As I was driving home from errands yesterday and every single light in a stretch of five was green, I thought to myself, Self, you lead a charmed life. Of course, that was Monday. Thursday might be a Murphy’s Law kind of day, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Part of it is attitude. No one has everything go their way every single day, right? I went down to Dublin Sunday to get the bathroom tile for the contractors, and the woman working that day said my sales guy was out sick and that my tile hadn’t come in. I called again yesterday to check on the tile, and the sales guy was back, telling me that it had been in the warehouse all along — the shower tile, anyway. Murphy’s Law for me. He also mentioned that he got into a fender bender on his way to work. Murphy’s Law for him.
I’ll go back to the Dublin store today to get the tile.
Today is my daughter’s birthday. She’s on the East Coast so I mailed her birthday box a week ago. She hadn’t received it as of yesterday. I went online with the tracking number. Instead of going to Maryland, it went to Florida and then Alabama. My hard work to get it to her on time failed. Murphy’s Law. But she answered my text. Yay!
You can dissect and analyze anything and put it in one or the other category – charmed or Murphy. It’s just the way it goes for most of us. Attitude helps. I caught one of my offspring mentioning that she can’t catch a break. That sounds a lot like my ex, who looked at life that way. It was depressing to live with such negativity all day, every day.
I know that some of us are born with depression and that our brains don’t have enough serotonin and that the world looks dreary. Meds help, dancing helps, affirmations help, meditation, exercise, healthy meals, all of those things help.
Pets help, animals with unconditional love in a harsh world. I’m of the generation that played outside until dark and had no technology up in our head spaces. We played, we danced, we put on shows, we walked for miles because we wanted to get to some real event. Nothing was virtual then except our dreams and nightmares.
Now, walking is called hiking and we organize and plan it in advance. Our children prefer the indoors, and the video games suck them in, till way after midnight. We pay others to walk our dogs, clean our houses, and run our errands. We stopped cooking and order in. We wonder why we have no money saved. Our $5.00 cups of coffee might be a clue.
I choose not to eat out more than twice a month, unless adult children are in town. Then all bets are off. If the waiter brings my Salmon Portofino the way I like it, with no garlic or black pepper, I again think of my charmed existence.
And then I get a summons for jury duty, the day before a long-scheduled cardiologist appointment. Where’s that guy Murphy? I’d like to give him a piece of my mind about his dumb law.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 