Originally posted 11 February 2008

No new word on the murder. [edit: The murder of my cousin that took place in Smalltown, USA.]  It would be nice to hear something concerning key evidence, suspects, leads...


    The world distracts us from what is really important, the preacher said.  The world distracts us from God.  I suppose it does.  How could it not?  The world distracts me from my own life.  My children distract me from my work.  My work distracts me from my children.  If only there were more time in a day...  How can one make the most of a day when he is at work?  How can one dedicate himself to his family when he sees his coworkers more often?  And in all this, how does one make time for God?
    It is easy for God to make time for us, He's God.  Time is His to do with what He pleases.  Stop it, start it, rewind it, pause it.  For God a second could last a billion years, more, but for man a second is how long it takes to change the channel, to make a bad decision, to regret and forget to cry.  I go to church and they pass the plate and it hurts my heart to know that if I truly gave a tithing, a tenth of my income, that I could starve.  I give a bit more than one percent, and I don't even feel good about it.  I put money in the bell ringer's bucket and in the collection bowl for the blanket fund and I drop change in the charity box at McD's and all I feel is poorer.  "Give a dollar to fund cancer research?"  Sure.  Will I regret that dollar the day before pay-day and I'm not sure if I have enough gas to get to work?
    Yeah, I don't manage my money well, admittedly, but I fail to grasp why it must be so difficult.  I don't understand why everything in life must be a compromise.
    If I must make compromises everywhere else, why not with God?  If I have to choose between paying old bills and new bills, buying food or buying gas, getting a book with which I might better myself or making my car payment, why should God get an exception to this?
    I do not feel God's hand in my life, because I shrug it off.
    I do not feel God's love in my heart, because I have closed it off.
    I do not find God's wisdom in my mind, because I have made it up, for the moment.
    But I want to.
    I want to so badly.

    My children are staying with me this week, all week and that makes me so happy.  And so sad.  I have to go shopping tonight because they were there for supper and I didn't expect that.  Now I need to buy more food.  Enough for three for a week.  My house is a disaster area and will remain so until the kids have grown up or gone back to their Mom's.  It has been so long since I have done this that I hardly know what to do.  I had nearly every dish clean Friday night.  I now have around ten clean dishes.  I don't know how this happens, but I think it is about time to invest in paper plates.
    The boy next door spent the night with Howard this past weekend.  I have a bad feeling about this.  I do not want to, but I do.  I do not know what his home life is like, and honestly do not want to, but his mother, whom I've never met, let him spend the night at my house.  They are not "from around here" but I have a terrible reputation in Podunk.  I do find it strange that she would allow her child to stay over in a house occupied by a madman who happens to be a perfect stranger.  She wrote a note.  My son very much wanted the boy to spend the night so I, very much against my better judgment, allowed it.  I fed him, but there is more here than that simple statement can capture.
    "So... are you going to feed me dinner (or perhaps it was, "Am I going to eat here?")?"
    "Nnno.  We're going to eat shortly here, why don't you go eat and come back?"
    He paused, just for a moment, and said, "Well, I don't really need to eat right now."
    "You don't?"
    "Actually, I don't even want dinner."
    "Oookay.  Well, I'm doing dishes, so why don't you guys (My son was there, too) go play?"
    I thought about that exchange and how strange it seemed.  From "Going to feed me?" to "I don't even want dinner" in less than three minutes.  Again, I know nothing about this boy's  home life (he's about five years older than my oldest) and don't want to, but something was not right.  I had never actually given the go ahead for staying over, my mind was made up but I'd not spoken my decision, yet.  There was still time to back out, to send him home, and I desperately wanted to, but I couldn't.  I don't know, call it paranoia or women's intuition or fatherly instinct...  The idea of turning the boy away, as uncomfortable as he made me, was somehow unthinkable.  I dried my hands and found my oldest and the neighbor boy playing very nicely together.  My oldest does not often play well with others.
    I said to them, "Going to the store, real quick.  Don't burn the house down while I'm gone," and to my son I said, "and stay out of anything you know you're not supposed to be in, okay?"  My son nodded, and voiced an affirmative and the other boy sort of stammers, all nervous and says he wouldn't even know how to burn down a house.  He was disturbingly serious.  I told them I was joking, just stay out of trouble, I'll be right back.
    I took my youngest and ran to the store and came back with two frozen pizzas.  Had a bit of trouble at the store (long story, short ending:  my bank was not meeting my expectations of expedient distribution of deposited funds) but got home and they were playing in the kids' room and, apparently, having a great time.  I do not like strangers in my house, and I especially do not like it when I am not there and children are no exception to my paranoia.
    At any rate, I went back to my dishes, and called the older boys into the kitchen.  I told them that we'd be having pizza.  The neighbor boy thanked me, I thought, too emphatically.  I made two pepperoni pizzas and some shells and cheese and got out some chips.  The neighbor boy ate very well.  He told me later that all he had eaten previously that day was a Pop Tart.  I just came out and asked him if everything was alright at home, that I was concerned.  He said everything was fine, his mom this, his mom that.  My son asked about the boy's father.  He told us his father wasn't around anymore.  He told us that his father had choked his mother and that he had broken his father's nose with a punch in the face.  He said he liked me, that I was nice.  My sense of danger is only increasing now.
    I made popcorn and we watched The Matrix.  I kept pausing the movie because my son and the other boy had a hard time not talking during the show, but eventually made clear that we were watching a movie and that was what we were doing.  The neighbor boy fell asleep half-way through the film.  I don't know why, but I thought, at first, that he was faking it.  I am fairly certain, now, that he was not.  It was shortly before 9pm.  My youngest fell asleep in my lap and my oldest had to be ordered to sleep.  I sent the boy home in the morning.  I didn't give him breakfast, felt sort of bad about it, but I had to stop somewhere.  He left, we ate, showered, dressed and went to church.  My youngest was a total maniac and I loved him for it.  It had been an uneasy night and I needed the decompression badly.
    That evening, the neighbor boy knocked at my door and said, "My mom wondered if you could give me a ride to Pizza Man."
    "What," I practically demanded.  I was incredulous.  My cousin was there with her boyfriend with whom I was playing video games and she said she would take him.  Went to leave and he said that the food hadn't been ordered, yet, but he would be back.  She took him and returned without him.
    "That was weird," says she.
    "How so," I inquire.
    "I think he was trying to get me to buy a pack of cigarettes for his mom, kept talking about how she was getting cigarettes from his aunt, who'd left"
    "He was probably trying to get you to buy a pack for him," I responded, but not out of spite.  The evening prior he was questioning me about what I would do if I caught my kids smoking (Make them eat the remaining cigarettes, or a pack of mine if he had only the one, for the record) and told me how he preferred cigars.  I told him smoking will kill him and he said he was going to quit after the cigars were gone.  I wondered how he'd gotten them in the first place, but didn't press the issue.
    I have this feeling that I have, by being nice, opened a can of worms.  I feel, somehow, that I have introduced more chaos into my life.  I feel I should meet this boy's mother, and simultaneously it is the last thing I want to do.
    There is something not right about this boy, but it sounds as if there is good cause for it.
    More than ever, I am concerned for my children and what this world may make of them.