I opened my eyes and thought, wow it’s light in here.  My head immediately shifted to my right where the clock read 7:42 a.m..  No, no, no!  The alarm was supposed to go off at 6:45!  I jumped out of bed, calculating how much time I had to get ready and get to a professional development session by 8:20.  It’s amazing how fast you can go when you need to and I was just grateful that the PD was at the high school literally across the road. I pulled in at 8:22.

My car was making a funny sound as I left the garage.  Yes, I was driving across the road – I can’t walk that fast.  Anyway, I’m listening to this strange sound, opening my windows to figure out what it is.  As soon as I park, I walk around the car to check the tires and sure enough, one of the back tires is going flat.  Great.  I send a text to Doug to let him know, knowing that he’ll figure out what I should do or do it for me.  Whatever works, right?

So, I’m doing okay now, I’ve arrived on time and in one piece and now I’m wishing I had had time to have breakfast, but bless their hearts, the presenters brought breakfast munchies!  Despite the bizarre morning so far, life is good.  Until I open up my laptop.

You know, it’s a great thing that district computer dudes can remotely do things with your computer or schedule updates.  I just don’t want them to do it right before I’m supposed to do a professional development on curriculum that just happens to be on my – you guessed it – computer!!

So after a while, it decides I can use it again and I’m working to do the catch up thing, but at least it’s working and the rest of the session goes great.  In the meantime, my great husband has walked across the road, around the back of the high school to pump up my tire by hand so I can get home and get to a tire store.  We get to the store and they’re  closing.  They won’t be open again until Monday.  Okaaaaay – we go down the street to our favorite car repair shop and cross our fingers.

Sure enough, he can do it, so I get my things out of the car and we walk back to our place to get Doug’s car and do some birthday shopping.  As we walked through the parking lot to our apartment building, I said to Doug, we’re so lucky we have another car to go to aren’t we?  I say that as we had driven past a homeless man standing on a corner asking for help.  Not only do I have my car but we have another in case something like this happens.  We’re fortunate that we have a car repair shop close to where we live and that we can afford to get this taken care of.

I can remember those early days of marriage when stuff like this was such a source of major stress.  Maybe we only had one car at the time or maybe the car we owned was ALWAYS in the shop.  Pretty sure it was the Topaz.  Nope, you’ve never heard of it because it was AWFUL.  Struggling to find money to pay the bills, living on boxed Mac and cheese and sloppy joes. So while we are not rich by any means, we’ve become pretty comfortable and I am grateful.  In the past, the things that happened this morning, on top of other stressors would have probably sent me over the edge or started a flood of tears.  But life experiences, knowing I have people I can trust to help me when I need it and putting things in perspective really help alleviate a lot of the stress.

However, putting things in perspective means looking past myself to see what is happening to and with people in the world around me.  This afternoon I went to my new foster grandson’s birthday party.  A child who took his time opening his gifts and taking the time to quietly thank each individual.  A child who frequently looked to his foster mom for reassurance.  Is this really for me?  Am I doing the right thing? Who do I need to thank?   The combination of disbelief, humility and happiness on his face was a reminder to me that something as simple as a child’s birthday party can take on a completely different perspective when you know where that person has come from.

There’s a lot of hate in this world and I am surrounded by loving family and friends.  There are people struggling in so many ways and I’m at a place now where I can help more often.  Experience lets me know that things will get better, even when crazy things happen, not just the everyday annoyances but also those big life changing events.  Time is a great healer, whether it’s a short or long amount of time.  So when the next annoyance or crash comes, I need to remember  whose child I am, that I have a loving Father, family and friends and the look on my grandson’s face. Perspective is everything.  Even when nothing seems to be working!