Friday, January 22, 2010

One of THOSE days

A couple of years ago my mom gave me an audio book that she insisted would change my life. It was one of those If you imagine it, it's yours/Good energy attracts good energy/Zenny-type books. She meant well so I took it in the spirit in which it was offered. And I tried to listen to it. I did. But three chapters into it I had to stop or I was going to hurt myself laughing. I think what finally did it was, "Your feelings are controlled by your thoughts. So if you think good thoughts you will feel good. And if you think bad thoughts you will feel bad." Umm. Yeah.

However I did decide that it didn't hurt to think positive. One of the many speakers pointed out that assuming you're going to have a bad day after a bad awakening will often be a self fulfilling prophecy.  That seemed sound enough. Though I think he mentioned something about inhaling bad energy which causes more bad things to happen. Still I try very hard not to have bad days. And I try not to assume that one bad event is going to lead to another.

Today I tried, I really did. I woke up at six, not having slept well, staggered into the kitchen and noticed that there were no telltale signs of Daniel having had breakfast. This was not good. His baseball glove was laying where I'd set it for him to find. He had his first practice today. This wasn't good either. I glanced at the bedroom door. Still closed.

Sure enough his alarm hadn't gone off. As he was flying around trying to get ready to go, the bus came and went.  No matter, he assured me. We can catch the bus where it meets with the high school bus at the edge of town. Hey, I said. if we wait an hour, then it will be light and I'll drive you all the way. But it we catch it now, you won't waste any extra gas, he says practically. Daniel really likes riding the bus. Okay, I said. That "save money thing' was too sensible to pass up. So we jumped in the mini-van and drove out to the edge of town, I missed the turn off twice in the dark and the incredible fog and got there just in time to see the bus leaving. We were halfway there so all I could do at that point was drive him all the way. This meant a long, slow drive in the dark to the school, an hour and a half long, through some of the densest most disorienting fog I've ever seen.  I got home in one piece, already tired, but determined to focus on the day. Everything would be fine. I exhaled as I made the last corner--

--And had to drive through the trash strewn across our road.  A neighbor's dog had once again gotten into our trash. He is a pitbull and a big scary problem I haven't figured out how to solve. He's well nourished and wears a collar, but I'm not sure where he lives. The mess was huge and it was cold and misting rain. I had a jolly old time cleaning it up, as I'm sure you can imagine. But I wasn't done yet. This was a small thing, right. Nothing to set the tone for the day.  I exhaled as I entered the house.

Just as I dropped my purse into a chair at the end of the dining room table, the younger boys announced that the living room computer had picked up some kind of nasty virus that was causing it to reboot repeatedly and kick out corrupted files. The reinstall took all day, of course, because when you install XP on a Gateway, you quickly find out that Gateway doesn't support XP so I had to hunt for hours to find working drivers.  .  Persistence pays off, I told myself. Yay me. Exhale.

Meanwhile, I was schooling boys, cleaning house, and packing to take a group of teenagers to WOW (Weekend of Worship). While packing I find that while I was busy making sure everyone else had stuff they needed while we were at Walmart yesterday I  forgot to buy socks for myself (sock gremlins, I'm telling you). Exhale.


Then I had an argument with my oldest who went out the door to work mad at me.  I really hate that for both of us. Big breath here.

Then two of the teens I was taking with me to WOW cancelled for flimsy (separate) reasons so I had to try to find someone else who wants to go so we don't lose the money. I only found only one. I'm feeling discouraged about youth group as it is; this didn't help. But I tried to focus on the fact that God sends the kids who need to go. Apparently the ones who have really lousy home lives, whose fathers are alcoholics, the ones who are talking about getting married at seventeen just to get out, aren't who he had in mind this year. But he knows all.  I'm beginning to feel light headed with all this breathing.

And then my oldest called from work unhappy as he had learned that he and another young adult have been laid off for the winter with a call back promised in the spring. So now I'm about to have an unemployed college student living in my house. It's not impossible to find jobs here during the winter, but it's close.  When he came home, he was pleasant and apologetic, but depressed. He's a pain sometimes, but he's a good kid. It's hard to see him discouraged. Really hard. 

I'm done in. I'm about to sit down and sip a rum and (diet) coke and try very to exhale all the bad energy I've obviously inhaled today when I was busy just breathing and trying to get through it all. Then I'm going to find the guy who suggested that we attract bad energy by assuming we're going to have a bad day and kick him and see how well he breaths after that.  

3 comments:

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

I'm sorry but my take-away from this is that I'm very impressed you could solve the problem of the computer!! WOW!

Scotty said...

Wow, that was some kind of day, Mary - bet you enjoyed that Rum and Coke, eh?

A couple of things come to mind about the dog/trash problem - the first is to call your local dogcatcher I guess; if the owner doesn't care enough about their dog roaming the streets then you shouldn't feel guilty for calling the authorities. Let the owner deal with that particular headache. If you don't wanna do that, then you could try some repellents. We forget that our trash often smells like a smorgasbord to dogs and cats so the trick is to dissuade them from coming back.Since dogs will usually sniff the area (especially if they've marked it with a scent) then a liberal sprinkling of pepper on and around the bin might help. There's a few more home-grown recipes for repellents right here.

What model Gateway do you have? If it'll help, I'll do some research for ya and see if I can find some more handy links for driver downloads (if you know what particular hardware is fitted inside, that'll help too) - reinstalling stuff can be such fun, yes? For the past few years I've kept all the drivers I've downloaded on a 2gb thumb drive along with Service Packs 1, 2, and 3 for XP (available as standalone downloads) - makes the process a little less painful.

Sorry you had such a bad day - here's a virtual hug...

[[[hug]]]]

:-)

Mary O. Paddock said...

Hi Mrs. C. Thank you. I used to build computers for "fun" (in the loosest definition of the word). Then I went to work and had to turn most of our computer stuff over to my multi-talented oldest. Now that I'm home full-time again and he's busy, I'm having to reacquaint myself with it. This was no fun, but I did rediscover my own "talents" as it were. :)

Scotty--I did enjoy that drink. And then I went to bed. Thanks for the support and the hug. Bad days happen; I just needed to share :).

As per the dog--I live in an area with no animal control. Out here if people can't reason with the owner to take care of the dog themselves then the dog (ahem)"disappears". I don't know for sure where the dog is coming from, but I'm going to follow a couple of leads tomorrow. Thanks for the link to the home grown repellents. That is an excellent solution. We have multiple dogs and cats of our own and are very familiar with the attraction. But ours are generally well mannered (and well fed) enough to ignore it.

As for the computer--I think I've got it in hand, thanks. It took A LOT of googling to find compatible drivers, but I did it. We're still fine tuning it a bit, but we're on the way.