In case you hadn’t looked at a calendar today, the date is 02-21-20-21. It only lines up that way once – it will never be another 2021, so this is a special day!
On Sunday mornings, since where we are they are by and large still not holding in-person church, we have fallen into a couple of different habits. One, I run off the big Sunday crossword puzzle for Cheri and me to work on across from each other at the dining room table, and then we listen to the reruns of Casey Kasem’s Top 40 songs from some week in the 1980s. We also most Sunday mornings either run out or order in some donuts or other kinds of pastries, since things can be a little more leisurely, especially now that I am retired, and don’t have to travel the tens of thousands of square miles to get to the churches on my district each week. We’ve done donuts, and even caramel rolls, and believe me, they are good! Apparently, the ability of Scandinavians to make sweet pastries is a real plus when living in yearly Ice Age. Yesterday, however, as I was thinking of what we might want to have for breakfast today, my mind drifted off to something different. I did some checking on line, and sure enough, it was possible for us to order, to be delivered and left on our front doorstep, a bunch of huge blueberry muffins with the sugary tops, from our favorite muffin place, Perkins restaurant. Now, the Perkins closest to us is about 6 miles away, which means I could just get in the car on a Sunday morning and drive over there and pick up a load, but there’s something kind of nice about having them delivered, and not have to get in a cold car, and put the mask on, and all that business. So, I thought myself pretty smart, and decided that I would order the muffins yesterday, delivered last evening, and we would have them ready to go as we rolled out of bed. That was the plan. I went on line, found the restaurant, which allowed me to place an order from the convenience of my own office desk. I put in all the information, and my credit card and then sat back and waited for the delivery to happen. It usually takes about a half-hour, although it wasn’t like I was ordering a mushroom and swiss burger, or a bunch of pasta, that would have to be cooked before sending it out. Basically, all they had to do was to reach into the display case, and pull out the requisite number of muffins, put them in the box, and send them on their way. 90 seconds, tops. A half-hour came and went. When it was coming close to an hour with no apparent progress, I decided to call the restaurant, at which time I was pretty sure there would a knock on the door, and the stuff delivered. That’s usually how it happens – it almost makes you wonder if the delivery person is hiding around the corner of the house, waiting for you to make the call, at which time, the store gives the “go” signal, and they rush to the door, drop the food, and run… That didn’t happen this time. Instead, when I called, I was put on hold for about 5 minutes. I understood that, since it’s usually the manager who rings people up at they are done with their meal, and directs the wait staff, and seats the newcomers, and also answers the phone. I’m a patient kind of guy. So after a little bit, she came on the phone, and I carefully explained and then inquired about the status of my order. It was quiet on the line for a moment, and then she began to apologize profusely. Apparently the restaurant had been super busy, and of course they were short-staffed. She then told me that, being as busy as they were, they actually ran out of every kind of muffin they sell. The whole store was a muffin-free zone, and she simply did not have the time to run into the kitchen and pull out some yet-to-be-baked muffins and put them in the oven. Now, I did not know that was also the job of the manager, to bake the muffins, but I began to form the opinion that I really did not want to be a manager at Perkins, because I wasn’t sure what else the leader of the team would have on the job list. I wondered if it might include cleaning the bathrooms, or running the little dustbuster under the table after the toddlers in high chairs had managed to toss the better part of toast and crackers, and scrambled eggs and French fries all over the floor. I could tell she was in a bit of a hurry, so I hatched my plan quickly. “Would you have more muffins tomorrow morning?” “Oh yes – when things settle down, or early tomorrow morning, we’ll bake up a nice bunch of fresh muffins.” So, I explained that we really didn’t need the muffins that night, but wondered if she could just take my order, unfilled then, and roll it over to Sunday morning for delivery. Of course that was no problem, and it would all be fine and the sun would be shining on a beautiful Sunday dawn. I thought it was all settled, when I realized I must have triggered the launch codes for the intercontinental ballistic missile or something. My phone started vibrating and rattling around – actually, it was the text function of the phone. I pulled it up and read nearly a dozen text messages from the food delivery service. Apparently, even though I had ordered the muffins for the first time on the Perkins website, and had called the restaurant directly the second time, Perkins doesn’t deliver food – although their website seemed a bit sketchy about all of that. NO, what they do is take an order, but when it comes to closing the deal, it shoots over to DoorDash or GrubHub, or FoodDudes, or whoever else carries the food from the restaurant to the house, and it all is on their turf, and they take a cut of the fees and profits. So, when I had talked with the manager, and I thought I had moved the order to Sunday, what I had really done was to cancel the Saturday order, which sent the flurry of texts my way. Sahib was not able to deliver the order. Perkins was not able to fill the order. The North Dakota National Guard, and the Highway patrol were not going to be involved in food distribution. It went on and on, and I finally figured my order was cancelled. However – I still had the belief that when I had talked with a human being, she indeed had slid the order to the next day, and all would be fine. We had agreed – I thought – that the muffins (remember they were only blueberry muffins!) were to be delivered at 7:30am to our front door. At 7:50, I decided to call again. Lo and behold, the same manager was working, which made me even more sure that I didn’t want that as a new career. She told me that yes, our muffins were all baked and boxed and ready to go. However, she told me what I knew already after last night’s text storm, that the restaurant doesn’t deliver, but that I would again have to place an order somehow with the delivery folks, which I had never thought I had done before. Well, I will spare you the rest of the complicated details, including the fact that the delivery site told me that the Perkins restaurant was closed at that time, which seems odd, since it is open 24 hours a day, and I had just spoken with the manager… I finally cleared the deck, and went back to the original placing of the order of the Perkins site, and got the same deal and the same hearty congratulations for placing the order, and it would be delivered in about 30 minutes. But not by Perkins, which was indeed open, but not in the mind of the delivery folks. Sure enough, almost exactly a half hour later, there on our doorstep were boxes from our friends at Perkins. I don’t know if it was a “sorry” or just an accident, but when we opened the box, the muffins, instead of being the “normal” Perkins size, were enormous! They were about the size of my fist… We gobbled them down, enjoyed the crossword puzzle, and the Top 40, and it’s actually turning out to be a pretty nice day. I just hope someone realizes and fixes the double charge on our card from exactly the same place, for the same cost, just one day apart… I’m not sure why, but it seems that, perhaps because of CoVid, we are having to slog through a lot to have some very simple things occur. It’s almost as if we have a body-sized face mask on that seems to make everything blurry, or complicated or near-frustratingly crazy. I hope that eventually, this will clear up, and what seems difficult will instead become a bit more reasonable. Part of living in this time is to do so with “loose hands,” not having to control everything that occurs, but instead allowing for errors and mistakes without having everything being ruined or worthless. Remember that things were frustrating before, as well – we just perhaps could handle them a bit better than right now. It will all be well in the end. If it is not yet well – then it is not yet the end… And the muffins really were excellent… Word for the day: biggin. Pronounced simply BIG-un. It’s a silly little word that has been used for a number of definitions. The one we choose for today is from the French beguin, which is believed to arise out of a religious society of women, kind of like lay-nuns, called the Beguines. The artists’ sketches of them contain kind of a funky-looking bonnet that they wore, which then was called the beguin, after their group. Later on, it came to be used to describe any small, tight-fitting child’s cap, usually tied under the skin. We call them bonnets, or just “little hats” but if you want to be fancy, you can always point out a baby, wearing her or his “biggin,” and people will be in awe your vocabularic prowess…
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AuthorAfter 43 years of ministry, Randy Cross lived his "fourth life" and shared about retirement, living boldly and intentionally in our world. To be sure, there was some North Dakota thrown in. Archives
March 2023
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