God is testing me.

So I'm driving along in my automobile, my doggy beside me at the wheel.  

Not really.  Gracie Lou wasn't with me.  I had a couple of errands to do and it's too warm to leave her in the car.

Anyway.  I'm driving along and all of a sudden, I see these 2 men having some sort of altercation at the Bus Stop.  At first, I thought maybe it was a couple of college dudes wrestling around but as I got closer, it was apparent this was not the case and at least one of the participants appeared to be one of the many mentally ill transients that are always around.  They were pushing and shoving and yelling at each other and it looked like they were going to come to blows and I didn't know if I should dial 911 and then one of them picked up his pack and his hat and screamed a couple of expletives that *I* can't say for another 39 days (not that I'm counting) and stumbled off and I was all, "Whoa!" 

I had been coming back from attending an estate sale when this happened and I was empty handed because even though the entire contents of this house was for sale, the now-deceased homeowner had a houseful of junk.  And this was a house in one of our fair city's most exclusive neighborhoods, too.

And when I say the entire contents of the house was for sale, I mean EVERYTHING was for sale.  There were rusted cans of food that had to be at least 30 years old that had price tags on them.  Half-used bottles of old creme rinse.  Do they even make "creme rinse" any more?  Open boxes of cotton swabs.  Used pens and pencils.  A half-empty roll of toilet paper.  Anything that should have been thrown away for health and sanitary reasons had a price tag, even if it was for five cents.

A year and a half ago, a lady on my street killed herself and the county took possession because of unpaid property taxes (or something like that) and the house has been vacant ever since.  The neighbors have been good about mowing the lawn and parking their cars in the driveway so that it looked like someone lived there but the house itself has been locked up tight.

On Monday, a crew showed up and started getting the house cleaned up and cleaned out.  Turns out there was quite a bit of the dead owner's stuff still in there.  Which was kind of creepy.  And sad.

So I'm one day in to my "no-cussing for Lent" assignment and I'm doing...okay.  When I saw the Bum Fight I was all, "Holy Poo!" because I couldn't say the S-word the way I normally do.

It's like God is trying to test me by throwing curve balls such as Bum Fights at me.

I must stay strong.


I can do this.