The Car Alarm Saga
This happened a few times at first but randomly became more and more frequent. We’d look out the window to see neighbors gathered around but no one knew who the car belonged to. This went on for not one, not two, not three, but SEVEN DAYS. The worst of which was during the middle of the night on Wednesday from 2:00 - 4:00 a.m. the alarm went off almost constantly. Jaden and I turned on all fans in our room for background noise and grabbed our AirPods and blasted piano music to try to get back to sleep. It was miserable! I was so bugged I called 311 and left a message reporting it as a noise ordinance violation. I wasn’t the only one who was upset by it because when we woke up the next morning so groggy and looked out the window to see people had put notes on the car. And yet we still did not see any sign of an owner.
For some sick reason the most frequent times the alarm would go off was during the night. We could not figure out how the battery wasn’t dead in the car yet. Finally one night a week after the initial alarms went off I stumbled to the window and saw a cop car parked outside and an officer walking around investigating it. The car was gone the next morning and we have had no issues since. As obnoxious as it was we really just hope the owner is found and is ok.
Other than that the only other horrifically annoying occurence this week was taking my first finance exam. Between a crazy work week and juggling a class that is pretty much Greek to me, plus lack of sleep from the car alarm I was so nervous and jittery for my exam. I finally decided to just take it late Saturday night because I had to teach Relief Society the next morning and just wanted the exam to be over with. It was honestly the hardest test I have ever taken. 3 weeks of condensed knowledge no notes available except for a formula list provided within the test. It was the first test I ever took using an online proctoring service that records you taking the test to monitor for cheating. I never had to use this type of service during my undergrad so I was worried about that. That paired with the overall stress from the unknowns of the exam and my utter lack of confidence in the material made me jittery. And when I get super stressed I get clumsy. And this night was no different. After doing my required room scan before the test began I sat down at my desk with my computer and immediately knocked the power strip with my foot cutting off all power from my computer and turning off the WiFi. I was SOOO worried that it was going to disqualify me and I’d fail the exam and the class. But luckily I was able to sign on struggle through the test and by 3:00 a.m. I had reached a point where I spent the last few minutes of the exam calculating how many answers I was completely confident were right and after I got above 50% I hit submit. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when my score immediately appeared: 56%.
I have never, I repeat NEVER gotten a score like that before. Part of me was embarrassed that I actually passed and I didn’t deserve to pass. Another part of me was just so relieved to have it over with. Jaden was so sweet and had waited up and watched a movie so he could hear how it went. He was over the moon that I had passed. He’s been such a trooper these past few weeks as I’ve tried to learn how to juggle new classes and busy days of work. He’s cooked, cleaned, done laundry and made treats and I couldn’t be more grateful for him. A 56% would have nearly killed me in high school but at this stage of the game I recognize that I just don’t have the time to do school like some of the other students so if it’s barely passing that gets me through this class I’ll take it. I’ll still put in the time and work as hard as I can but like one of my new friends that is also in this program always says, “good enough is good enough.”
A few short hours after that exam we got up and headed to church and I finally got to teach the lesson on the talk I had listened to over and over for weeks from Elder Andersen. I am really grateful I took time to prepare in advance because I had no time to prepare the week before because I was so busy trying to stay afloat in my classes. The fact that they had a group project and exam due in the same week will forever be cruel to me but I survived.
Relief Society went really well I divided up everyone into groups and assigned everyone a separate story from Elder Andersen’s talk and had them discuss together and share their insights with the group. I especially wanted them to focus on the fact that each of the people in the story were pretty ordinary but through small and simple things they brought to pass extraordinary things. We shared our insights together and I left them with the challenge to choose something small and simple to work on and look for small and simple lessons in the upcoming general conference sessions.
There were several ladies after the lesson that came up to me and commented that normally they really didn’t like group activities but they really enjoyed it. I’ll say it over and over again but it’s the insights and testimonies of people who share that bring the spirit to a lesson. It’s been a really amazing thing to witness.
At the very end of the lesson I shared an excerpt from one of my very favorite children’s novels “Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed” about a little girl who by picking and secretly delivering a basket of blueberries to her elderly neighbor starts a ripple effect that changes the world, “the world was changed! And thousands and millions and billions agreed it was all because one ordinary day, Ordinary Mary did a perfectly ordinary stunningly earthshaking, totally extraordinary deed!”
No matter how imperfect we are (even if we get 56% on tests), no matter what difficult things happen to us (car alarms going off all night) we all have the capacity to do small and simple deeds that make great impacts in the lives of more people than we will ever realize. I know that from the depths of my soul!
- Flowers starting to bloom
- Jaden made dinner and cleaned the house while I studied and took my test
- Talking to Bridge on pday
- It was World Down Syndrome day when you wear colorful socks to honor and celebrate the extra chromosome (that look like socks) that Hayes and other DS kids have
- Walking in Bath and Body to pick up my online order of soap and just thinking of mom
- Had a good discussion in relief society on Elder Andersen’s talk I’ve been studying for weeks
- A sign from mom coming in handy when I needed a reminder to doubt my doubts
- Actually passing my first finance exam and helping complete another group project
- Decorating for Easter
- Figuring out a new way to work out during work. Every hour pull out a slip of paper from the jar and do whatever it says in it. Gets me up and moving from sitting and standing at my desk all day
- Waking up to continuous car alarms
- Bombing my exam
- Feeling so stressed and lost about finance
- If you have a sound ordinance complaint call 311 not 911 at least for here in Pittsburgh
- I can do hard things
- Good enough is good enough
- Out of small things proceedeth that which is great
- I have such an amazing support network
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