I've noticed that sometimes, the best part of life happens in between the planned moments:
1. On an hour car ride to a park, I was sitting in the back of the van with the kids so my mom could sit up front. Since I am hardly ever in the back of a vehicle with my daughters, it ended up being a journey filled with unexpected laughter:
- I was talking about middle child syndrome since I was the middle of 3 kids. My daughter, who is a twin, said she also had middle child syndrome, to which I vehemently disagreed. I said you are a twin, it's not possible to have middle child syndrome when you were born 7 MINUTES later! Then my mom turns around from the front seat and says, "You didn't have middle child syndrome growing up!" And my daughter emphatically points to my mom and said, "THERE'S the voice of reason!". Her and I proceeded to get into a laughing fit where we couldn't talk for 15 minutes.
- The song "Material Girl" by Madonna was on the radio and my 9 year old asked, "Is she saying Cheerios??!"
- My 9 year old said, "Let's do a smile contest!" and my 13 year old immediately responds, "I win! I have the best smile!!"
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| Our minion traveling companions after visiting Universal Studios |
The amount of unexpected laughter during that one hour trip was truly a beautiful thing!
2. I am not the best plane traveler. I see it as a necessary evil. I hate flying, but I hate a 20 hour car ride even more. So, I must simply suck it up and deal with flying.
Let's just say when I hear people coughing all around me, I hate it. When the plane goes through horrible turbulence, I hate it. If it gets too hot or if there are strange noises, I hate it. I'm sure you get the point.
On our flight home, I made a comment to my 9 year old (who got the pleasure of sitting by me) that I HATED hearing all of the people coughing. She pats my arm and says, "It's okay momma. Remember, it's just a cold. It's not a big deal." Her wise words of wisdom made me laugh and commend her for her sage advice. (It is noted here that I was NOT laughing two days later when I was bed-ridden with a fever and horrible body aches; I missed two additional days of work and it turned into a horrible sinus cold for two weeks!)
I really am amazed at how my daughters can be calm despite the fact that they have a mother who is a constant worrier. At one point, there was an infant that was sitting across the aisle from us, in her mother's arms and she went through a horrible coughing spell. My daughter was coloring, and without even looking up, she shakes her head and says, "Awww. Poor baby."
Our plane ended up having horrible turbulence, such that many people were holding onto the back of the seats in front of them, and several people were vomiting when we landed. This led us to have many 'horror story' discussions with all of the people sitting around us as we were waiting to de-plane (such as landing gear that wouldn't go up after takeoff so they had to circle for hours and then had low fuel and had to land at a different airport to deplane; one that had turbulence so bad that all of the luggage fell out of the overhead bins and the pilot never explained anything, etc). All of these stories simply add fuel to my dread of flying immensely. I was just happy I heard them after we had landed and were home.
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| Putting fear aside, the view out the plane window is always pretty cool. Amazing how small it makes you feel in the world. |
3. I headed back to work after being out of the office for almost two weeks and was informed I had to move my desk location that day due to someone new starting. Here are some of the comments I received for having to move again:
- "You are the only one I know who has moved cubicles so many times without any of them being due to a promotion." I said: instead of being the MVP I feel like the LVE (Least Valued Employee).
- "There goes the neighborhood."
- "Your next move will be out to the parking lot."
- There were many references to the movie "Office Space" and the guy with the stapler.
- "Oh, you actually moved here permanently? I thought it was an April Fools joke".
These were all said in a good natured spirit by people who I enjoy working with and who truly make me laugh.
I do have to say everyone in my new area was very friendly and welcoming and I even got a compliment that the "neighborhood just became friendlier and cube values went up".
4. This is a total random entry, but I love it nonetheless. I made egg salad with the leftover Easter hard boiled eggs. I gave it to my daughter when her and I were home sick and she said, "I thought there was lettuce in egg salad! Where's the lettuce?!"
5. One day of the vacation was beach day. We were happy to see that the house we rented had 3 beach chairs that my mom, sister, and I could use. We packed them in the car, carried them to the beach, and set up for an afternoon of lounging. My sister sat down, and her chair (the blue one) immediately split down the middle. I laughed and was all smug in my chair reading my book for about 10 minutes ... until BAM ... my butt hit the ground when my chair split wide open (the green one). My mom (and her skinny butt) was able to enjoy the entire time at the beach, sitting comfortably in her chair, reading her book.
Laughingly Yours,
Me
Motivational Moment:
May you have days of pure bliss.
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