I’ve been filling in in our church office and really I love it. I did this a year ago and it’s just nice.

Today however, I should have known when we were all ready to leave shortly after 8. I need be at the church around 8:30 and being ready to leave half an hour before is great! Especially on a day when I have an appointment at 1:50, and I’m supposed to be there until around 2:30. Come early…leave early. Yup. Stuff gets done and everyone is happy.

Our pastor came in the office this morning and handed me his sermon notes and talked about my doing something with them. You see if I am doing something I am struck deaf and while I can hear you droning on and on it really isn’t making it to my brain. (Okay, there are times I’m not doing something and have the same malady, I was merely striving to stay away from any form of self-flagellation.)

I finish what I am doing, which at the moment I can’t exactly recall if it was something or nothing or maybe I was wondering how to escape him and get more coffee, and I begin to search for PowerPoint on the computer so I can put together his sermon powerpoint slides. I can’t find it. It’ just isn’t there. So I kill two birds with one stone, take something back to his office and ask him, “Do you have a thumb drive of the PowerPoint for your sermon? I’ve been looking for it on the computer and it isn’t there.” And yes, because he was looking at me like I had suddenly sprouted a beard and a humb back, I babbled on and on and on. He stops me and says, “But you aren’t doing the slides.”

And it hits me. All I have to do is the outline. I have to prepare the outline for the bulletin insert. That’s it.  I had just spent untold seconds and, more importantly brain cells I will never get back, on the wrong thing. I should have seen it coming.

In my excitement, or in my talking-with-my-hands, I laid down the paper I had brought in with me. Dan picked it up and asked me if I had gotten anything in the bulletin regarding it and I quickly assured him I hadn’t but I would get “right on it.”

Now this man had just watched me babble about something I *knew* I didn’t have to do, and okay, he knows me and so he asked, “do you need to take this with you?”

And yes, to be honest, my first thought was, “Take what?” Thankfully though my brain engaged before my mouth and I said I thought it would be an excellent idea.

That was this morning. This afternoon….oh my. I am on my way to the mailbox when I noticed it was lightly raining, and our other pastor’s pickup window was down. I get the mail before I go over to his pickup to roll the window up. Do you know he has one of those new fangled pickups that just has a button you push to roll up the window! It’s true.

I learned something about those fancy windows, they don’t roll up with man-power. No sirree. You have to have the key and I didn’t have the key. So I head back inside to get his keys and as soon as I am in, the downpour starts. I hustle down the hall to the office I know he is in. On my way, I pass his office, his door is standing open and his keys are dangling in the lock.

I make a mental note of his keys being in the door in his office, and walk two doors down and say, “Jake, could I get your keys?”

“My keys?” and he’s patting his pockets.

“Yes, it’s raining and your window is down.”

“That was a dumb thing to do.” still patting. Now it takes me a minute to realize he isn’t referencing me with that statement.

“Would they be the keys in your office door?”

“Oh. Are my keys still in my office door?”

“Yes they are. I’ll just grab them…..”

Our youth director steps in about this time and says, “Jake, I need your keys.” I assure him I’m on top of it and Jake says to me, I’m sure remembering one other time I used his keys, “It’s the small black one.”

I grab his keys, dash outside in the pouring rain, hop in his pickup and then realize, ” It’s raining, his window is down, and you just plopped your buns on his seat.”

I turn the key on, get the window rolled up (if it’s an automatic window do you still say “I rolled up the window” since there is nothing to roll? Just curious….), dash back inside (in the pouring rain) and replace his keys exactly where I found them.

Okay, how is it possible for someone to make a mental note and even mentally say, “oh look there are his keys” and walk two doors down and ask for his keys?

Tonight I’m making cheesecake. I read the recipe and realized I need “just a couple of things” so I dashed off to get them. As I was making the cheesecake I saw I would need sour cream, and I had none. I saw I would need unsweetened cocoa..and I had none.

And just think, it’s not even Monday.