#365Gratitude Day 155: Room for mistakes

Yesterday my boss and I went into DC to get some particular paperwork we needed signed.  According to the information we had, we didn't particularly need an appointment, and someone would be available to help us all that day. 

I actually put aside some other tasks so we could go do this.  I drove us to the metro, we rode it, changed trains, and even had a nice 15 minute walk or so to the place we were supposed to go.

Only to find out that the particular office we were trying to go to was appointment-only that day, and we were told to come back next week.

So we walked back to the metro, rode it, changed trains, and drove back to the office.  

All told, it was maybe a 3 hour mistake.

Pretty frustrating.

But in retrospect, things could have been much worse.  We laughed it off, scouted out a parking space for next week (when we will drive there!), and had a good long talk about other stuff on our plates.  We strategized, and commiserated.  I was grousing about it a bit to a friend who pointed out to me that hey, it was still billable time, and I was getting paid, right?

Absolutely.

I make mistakes all the time.  Multiple times per day, it seems at times.  That's okay though - I've got the room in my life for them.  That's an enormous thing.  

I've been struggling lately to consistently work out, and to re-establish a writing schedule for myself.  One of the things I told my boss yesterday during what I called "our little sabbatical" was that I was going to be coming in to work later because I really needed to work out in the mornings.

He was totally cool with that.  Maybe it was the 15 minute walk in mid-afternoon heat endorphins.  Actually, he's just a really nice guy.  In that same conversation, he also told me that when I need to, it's totally cool for me to bug out of the office and work from home for an afternoon, too.  

Maybe that wasn't a wasted trip after all.

#365Gratitude Day 154: function() - no arguments

​Bear with me.  This is a longish entry, and kind of complicated.  So the past few days I've had this terrible thing on my mind.  

It's an argument I've been having, at a distance, with someone I love very much.  

I got a good sleepless night out of it Monday night, and then had a shoddy, not-really-spoonful workday out of it yesterday.  What the argument's about doesn't even matter.  Nor does who it's  with, nor my position on the issue, versus theirs.​  It's not worth rehashing even a little bit.

So why am I bringing it up?  Because I'm grateful for how I've managed to transcend it, this morning.  ​

My friend Shokolada and I often have fairly deep philosophical conversations.  He lamented to me once that ​one of the things that make the eastern philosophies I'm so enamored with kind of a drag is that ultimately, you have to rely upon yourself.  There's no other person, entity, resource, guidebook, scripture, guru, or even deity to turn to.  In the end, you have to do your own heavy lifting.  Shok thinks that's kind of blah.

He's not wrong, either.  

Mindfulness is a practice. Even when someone else teaches you about the practice, it's you who has to do it.  And, as work goes, the sort of chilly, bleak news about the work is once you begin it, you only have to do it until you're dead.  (Maybe after, I'm not sure yet.)

OK, so back to my issue at hand.  I got a good big case of the I'm-Very-Disappointed-In-This-Person's about the person in question, and proceeded to rant about it for about a day and a half to other folks I care about.  It's painful.  Although I didn't want to admit it to myself, the source of that pain is mostly the guy writing this blog entry.  I had an expectation that wasn't meeting with how things really are. It was my dissastifaction about that expectation that was hurtful to me.  I desperately wanted this person to see how wrong they were, and how right I was.  

That's really kind of silly.  It's human, but silly.  This morning I remembered why.   

Specifically, I remembered this telling of a zen story, "You Are Right."   Go ahead and read it, if you like. It sums up far more succinctly why I was being silly.

Today I feel light, easy.  I'm not worried about being right.  I don't need to be.  I realize that when I'm functioning well, I have no arguments. 

#365Gratitude Day 153: It's pronounced "pass-tea."

Lately I've been re-listening to a favorite book of mine, American Gods by Neil Gaiman.  There's this big part of the book where the main character, Shadow Moon, spends the winter in the town of Lakeside, Wisconsin.  One of the things he does there is hang out at a café where they serve pasties, a kind of meat-and-savory pie.  I've always wanted to try one.

Yesterday, I did.  I decided to get out of the office, and Yelp-stumbled across this place: http://www.purepasty.com.

I got a traditional pasty, which was stuffed with grass-fed beef, and veggies.

Holy Moley was that good.  The counterman described them to me as "Like the best hot pocket you ever had in your life."

He was right.  

An added benefit was that they sell all this imported food and candy.  I picked up a nestlé Lion Bar, a candy bar I used to love when I was a kid, and had often when we spent summers overseas in France.

What a good find!

#365Gratitude Day 152: Claim Processing

Every so often I stumble across a cartoon or photo that really, really speaks to me.  Here's one that was on my twitter feed Monday.

That's fantastic.  I'm grateful for all the cookies and potatoes in my life.

#365Gratitude Day 151: Missy's love for children

On Sunday we were waiting in line to get our picture taken with George Takei.  It was a long line.  This nice lady in front of us kept getting dive-bomb-visits from her toddler son, Seamus.  Seamus would zoom in, hug her, gabble on about something or other, then zoom back out to his dad, waiting outside the queue.

On one of Seamus's many visits, he decided to park himself on the floor, bust out some lego his mom had in her bag for him, and get building.  (What a good mom, right?)

He invited Missy, who was his newfound buddy, to help.  

Note the Transformers pic Seamus's mom is holding.  She got it for him because "He sure loves his Decepticons!"

Missy got right down there with Seamus, and they chitchatted while he built.

I love stuff like this.  Missy has an ENORMOUS HEART.  She loves children.  She is always happy to talk to them, or lend a hand with a friend's kid.  She's really one of the kindest, gentlest people I have ever known.

I'm lucky she's my wife.