Day 6 - "Your Day"

Well, I certainly timed this right... Today my day was hell! Okay, maybe not Hell... There was not any fire and brimstone, the face of Satan didn't appear on my grilled cheese sandwich and the smell of sulphur was muted and barely distinguishable from the smell of asphalt. We had a few potholes in our contractor yard repaired and filled so fresh blacktop does a pretty decent job of taking out any other competition in the arena of odor. Also, I didn't have a grilled cheese sandwich, which might explain why I didn't see the face of Satan. I heard that showed up in someone's bathroom floor tiles anyway.

I am certain, however, that the devil is not always in the details. Occasionally he makes it into the very center of the situation - the "program".

Yes indeed. Apparently at 9:30 last night, according to an email, our sales system went down. Down.

Down as in defunct, not working, wish you had called in now I bet, your morning is going to be miserable - down.

We've got a backup plan for such situations. We do it like the old investment commercial guy used to say - "We make money the old fashioned way - we earn it" - which means we hand write every single ticket. That's never hard. What is hard is trying to find the item code and the right price... Needless to say, it was a long and tedious process and to add insult to injury, (not literally) I had a headache.

However, my daughter, wise and sweet, suggested I take an Ibuprofen and hide in the corner. She also suggested that I put this issue in perspective, that was that it was just a snafu, it was not killing anyone, and compared to the problems that others face on a daily basis, it was, perhaps, nothing major. She is absolutely right. After I took the Ibuprofen, I tried to find the dark corner to hide in. Unfortunately we've had the electrician in and all of the flourescents are working. There is never a dark corner around when you need one...

But you know, I woke up with a roof over my head.  I didn't have to grind my coffee because I was able to buy it from a well stocked grocery store and the hardest part was choosing between Folgers and Maxwell House - Folgers won...  and all I had to do was plug the coffee maker into the wall outlet. I turned a faucet on and got water out of it. I flipped a switch and was able to see everything in my closet and when I pushed a button on a little remote control, I was able to see what had happened in the world. I didn't have to milk a cow to get cream for my coffee and I didn't have to feed horses and hitch them to a wagon so I could get to work. I didn't have to plow a field to get wheat for flour so I could have toast, and my hands won't be blistered from holding a pitchfork or a hoe. I was able to get into my car and ride to work.

I wasn't shot at, nor did I have to kill anyone to get to where I was going. There was coffee already made when I got there. The air conditioning was on and the building was cool. In the winter it will be warm.

Yes, all things considered, I feel fortunate to be where I am in my little pie wedge of time. I have no right, although I forget occasionally, to complain when I have to work a little harder to get something accomplished. I need only think about what our ancestors had to do for a living, to get water, to get the makings of a day's meal, or to get somewhere, when I feel agitated about technology's failure now and then.

If I feel like I have it tough, or rough, now and then, I need to consider what our soldiers are dealing with, and all that they had to work through to become a soldier, and what they go through on a daily basis to survive.

I won't promise never to fuss or complain when things don't go smoothly. I do promise to remember that I tend to take too many things for granted, and I shouldn't.

With that being said, for all that I had to pick up a pencil and not a plow or a gun, to earn my paycheck, today was a damn good day.