Edge of Your Seat Fun for All Ages

You've played it before... ever-so-carefully removing a wooden block from low in the structure and replacing it on top. In college, we turned it into a drinking game: each block had some silly "truth or dare" or an amount of alcohol you were supposed to imbibe written on it in sharpy, and if you knocked the tower over, you had to kill your drink. Ah, Jenga... you've brought joy to umm... thousands(?).

As I was killing time on Amazon at work one day last week, I came across my next fictional indulgence: Lucky Dog by Mark Barrowcliffe. I love being able to preview the first few pages of the book before I commit to buying it. Granted, you can't always judge a book by chapter 1, but it at least gives you an idea. As I was reading the introductory pages of Lucky Dog, I ran across something that gave me pause, and is finally resulting in this post on the blog. The main character's mother has just been buried (earlier in the day):

"I could have done with a break that afternoon, from difficulties, from stress, from other people's problems and from my own. God, however, occasionally plays Jenga with our souls, seeing how much he can challenge the foundations of our beings before they collapse."

Jenga with my soul, indeed. I have always known that God has a very silly, sometimes twisted sense of humor. And I, having a sense of humor of my own, have come to appreciate God's little jokes. Unfortunately for me, my patience is wearing a bit thin. Most of it's in my head, I'm sure, but it appears that nothing in my life these days makes sense. Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Was it wrong to move to Boston? Should I have taken that middle-management gig at my office (...sorry... I just vomited a bit in my mouth... better now...)? Uncertainty... I hate it. It causes the OCD tendencies of my personality to overwhelm the rest of me. It makes me not a nice person.

I feel like this is the point where the only piece left to remove is one of the center blocks about halfway up the tower. *Tap* it moves a bit. *Tap tap* almost out...

I think I should switch to Operation... or Hungry Hungry Hippos. Then again, maybe Chutes and Ladders is more in my wheelhouse these days.