The Waiting Place
Nobody hears much from me. I don’t know what is happening, what will happen, when things will happen … So, I keep my mouth closed. I want a sure foundation from which to make my choices and plan my future. Lacking that, I have found myself in this “waiting place” for far too long.
Dr. Seuss describes my situation best as I sit in “a most useless place. The Waiting Place …”
“…for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting. No! That’s not for you! Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying.” (Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go)
And we will escape. In fact, in many ways we have escaped. We are living, we are enjoying. We are growing and learning and loving. I have learned to enjoy the moment. Enjoy what I have now. Yes, I am still frustrated by the lack of planning and preparing I can do from here, but I refuse to allow that frustration strip me of my happiness. When the last fire occurred and I was still trying to process what it meant, someone extended their condolences and used the phrase that my life was ruined. But even in that moment I was able to stop them. This is not my life. It is merely a moment in my life. And yes, it is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. It will be hard to start over again. But this is such a small moment in the lives of me and my family (not to mention the eternal perspective).
Elder Dallin H Oaks gave a devotional address at BYU recently. He stated, “The Future is always clouded with uncertainties … While some abandon progress, you of faith should hope on and press on with your education, your lives, and your families.” And I feel like I am doing just that. I try to focus on the blessings we have here. I am trying to utilize the opportunities available to us while we are here.
The children love being here near family. Grandma and Grandpa have adjusted to our noise level and we love being near each other. Each child has a their own sleepover with the other set of grandparents. We have cousins over at least 4 times a week highlighted with sleepovers and on hand babysitting. There are gymnastics classes, basketball leagues, Zumba classes, track, scouts, young women, activity days, etc. The kids are enjoying school. There are so many opportunities available at these larger schools that just wasn’t an option at our rural school.
And so though “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;” (2 Cor 4:8-9). We, the Jensen family, will continue to “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men” (2 Nephi 31:20). ”
Coming Soon: Thoughts on Piracy!
Blogging Issues … when your ISP sucks
So Julie and I started this blog to document the what we are up to, whether that is a journey onto a boat, or a journey back to the farm. One of the necessities for keeping up a blog though is good internet connection. We realize that might be spotty on the ocean, but surely not here in Pleasant Grove, Utah, right?
Wrong!
You remember this, right?
The last few days almost made think that dial up sound would be an improvement! On Monday morning I tried to login to write something about our running events. But to my chagrin I got a page telling me “Hmmm, we can’t reach this page” when I tried the link in my Favorites for logging in.
“I must have linked the wrong page,” I thought to myself. So I manually typed into the address bar the URL for the admin login. Same result… ‘Hmmm, we can’t reach this page.”
Well now I think it must be a problem with the host servers. So I get onto their page and start a chat with their Tech Support. This isn’t fantastic, because they are obviously from India and had only a tentative grasp of English (not racist I swear, the stats page for the blog showed views from India as they were trying to work it out). The Techie tells me that the server is working fine and that she can access the site just fine. She tells me to try another browser. Same result… except when I hit refresh it magically works.
I’m happy again and things work just fine.
Until Tuesday. Tuesday morning brings the same problem. But I come across it only about 10 minutes before I need to leave for an appointment at the VA, so I just ignore it and leave, expecting that I’ll have to work it out when I get home. Fast forward a few hours. I get home and try to login and … voila’ … it works just fine.
Wednesday does basically the same thing. Page works just fine in the morning, doesn’t work at lunchtime, I wait about 30 minutes and try again and it works. Frustrating, right? I have an on-again, off-again server issue?!?
Yesterday (Thursday), same story only this time there is no on-again. Worked just fine when I posted in the morning, but sometime between then and 3pm it stopped entirely. When it didn’t just magically start working again after about 2 hours I got on with Tech Support, again, to find out what in the world the problem could be.
Well, Techie from India has no clue. She sends me different links to try, has me use different browsers, has me try a different device (cell phone), all to no avail. She then says I must have a faulty Plugin and that I’ll need to deactivate it to get things to work. I ask her how I’m supposed to do that if I can’t login? She’s lost and transfers me to someone different. This person tries all the same things, but insists that things appear to be working just fine on their end and can’t account for why multiple devices and browsers all fail to find the server. She suggests I try clearing the cached data in the browser (which I didn’t know how to do) but the moment I hit the button to clear it screen we are chatting in freezes up. I had to close it, log back into their site, and start all over.
Well, this third person (gender neutral name) asks, “can you try to login with a different internet connection?” To which I reply, “would you like me to leave you now, drive to the library and check, and then come back?” She says not to do that, but comes to the conclusion that it must be a problem with the ISP (Internet Service Provider). The problem isn’t my computer, because other devices here don’t work either (and I can obviously get online), nor is it the server because all three of the techies can access it just fine on their separate devices (and show no server issues). The conclusion being that the internet being provided to this house must be the issue, and I need to contact them.
Well before I do that I DO run down to the library and… I can login just fine. No issues finding or loading the blog pages. Which means that for some reason unknown to me, the ISP is occasionally allowing access to my blog, and occasionally they aren’t. If any of you computer gurus have a better explanation (and preferably something I can do about it) then I would love to hear it.
Unfortunately I have no faith that the ISP here at my in-laws (Veracity) will be able to do anything. They provide the worst internet service I’ve ever had. Blake (Julie’s Dad) uses them not only for internet but to host his website (Radical Glow fishing tackle), and is on the phone with them almost every week to get some issue resolved.
What I’ve realized is that if I am just patient enough that eventually the ISP will be able to find the server. What I’m not clear on is why in the world it would occasionally not be able to find it anyway.
If you have an idea, feel free to share it with me in the comments.