I Got Tickled

Yesterday wasn't a good day for me, I think a lot of you have guessed that, seeing as I've gotten a slew of ''Hey, what's wrong, don't lock it all away inside, and we are praying" encouragements. So thanks for that

Today I was reflecting on something that happened earlier in the week, and I have decided that during this rather gloomy time, that the Lord has taken to not only giving me kisses each day, but that on some rather hard days, He has taken to gently tickling me as well.

This Wednesday, was such a day. Now because we are in close proximity to a school that is having Wayne Thomas Batson come and do an author night, my store was asked to procure the paperback copy of The Door Within lost chapters edition. (Shame on you if you don't have your own copy yet!) because that was the one thing they didn't order.

So, I ran around like a mad hatter on April 25th, got all things lined up and in their proper order for the 150 copies of The Door Within to come to the store. The very nice sales rep on Thomas Nelson's end put a rush on the shipping to make sure they were in my store by the 4th so the school could pick them up on the 7th and they'd be available for purchase on the 8th. So far so good. On Wednesday of this week (for those counting along that would be the 2nd) 11 boxes arrived from a gift company, 1 box from a distributor of books, 1 box from a music company, and 5 boxes from Thomas Nelson. I was not laughing at that point, because the 11 boxes were large, heavy, and full of Christmas product that we weren't suppose to get at my location, they were to be sent to the main store and on top of this, they weren't suppose to ship till September. So, wrong location, wrong month, large headache for me. Thankfully the owner was up there and she told me what needed to be done seeing as my branch doesn't have a manager just several senior staff and I was on duty when this happened. Anyway, back to the ticking. The tickling happened after the rather stressful morning, after the Bible Study was over, after I had a chance to fill my grumbling stomach, after the mad rush of customers.

I had to check in and front-list the Nelson order (150 copies of The Door Within Lost Chapters Edition will not do so themselves--though it would be nice if books would just sign themselves into the store and we could eliminate this step) and part one of doing so was to unbox and count the books.

Now paper is heavy, 1 box of The Door Within Lost Chapters Edition weighed 15 pounds, and the other 4 which were all the same size and larger than the first weighed 32 pounds a piece. (For those still counting that's 143lbs of Door Within goodness) So like any good store clerk, I slit open the boxes and began disemboweling them rather than picking up and moving 32 pounds at a time. Well, you can imagine that 150 copies of a book takes up less room inside boxes than outside boxes. I had them piled on the floor in rows, counting and stacking as I went. And I kept thinking of the scene in the book where Robbie and Aidan are making a fort. . .and there are all those lovely books that I'm. . .making a fort with and I just lost it. Right there, in the middle of the floor with customers gently stepping around and over me and the books which were stacked in small towers all over the floor. I howled. And one day, I hope to come across some hapless clerk howling among piles of my most recent tome, for similar if slightly punch drunk reasons.

Yeah, that was most definitely a tickle. And I needed a tickle this week. Desperately.