So, today is my birthday. I almost forgot about it. I don’t think I’m at the point where I could truly forget totally, but my week at school was such that, literally, I had no conception of time outside of ‘do I have my lesson ready for tomorrow’. I really didn’t have a lot of time to plan any sort of party, but a week ago the ward announced that we were going to have a big bbq at the bishop’s house as well as the Philadelphia Temple Groundbreaking on that day, so I thought I was good as far as parties.  The bbq ended up being cancelled and the groundbreaking was a broadcast… so I ended up not really having a party or celebrating my birthday in traditional ‘party’ fashion… but hey, I decided precisely four years ago that, in an ideal world, birthdays should be a time to turn outward, not inward. So all I did that day was attend the broadcast, help someone move… and, one thing that–to me–really was a party. I cleaned my room. And organized it. In a radically different way.

Story.

The cleaning and new organization would not have been possible without the help of several people: My roommates Dan and Eric, a neighbor of our’s, and God. I’ll explain: I live in a room that is 7′ by almost 9′. That’s pretty small (it is actually a closet that happens to have a window), but I find it adequate, and I have it as my mission to save money while I’m paying for my master’s degree (which is no small task in a city like Philadelphia, especially when it comes to housing). So I like my room, but it is small. SO, I bought myself a birthday present: a loft. It’s a bunkbed without the bottom bunk. It puts my over 5′ above the ground–saving all of that room my bed used to take up!! At least, that was my idea. The problem is that shipping here in Philly is a pain: they ship during the day and all of my roommates and I work during the day…if it doesn’t fit in the mail slot (a bit thicker and wider than a VHS tape), you have to plan on picking it up. Problem is, my loft box is rather large, irregularly-shaped, and 100 pounds… and my not having a car here in Philly complicates things substantially. So, I knew it was going to be delivered on Friday, and, because of past delivery attempts, knew that I get home only about 35 minutes after it would be dropped off. So I thought I would risk it: I would leave a note for the FedEx guy to leave it at the door. I was told that leaving packages on your doorstep is not smart in Philly, but I thought the size and weight would make me safe–surely–for a mere 30 minutes until I arrived?

Well, I walk up to our row home, no package in sight.

I swallowed, and went inside, hoping that, by some chance happening, one of my roommates had come home and received it. No one home, no box anywhere in the house. I looked up the shipping info online and it said it had been delivered.
…
…
I frantically called FedEx to tell them what had happened, and they listened unsympathetically. I had bet and lost.
…or so I thought.
This morning, right before my roommate and I left for the groundbreaking, our neighbor knocks on our door and tells us that she has my package: some people saw it delivered and began loading it in their truck when she said that the package was hers, they just delivered it to the wrong house. Cluuuuuuuuuuutch! So, end of story: that was a huge load off my mind, and my roommates helped me set it up later that day (read: did all the work), and it was a grand birthday present after all: it roughly doubled the size of my room. God is sooooooooo good to me.

The end. Except that school is still really, really, hard. But I’m telling myself to focus on the good, and, funny enough, even though some things are outrageously ridiculous, there is plenty of good to find. 🙂