Today just got off to a bad start. Ordinarily I keep to myself on Sunday mornings while I'm getting ready. I don't make breakfast, I don't chat up my children, I don't make small talk with OEH. My brain is Working, even if my body is drinking a cup of coffee, or putting on makeup, or trying to convince my hair to settle on a look somewhere in that delicate place between "12-year-old boy" (flat and stuck to my head) and "80's mall rat" (two words: bubble bangs). The 80's were winning this morning, by the way.

But I had to go and blow it. I had to complain about my car and how it's been acting up this week. (I had to have my car jump-started twice this week. I hate it when the car acts up.) This very quickly snowballed into a conversation with OEH in which one of my most prominent, quirky flaws was capitalized: I suck at car maintenance. I always have the best of intentions. I even purchased a maintenance contract when I bought my latest car--I was determined to take very good care of this one. But I have skipped the last three oil changes. Sigh...

I know, I know. Believe me, you couldn't tell me anything about this that I don't already know. I'm embarrassed and ashamed that I have been blessed with a new car, less than two years old, and this is how I've treated it. Mea culpa.

But did I really have to listen to the whole breakdown of the possible consequences in the car on the way to church--where I have to preach and lead worship? By the time we got there, I was angry, all right.

Then I walked into the vestibule to find that the toys and equipment from the nursery--which was being insulated and drywalled this week--were piled not just in the vestibule, but in front of the elevator, completely blocking it. Not to mention filling the stairwell. This was not done by anonymous workers, who would perhaps not realize that the elevator and stairwell would be needed on Sunday, but by members of the congregation.

That is when I had, as Songbird would say, a little nutty.

The problem with having a little nutty in a small church is that there is no place to go that I cannot be seen by church members except a bathroom stall. Sure, I have a lovely study at church--with a big glass window in the door, at my insistence. There is just no graceful place to seethe at church.

I'm thinking it may be just as well. It is a very bad thing for a Pastor to have a little nutty on Sunday morning. The 'nowhere to hide' factor necessitated my getting my act together--and quick. So I did.

And then we took up where we left off in the car on the way home. But at least I didn't have to get the car jump started to get home, although I guess that would have been poetic justice.