Good morning! I hope your day is starting off well.
It’s that time of year when all the germs that have been closed up in our homes over the winter are starting to take their toll. Trust me, there are no germs left outside. They froze weeks ago. In fact, according to the National Pest Management Association, this last “polar vortex” wiped out about 95% of the stink bug population. That means it’ll take them until June to fully repopulate.
But as the cold weather wreaks havoc on bad things outside the home, we’ve done a bang-up job of preserving all those germs indoors. They’ve not only survived, they’ve thrived. After a while, it’s like last week’s leftovers. They all get thrown together for a stew nobody can quite identify.
Until now, everybody was fighting a cold. It was an especially brutal winter for that. But with each cold, we build our immunity for the next one. Of that strain. Next year there will be a whole new batch of germs to contend with. Still, people seem to be getting over the worst of it. But, apparently, we haven’t built up our immunity to the norovirus that’s making its rounds. Lovely.
So far, I’ve dodged the bullet. Both of my grandkids had it over the weekend. They gave it to their mother, who called my wife to pick her up from work when it hit. Well, guess what my wife was up doing all night? I tend to be a little more resistant to these things, but nothing gets past her.
When things aren’t going well, I’ve always said we sometimes need days like this to help us appreciate the good ones. Well, maybe. But I don’t think anybody needs this. I can appreciate a day of backaches and stiff joints just fine without an intestinal bug as a basis for comparison. This is just plain evil.
And all those pounds we thought we shed overnight are just nature’s way of rubbing salt in an open wound, because they’ll be back the first time we eat a slice of peanut butter toast. There’s no up-side to this, except possibly the power-flush of the digestive system. You pretty much start from ground zero on that.
I always try to impart some kind of lesson in my morning posts, but I’m not sure there’s much of a lesson in this one, other than don’t kiss grandkids when they’re sick. And nobody’s going to follow that advice, least of all me. That’s a chance I’ll take any time. Believe me, they outgrow that age far too soon. And those moments are worth whatever consequences they may bring.
I guess if there’s something to be learned from any of this, it’s that we should try a little harder to enjoy each day as it comes. No day will be perfect. You may wake up with a headache (deserved or not), somebody may cut you off in traffic, the boss may be in a bad mood with you squarely in the crosshairs, dinner may be late, whatever. Life happens, and it’s not always pretty.
But that feeble gratitude you feel as you wake up from a night glued to the porcelain with a bucket in your lap, and realize the worst is over and you may be able to eat a cracker for lunch, will overcome just about any bad thing that happens for the rest of the day. It certainly has a way of putting things in perspective.
We’ll all have bad days. And we’ll have even worse nights. But if we take more time to enjoy the good things as they come, the bad stuff just doesn’t have as much of a lasting impact. It sucks for the moment, but when it’s gone, we’re able to get back into enjoying life that much quicker.
I read something yesterday that pretty well sums it up. It said it’s easy to spot a yellow car when you’re thinking of yellow cars; it’s easy to find opportunity when you’re thinking of opportunity; and it’s easy to spot reasons to be mad when you’re thinking of being mad.
We are the sum of our thoughts. If we spend our days looking for reasons to be upbeat, they’re a lot easier to find. And when something we didn’t really deserve comes along to knock the wind out of our sails, it’s that much easier to get back on track. Happiness is a choice we make. And the more we practice it, the easier it becomes.
That’s all for now. Have a happy, healthy, and completely awesome day!
© 2019 Dave Glardon – All rights reserved
Dave Glardon 