Positive Post Tuesday - My car

Last week I sent my friend Laura this link I was pretty positive that I could totally beat her at that game (except for maybe the molar).

My life is going at about a million miles an hour right now. I started a website (that very few people meet deadlines for), I'm transitioning out of one job and into another job. I'm going to be moving homes soon. I've spent the last 5 of 6 weekends out of Houston. All of these things are great and amazing and have me super excited for life, but they're also weighing down on my ability to lead a life.

When the going gets tough, my car and my room fall to pieces.

I had nothing really redeeming to say about the state of my car when I handed it off to Laura on Wednesday. She needed a car. I was leaving town (yet again). I think I called her sometime the next day to let her know that I was fairly certain there was perishable food in the back seat that she might want to throw out. Lest it start to smell.

Lets fast foward shall we? Laura picked me up from the airport last night and I was starting to have a minor panic attack about where I was going to put my huge suitcase. I have not seen the bottom of my trunk since last November. Seriously.

When she pulled up and opened the door I about fell over. Clean. Ridiculously clean. Cleaner than I think I have seen this car since the day my dad bought it from enterprise four years ago.

There are no words for what this will do for my week.

Lets be honest. My schedule is continuously getting more crazy, not less. Cleaning my car was not high on the priority list. Things that effect other people (my students, my co-workers, my friends) take a much higher priority than things that effect me (eating, cleaning my car, doing my laundry, cleaning my room). I still can't believe she did this for me.

I feel like it might sound to all of you that this was a simple scrub down the outside and throw some trash away. Oh no friends. It took her four hours to clean the car out. She did a load of laundry with the amount of clothing she found in the trunk. There were easily five bags in my car. She also scrubbed my steering wheel clean of grime. I didn't even know it was grime. I just thought it was that color.

She started a list so I could beat the lady above, but quit because it would have taken her an hour just to do the listing.

Here's a mini-list:
-bag of gooey marshmallows
-more pens than I can count on my fingers and toes
-37 loose CDs
-three pairs of shoes
-two soccer uniforms
-IKEA carpet
-5 3-ring binders
-two boxes of kleenex
-latex gloves
-a bike helmet
-a box of granola bars
-three packets of oatmeal
-an over-sized purple tennis ball
-my screen printer

Oh and the list goes on. After she cleaned my car and picked me up from the airport, she took me to my house where we moved every thing upstairs and she cleaned my closet. I haven't seen the bottom of my closet floor in some time either.

I'll tell you something. I'm one for great gifts. Anything from Apple. Earrings or bags of any kind. Chocolate. All of these things are wonderful, but this act of service is one of the best gifts I have ever gotten. In taking the time to clean up my wreck of a car and living space, she has done what I didn't have time to do for myself: create a clean and wonderful space to be in. I could not be more happy.

Laura, you are truly awesome. And by awesome, I mean totally awesome.