IT REALLY HAPPENED, I SWEAR IT DID

                                  IT REALLY HAPPENED, I SWEAR IT DID
                                                                            T. Wieland Allen
     Yes, it really did happen just the way that I am going to tell you.  I was amazed and I know you will be amazed, also.
     The temperature had reached 100 degrees outside, 115 with the the heat index.  It was so hot but I had to make a run to a store that had some things on sale.  It didn't really seem that hot to me, but after purchasing my good buys at my favorite store, I only had one short stop to make before going home.  Since it was so hot, I decided to stop by the drive through at McDonald's and get a large diet Dr. Pepper, which I occasionally do if I am out shopping for a good while.  Besides that, it was happy hour at McDonald's and the large drinks were only $1.09, a real bargain. I could almost taste that Dr. Pepper and feel the cooling effects of that first drink through the straw. 
     I ordered a large diet Dr. Pepper at the proper place, the faceless, windowless structure.  At the first window with a real person visible, the young lady told me that the diet Dr. Pepper was flat and do I want a substitute.  I told her that diet Coke would be fine and paid her my $1.09 plus a nice tip. 
     On to the next window I went, adjusting my taster to take the first sip out of the diet Coke, wetting my thirsty palate, as they say.   The pretty girl at that window told me that the diet Coke was flat.  I remarked that I thought it was the diet Dr. Pepper that was flat.  She said that both were flat.  I asked how long they had been flat and she said a week or longer.  What an inconvenience since that McDonald's is on a busy highway and there are always cars backed up in the drive through line. 
    The pretty girl asked if I wanted to substitute anything.  I didn't want that much sugar if I had a regular Coke or Dr. Pepper, so I told her that I would just take one of their good iced coffee drinks instead.  Eager to please, the pretty girl disappeared from the window and was gone for about a minute.  Then she appeared again and asked what kind did I want.  I asked what kind they had, expecting her to say a caramel frappe or a mocha frappe or some other tasty drink.  Instead she said, "Decaf or regular."  I was impressed that they had begun to have decaf specialty drinks, the frappes of which I am so fond with their thousands of calories.  Elated that they had decaffeinated specialty drinks, I told her decaf and waited for her to ask which flavor.  Her face disappeared from the window again.
    When her pretty face appeared, she said that it would be just a minute.  I complimented her on her hair which was piled high upon her head in a long braid and her neckline had been tattooed with a razor, meaning that there was a pretty shaved design in the hair on her neck.  She was grateful for the compliment. 
     Suddenly I saw someone, probably her supervisor, appear beside the pretty young lady carrying a small McDonald's Styrofoam coffee cup in her hand.  I surmised that she was going to make a frappe of some flavor for me there at the drink dispensers out of the cup of coffee. 
     Was I ever wrong.  The supervisor took the top off of the cup of coffee and added a big scoop of ice, put the top back on and handed it to the pretty girl with the elaborate hairdo.  As she handed it to me I was stunned, but told her how much I appreciated her going to that much trouble for me.  She remarked that it was her job to please the customer. 
     I was still thirsty and the ice had melted in the coffee, producing weak coffee with no cream or sugar.  What a bummer.  There were cars behind me, several of them, and they were getting impatient, so I drove away letting the pretty girl think she had made my day. 
     I was reminded of the time when we had first moved into town and my husband had a few hours to spare from work one day and asked a new neighbor to go with him to have a cup of coffee at the Walgreen's store which had a soda fountain at that time.  They sat at the counter and my husband ordered a cup of coffee.  His friend said that he wanted iced coffee.  My husband noticed a confused look on the face of the waitress.  The waitress brought my husband's cup of coffee to him, went and got another cup of coffee for his friend, grabbed a piece of ice from the dispenser and plopped it into the coffee that was sitting there in the white cafe style cup.   Unfortunately, my husband's friend was not as gentle with the lady as I was in my situation.   
    Some things are not serious enough to make a fuss over, iced coffee being one.  We can either laugh about the naivete of people later in a strange situation or we can make a scene at the time.  I have always made it a habit to laugh about things; in other words to go with the flow and flow with the go.  
    Both waitresses had done what was logical to them.  Actually in my situation it was my fault that I had not made it clear that I wanted one of McDonald's  specialty coffee drinks, frappes, instead of a hot cup of coffee with ice in it. 
     I got my specialty drink.  I made my own out of the cup of coffee from McDonald's, some almond milk, a teaspoon of stevia for sweetening,  a dash of Hershey syrup and plenty of ice to replace the melted ones. 
     Where there is a will there is always a way.
     I'm wondering if it ever occurred to the young girl with the fancy hairdo or her supervisor that what I was really wanting was a summer specialty frappe drink instead of a cup of hot coffee with a scoop of ice floating around in it.  Something was missing in the translation, evidently. 
    It was my translation, not theirs.  I will be more specific next time.
    My frappe was much lower in calories than the McDonald's frappe.
    It worked out better in the end.

THE DAY FROM HELL, I MEAN LITERALLY THE DAY FROM HELL

                       THE DAY FROM HELL -- I Mean Literally the Day From Hell
                                                       T. Wieland Allen
     Actually the day from hell started the night before the actual day when I discovered a tiny bump on my abdomen.  It was itchy one minute and painful the next minute.  Thinking that was a clever mosquito to be able to get under my lawn mowing shirt that I wore trimming the hedges that day, I immediately thought, "No, mosquito bites don't look that angry immediately."  Well, could it be a tick that I have dreaded finding on my body ever since my dear husband died.  He was my tick investigator.  Now, no self respecting  woman in her right mind would ask her adult son or his wife to inspect her in embarrassing private areas, especially the private ones of an 80 year old mom.  In fact, checking myself for ticks and moles is a real adventure because the cataracts on my eyes are not "ripe" enough yet to be removed, so I use 2.5 dollar store glasses to read and try to find ticks and troublesome moles on my body.  Sometimes the glasses are not strong enough for me to distinguish black moles from ticks on those private areas.  So I switch into  my contortion act, twisting and turning as far as I can with a magnifying glass in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other hand.  I always think about being so glad that my two loving sisters are not around to see me or they would be laughing hysterically and being no help at all.
   You see, when female aged bodies change it causes body parts to sag in all directions.  On my mole/tick adventures I have been known to tie particular parts of my body up high with a soft sash in order to see under sagging skin, inspecting every possible hiding place so I can tell my young, handsome dermatologist that I was a good girl and followed his orders perfectly.  If he could only see an elderly woman in her efforts to follow his directions he would get a good laugh, too.
    Sorry for the digression, so now back to my literal day from hell.  After finding the little bump on my belly (to heck with being proper) I put on some of Paw Paws Salve, which always works, and went to bed.  The day from hell officially began at 3:00 a.m. that day, July 14, 2016.  I woke with real pain around the area of the bump.  Upon inspection with my trusty magnifying glass, I saw that the bump had had babies during the night and there were three bumps.  The babies had blisters on their heads.  Oh, no, those buggers were not mosquito or ticks bites, they were the much dreaded shingles.  I ran to the kitchen, got some ice, put it in a plastic bag and slapped it on the fevered blisters around which redness was now prevalent.  The pain stopped immediately.
     Back to bed I went but sleep was impossible.  I made plans in my mind for the day for going to the Urgent Care facility at 8:00 a.m. in order to get to my dental appointment at 10:30 to get a root canal and cap.  Not my favorite thing to do.  During my awake time I planned to also call the dentist office before I left home for the Urgent Care to inform them that I might have shingles and since it can be contagious to anyone who has not had chicken pox, telling them that I might not make it to the dental appointment.  I got out of bed at 6:00 a.m. in order to dress, make the phone call and get to the doctor early in order to be the first patient.  Heaven forb
id that I would miss the adventure awaiting me at the dentist's office later.
     Sure enough, after examining me the nice doc at the Urgent Care said I had an early case of shingles.  Bummer, just what I had suspected.  Since I had his attention and no one else needed him at that moment I told him that I had had some lower back pain that I assumed was from pulling a child's wagon up a slight hill in my yard loaded with large bags of gardening mulch, one at a time of course.  The nice doctor asked me if I had had any problems with eliminating urine lately.  I told him that I had more frequent needs to urinate, but I have been drinking more liquids lately since I work outside a lot.  He ordered me to urinate into a plastic container in the bathroom and quickly came back to tell me that I had lots of bacteria in the urine so I had a UTI, not unusual for women my age but no less painful in the lower back.  He told me to cancel my dentist appointment since I was  contagious with shingles to someone operating on my mouth and he told me that I needed to go home and rest because my blood pressure was dangerously high.  He commented that he wasn't surprised at the high numbers since I was anticipating an extensive dental procedure and had shingles as well as a UTI.  He gave me four prescription scripts and told me to go home, take another BP pill and get some rest.  To be honest, when he told me the high numbers of my blood pressure I was concerned, too, and, as my handsome clever husband used to say, I'm usually fearless.  
     I went to Walgreens, left the scripts and went home, sat down to rest when I remembered that the lawn needed mowing.  I called two friends who help me in the yard with trimming trees, etc, and asked them if they could mow my yard the next day so I wouldn't have to worry about that.  Joan said that she and Steve were working in my neighborhood and would be there in a few minutes if that was okay.  Yea!  She never fails me. 
     They arrived and did a cracker jack job on the lawn while I rested in my recliner and got the BP down a little by doing deep breathing exercises after taking another pill.  My efforts were rewarded and it's a good thing because hell was waiting at the door.  Joan and Steve completed their task, I paid them and they went on their way.  Finally, I thought, now I can have a stress free, relaxing time the rest of the day.
     Back to my recliner I went with two full glasses of water, following the package insert instructions on the new pills, an antiviral one for shingles and an antibiotic for the UTI.  I picked up the newspaper to read, knowing that I would go to sleep and get some rest, having awakened at 3:00 a.m.
     The phone rang.  I started to ignore it, but am I glad I didn't  It was Steve, the yard helper, and he screamed into the telephone, "Tommye, close your garage door and head for the basement.  Ninety mile an hour winds are headed our way. They are five minutes away."  That storm was not predicted at all, just came up out of the blue.
     Oh, Lordie, I thought, this is surely a day from hell for me.  I wanted to sit down and have a good cry, which is a great stress reliever, but I didn't have time.  I grabbed a plastic bag of frozen peas out of the freezer, strapped them to the shingles which were hurting, found a sash quickly and tied the package to my belly.  I grabbed a bottle of water, two automatic light bulbs I have for such occasions, a battery operated radio, my cell phone and ran down the stairs to the basement, grabbing from the garage on the way my hubby's bike helmet.  The tornado warnings all say to put a helmet on your head in case the upstairs falls into the downstairs or basement and conks you on the head, killing you.  Putting the bike helmet on my head and getting settled in the basement, I started laughing hysterically.  I had visions of myself if the upstairs did fall in on me, with lying here dead and being found with a plastic bag of mushy peas tied around my waist and a bicycle helmet on my head.  I laughed until I cried.
    Then I remembered reading years ago about the woman whose washer was in her basement and she carried a load of clothes down there to wash.  She decided to take off her workout clothes and add them to her load of washing so she striped and added the clothes to the washer.  She spotted her son's football helmet and knew he would need it that afternoon, so she put the helmet on her head since she was carrying the clothes basket back upstairs filled with already folded clothes.  Suddenly the basement door opened and the meter reader walked in.  There she stood, nude with a football helmet on her head.  They stared at each other for a minute and then the meter reader said, "Lady, I don't know what team you play for, but I'll root for your team any day."
     Remembering that story kept me laughing while the tornado sirens blared outside for a long time.  I was still laughing 30 minutes later, still thinking about being found with the bag of mushy peas tied around my belly and the bicycle helmet on my head, as well as thoughts about the football team.  I could feel all stress leave my body from the literal day from hell.  I'm sure it does not sound like not your favorite kind of day, either.
    After the all clear whistle, I went upstairs and deciding to sit in my recliner after looking out of windows and seeing that the wind was still blowing but nothing like the way it was when I was in the basement.  While down there I could hear things hitting my house with a bang.  I saw no visible signs of any big trees blown down so I just decided to enjoy the low blood pressure, the pain free belly as long as I had something cold strapped to my belly, no pain in my lower back from the UTI as long as I sat on the full body vibrator I had put on my recliner.  It was so peaceful. 
    As I sat there I remembered that God said to count it all joy when tribulation comes your way.  Ah, such was the necessary laughter that I experienced.  Then I remembered that God's Instruction Book insinuates one tribulation at a time, not five in one morning, and all of them from hell, definitely not from heaven.  I found out that the joy that came from laughing so hysterically lowered my BP so much that I was tranquil after the storm instead of fearful. 
     God said that if we are joyful during tribulation that it will produce patience in us.  I can see that, because after that day from hell and then laughing at the circumstances worked good things for me.  I will remember to be joyful the next time tribulation comes my way from hell, just hope it is one at a time, not five in the same morning. 
     With the power still out that night, I knew that I had to write this story to encourage other people that what God says to do will work every time.  I wrote this story by hand, no computer with the power out, and I felt like Abraham Lincoln who studied as a child by candle light.  I had a battery powered light bulb that gave me enough light by which to write. 
     Remembering also that Jesus said that in the world we will have tribulation, but He said that we should rejoice during our tribulations because he overcame all the evil in the world which confronted Him, yes, even to crucifixion and death.  That is a promise. I experienced overcoming multiple tribulations that day, not to the extent Jesus did in his life, but knowing that the incidents were sent to defeat me, the gift of joy caused laughter and the laughter defeated all of the bad incidents.
    As I perused my property, there were only small twigs and leaves covering the yard, no problem to clean up.  My huge heavy umbrella by the outdoor tables and chairs was blown out of its heavy iron holder and deposited by the wind only a few inches from the pool.  I would have loved to have seen that huge angel protecting it from ending up in the pool.  Even though I was lacking power until the next day, there was very little inconvenience.  If there was, I didn't notice it because I was tranquil and peaceful, still enjoying periods of laughter at the thought of being found in the basement decked out in the package of mushy peas tied to my waist with the bike helmet on my head. I believe God gave me that vision to cause me to start laughing hysterically, having joy in the midst of several tribulations of that day.
    Oh, yes, there is one other thing that turned out great.  With the power out, the fridge was silent.  Inside the freezer were four Braum's chocolate/caramel ice cream bars rapidly melting.  Somebody had to eat them before they melted.  The good news is that I gave myself permission to indulge after not only surviving the literal day from hell but learning some things about joy and laughter.  The ice cream bars made a great evening meal.  That indulgence topped off the day, and I ate the slightly melted, messy ice cream bars with no guilt at all, just delighted that I could.  Actually the circumstances demanded that I reward myself.  God had rewarded me with joy and laughter.  I like his reward equally as well, if not better.
    The package of peas lost their medicinal effect of helping the pain as they had gotten hot from the feverish blisters.  I had seen a plastic bag of old dried up spaghetti in the freezer.  Before it defrosted I applied it to the shingles blisters.  They weren't particular as long as it's cold.
     My electric power came on the next day.  "All is well," is one of my favorite sayings.  Someone wrote a song that said that,  'It is well with my soul."
     It is well for my soul, for sure.