Every Day is a Today

Challenging myself - parasailing on the Gulf of Mexico

Every day is a "today". 

Every day has potential and possibilities which at first may be unseen.

Take last Friday for instance.  Ironically, the day after I finished Monday's blog posting "Today".

It all started normally with the wake up alarm followed by the minutiae of my daily routine such as listening to the news, making the bed, getting coffee started and toast made, checking my cell phone, etc.

It actually had its beginnings three days before when I'd visited a friend "in the process of becoming.

Okay, she's fast transitioning to a friend, to pet her fur baby, knit, talk, etc.

This person has been a huge blessing to me and aid in my process of recovery since I was fired from petting kitties at the Humane Society last December for being bitten by one.  This person generously offered to allow me to come into her home and pet her Shihpoo.  I'm not really a canine person.  More of a feline person.  But her Shihpoo is fast making a convert of me.  He's small.  His curly hair is quite soft.  He snuggles quite contentedly grateful for my attention in a busy home with two children and assorted illnesses.

On my visit, my friend had been very, very down.  Life, her life, was getting to her that day in a way I'd never seen before.  With people in the family on the autism spectrum, with epilepsy and other health concerns, I'd have been in the fetal position huddled under something long before this.  However, this brave lady has kept soldiering on through more than four months of different illnesses, seizures, etc.

The day I visited, things got to her.  I sat with her on the couch, petted the Shihpoo - and listened.
There are times when words just don't cut it.

I can't fix her life.  Platitudes, homilies, what have you are not going to be helpful.  In fact, they're going to be harmful.

When I left that morning, she was feeling somewhat better. 

I was concerned and stayed concerned.

Which brings us to Friday.  I messaged this friend to see how things were going in her house.  She messaged back that she had an appointment and was trying to figure out logistics on how to get there and back.  Having had the pleasure of riding our transit system, I knew that for her to get to where she was going was doable but cumbersome and time consuming.  Without thinking I offered to take her to her appointment and made arrangements to pick her up in about an hour.

So far, so good.

Right?

Ummm.  I conveniently forgot two details: (1) this destination was outside my comfort zone so while I'd been there before, I'd never driven there; (2) 3 cm of snow (a little over 1 inch of snow) was forecast for that morning.

What I didn't realize at the time was that all three centimetres of snow was going to come down at once.

When I made the arrangements with my friend, snow was forecast but not coming down.  When I left the house snow was lightly falling - a flurry.

However, when I left my friend's house en route to our destination, the situation had drastically changed.  Most of the forecast accumulation had fallen during the brief time I'd been in my friend's home.

I felt like I should be singing Slip Sliding Away as the car went various directions on its own.

So here I was in the middle of a snow storm in rush hour traffic heading to a destination I've never driven before from a location I'm not all that familiar with.

Inching my way to our destination with my friend beside me performing the duties of a human GPS, we saw a van in the ditch.  I was happy it wasn't us.

We ended up in the wrong lane at a roundabout I was dreading, thus forcing me onto the wrong road. Since I was dreading this particular roundabout as it can be "interesting" to navigate on the best of days, so I simply turned left off the wrong road into a shopping area and ended up turning right onto the correct street.

No fuss.  No muss.  No roundabout.

Although I was unaware of it, we were almost at our destination.

Imagine my relief when I saw the destination area ahead of me.

I dropped my friend off at her location, parked the car and decided this was a good time to get my steps in for the day.

My "souvenir" of that trip.

This is where the adventure got even more interesting, and the real fun began.

I'm not sure how to describe this particular area we were in.  It's new(ish).  It's huge.  It's got several big box stores like a WalMart, a Lowes, my favourite camping store Adventure Guide, a PetsSmart, etc., several eateries ranging from Dairy Queen to Milestones and things in between, the medical building my friend was visiting that day and a cineplex.  It's huge.

I definitely felt more comfortable walking rather than driving.  I walked to the Lowes to look at their spring bulb selection.  And that is where and how I found the greenhouse my hubby is putting together in the picture above.  The very greenhouse I'd seen a couple of years ago in another home improvement store.  The very greenhouse I didn't buy at that time because I didn't have the money then.  The very greenhouse I"d been looking for since then.

Yahoo!

I was one happy camper on my way back to the medical building to pick up my friend.

After our frightening drive there, if given my druthers I would have left the car in the parking lot and either stayed there or found another way home.  However, I had my friend to consider who had other plans for the day and couldn't stay in the parking lot for the rest of the day.

So, the two of us planned a different route back to her house, one I was more familiar with and, therefore, more comfortable with.

Onward and upward - or is it outward - we went.  Again with my friend performing the duties of a human GPS.

What a difference an hour makes.  The roads that were treacherous when we drove there were bare and navigable when we left.  Our drive was actually pleasurable.  Uneventful.

Yay!

It was only later, after I got home safely that I realized that I had had not just one but two major victories that day.

I had not only willingly gone outside my comfort zone - without even a second thought.

I had driven in a snow storm - again unwittingly.

Although my adventure may have begun with singing "Slip Sliding Away", it ended with a loud, lusty and knowing me slightly off-key rendition of "Victory in Jesus" accompanied by my happy dance.

*****

Each day may begin - and end - the same way.  It's what you do in between that makes the difference.

Until the next time.

I wonder what adventure is coming next on my road to recovery.

Comfort Zones Are Only In Your Mind - Looking down on the town of Hamilton from the Niagara Escarpment

Surviving Workplace Abuse: Disrupting the routine and going outside the comfort zone

Another routine disruption accidentally led to an early morning walk along the river.

Today, I would really prefer to be anything by blogging.  My routine has been disrupted for several days, which doesn't allow me the structure I need on this road to recovery.

Now don't get me wrong.  Having my routine disrupted isn't really a bad thing.  Or entirely a bad thing, as it takes me out of my "comfort zone" in small bites thus allowing me to get insight and glimpses into how I am progressing on the road to recovery.  But, it does make getting back into my normal routine a bit harder.

Right now, every fibre of my being is crying out for DVD therapy, rather than blog i.e. processing therapy.

I don't want to think right now.  I don't want to try to form thoughts into words and words into sentences that make sense.

I just want to veg.

Going back into the theme of routine disruptions, take Monday for example.  I had something on hold at the library to pick up - which is very much in my comfort zone - as well as a part to repair our vacuum to pick up at a mall on the other side of town - which is no longer in my comfort zone.

I designed a plan.  I would take the bus to the library, pick up the item being held, then take the Express bus across town to the mall, pick up the part and then retrace my steps, thus combining the familiar with the unfamiliar.  It seemed like a plan.  A good one ...

Until ....

Until hubby was having breaky and we realized that a lot of the items he puts in his lunch were down to zero.  I ended up getting very creative in putting things - and yes, they were edible - into his lunchbox which in itself is a disruption to our normal routine as he usually fixes his own lunch.  At that point, I realized that I needed to try to figure out a way to include a wee bit of grocery shopping - without a vehicle to load them into and without a grocery store being on my direct route.

Solution?

What else does a mother do when she has a quandary like that?

She texts her adult daughter and asks for help.

Adult daughter replies that she has to go grocery shopping herself, so we can do it together.

Hey!  I've just got a new plan in the formation.  One that has real possibilities of working.

When daughter picks me up, she asks where I want to go.  I wanted to go to the store I normally do my shopping at because I am familiar with it.  It's in my comfort zone.  However, she needed to pick up some non-grocery items and had a time limit.

Solution?

We chose to go to a WalMart which if half grocery items and half the other kind of stuff.  It was definitely not in my comfort zone, but it was logical.  So that is what we did.  (I am nothing if not logical.)

I don't know if I've mentioned it or not in this blog, but I have been having trouble focussing clearly with my eyes since around the time I had the stress breakdowns at work.  I've seen the optometrist several times and my vision has not changed.  She has suggested that stress can cause visual problems and also that I had the beginnings of cataracts.  So which is it?  Cataracts or stress?  Either way, it drives me nuts when I'm in an unfamiliar place looking for items such as was the case on Monday.  I felt like I was in a fog mentally and also in a fog visually.

It was fun though, as WalMart has different brands than I usually buy and I had fun picking out different cat food for one very persnickety cat.

After shopping and making a detour by my place to drop off my groceries and her place to do the same, she deposited me at the library and went on her way.  So,  my original plan A went back into effect.  And it worked.  It worked well, I'm happy to say.

Am I stronger for the experience?  I don't know.  It's too soon to tell as frankly I'm tired and feel worn out.

Yet, there's a part of me that wants to do a thumbs up victory sign like I did when I successfully confronted my "favorite" nemesis - the Observation Tower in Parry Sound, Ontario - and won!

So today, even though I'm tired, even though my mind feels like it's filled with cotton batting rather than brains and really doesn't want to function, I still feel that I'm on the winning side.  Recovery, mostly unnoticed, is happening.

Until tomorrow ....