready to cross the street and I'm six cars behind them watching and thinking, "this is not going according to my plans". Thankfully the traffic started to move, my taxi driver started honking his horn and I was able to get Naaman's attention.

When everything was said and done, the taxi ride and the lemons costs me R$42,00 (or about US$18.50). Now my question is, was this just old age or expensive lemons?