Keeping my wits and my nits about me

Well, it's been quite a week.

We have been in our new house seven days and I have been rediscovering the joys of domestic mundanities. I had given up in the student house. As the weeks got ever closer to our leaving, the satisfaction of cleaning a bathroom that was never ever going to look clean, no matter how hard I scrubbed, well and truly wore off.

Everything is so shiny here - it all being newly glossed and 'magnoliafied'.

...And life beyond the institution (theological) feels rather 'grown-up' - I cook my own meals again and I feel more like a mum. I have caught up with the girls and enjoyed doing things like IKEA shopping and cake-baking in a way less polluted with simultaneous thinking about clever conclusions and how to explain an interpretation without using the phrase '...and in the Greek.'

Today, however, has been a day including one nit-wit, my wits and lots of nits - all in all - it's been a weird one.

We are trying to buy a second car. I have a spec and at the first car show room, I beheld that spec, black and shiny, on the forecourt and in budget.

We were interested.

I was even ready to take it for a test-drive, which I always have to seriously gear myself up for (ha - good pun!)-
'Will I remember what to do?'
'Can I work those gears?'
'What if we crash?'
I can be pretty cool about most things but directions and driving is not one of them.

Everything was going well and I was imagining myself handing over my cheque but then we noticed that the front and rear door on the driver's side were misaligned. They just didn't match up and the driver's side didn't close with the same sound as the passenger side - that lovely clunk-click was missing.

'Ah-ha, must have been in a collision,' we said.

There was a pause. The salesman inspected the doors, paused again and then looked us both in the eyes and declared his verdict. This would also explain the price drop.

'It's the wind, the wind,' he said. 'Yep, you'll find it's the wind that has done that...yep...wind.'

He walked us to his desk inside.

Now the crazy thing is, we asked if he would check the service history of the car.

He proceeded to and told us about new alloys and a check on an indicator, a private plate a few years ago...there was nothing about a collision.

To cut a long story short we did not buy the car.

But the thing is, what we should have questioned was not the validity of the service history; there could have been a collision and the car could have been sorted without this getting recorded. We should have questioned this man for selling cars in a top dealership which could not withstand wind! We should have asked him for advice about how to drive the aforesaid vehicle through a gale. We might have even asked him whether we could test-drive the car again but only in conditions that were non-windy, after all we didn't want to see doors coming in on us or falling off in squally and tempestuous conditions.

We left bemused and amused at the sales pitch we had experienced.

We returned home, thanking God we know to have our wits about us, to find nits about us: correction - not us precisely but daughter number one. If you can 'come of age' as a mother - this has to be one of the those bar mama-mitzvah moments.

My daughter has long, thick hair past her shoulders. She spent a considerable amount of time laughing with me, as she sat on the shower floor, about the various personalities of the nits (not too many) that were enjoying life at the top of her head. We applied copious amounts of conditioner and combed and combed until we got every last little critter out. In a weird sort of way it became a rather delightful bonding experience, so much so that my other daughter hopes that she will develop nits overnight so that she can share in the frivolities. I was half-tempted to say that she could probably trust God would deliver on this one, if that was her prayer, but I am not sure about the theology of that one, so I left this unsaid.

...so the girls survived their school visit, we nearly outwitted the salesman and the nits did not quite outwit us - parish ministry is just going to have to happen alongside all this other stuff that is life beyond theological college. Bring it on!