Here we go again: Two Tuesdays ago I ran into a deer (not an uncommon occurrence where I am from!) and this Tuesday I had another eye opener. I slogged out to my car in the cold rain, umbrella-less, with 100lb baby carrier slung over my arm, and sleepy kids in tow and got in the van to take my oldest down to the bus stop. (I really wish the bus driver could pull up in front of my house which is only 6 houses away from the stop. This isn't even a bus...it's a MINI VAN. There is no reason the driver should have any trouble navigating on my street. But, I digress.)
Jim drove the van last. Now, hear me: I am not blaming HIM. I am merely explaining why the following events were more likely to happen on this day. He had the van pulled squarely at the end of our driveway. It would have been quite simple for me to back out of the driveway. All I had to do was slowly apply the gas, keep the wheel straight and go in reverse. That isn't how I roll. I don't like to back up. Normally I have the van positioned in the driveway so that I can do one three point turn and head out of the driveway nose first. But in order to turn myself around on Tuesday I had to do multiple three point turns to get there. At a certain point, I began to think: How many more three point turns do I need to do to get this van turned around? Then there also came a certain moment in the three point turn madness that it was too late to turn back. I did one more three point turn and then I thought, "This should be fine, I'm going." It was raining and darker than usual at 7a.m. And I misjudged how much room I had to maneuver. And ooops. This happened:
 |
| Yes, I sideswiped the house! |
"Why didn't you just back out of the driveway?? I had it parked perfectly for you to do that!" I know, dear, but that isn't what I am used to doing every morning and don't you know that I live my life on auto pilot half the time and I just want to do things the way that I do them so they can be done and I don't have to think about them anymore?
Do you realize how horrible this sounds? I did. He was angry and I started to cry. Not because he was saying anything untrue. Not because he was being cruel. But because I just don't think about things sometimes. I just do what I do because I always do it that way. I don't assess the situation to make the best possible choice all of the time. This is something I don't like about myself, so it's really hard to admit.
So from that point on, I started to have a bad day. I felt like an Eeyore--at least I could hear his voice in my head "it's raining..." "I messed up my car..." "I'm too tired to exercise." "This is boring." There were bright spots in my Tuesday:
 |
| We got our new kitchen table. |
 |
| Ava drew this adorable picture. It's me happily doing many different exercise moves. I can't get the picture to go right side up, but you get the point. I love the picture of me doing a push-up (it's on the left of the screen). |
 |
| And Jim brought me flowers when he came home from work. I hardly ever get flowers. He must have felt bad that I was crying. He probably didn't realize that I was being harder on myself than he was being on me...but the flowers were a nice surprise and brightened my day. |
