Printer Ink

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow."

-–Melody Beattie

I thought that was a nice little quote to end out Thanksgiving weekend.

Oh, there was a ton of food - two Thanksgiving dinners and few days worth of left overs says it's time to pull the plug on this weekend.

A few months ago I was standing in the middle of Office Max/Depot/whatever and I was so pissed. We have a Dell computer with a Dell all in one printer that only sells Dell ink on the Dell website. Racket! It's a racket. And I was so mad marching into this officy-superstore and not finding Dell ink. Grrr.

I stood there and started laughing at how mad I was. And then I started to think about how thankful I was that something so stupid had the privilege of pissing me off. It was a normal feeling to have - impatience, annoyance - and I thought about that time shortly after Christian's accident when our living quarters was the hospital.

Yes, I thought about all this stuff in a few split seconds.

This officy-superstore is right next door to the Target where I drug myself through the front doors while still staying in the hospital and wondering if anyone saw how much pain I was in just by looking at me. I thought while walking through those doors - Can they see it on my face that I'm in hell right now? I shouldn't be buying socks. I should be at the hospital. Don't make eye contact."

Now that's serious stuff. Those are serious worries. Not the socks part. But the hospital-I have a sick kid-my eyes are permanently puffy from crying-kind of worries.

And there I stood more then a year later in the middle of trying to find some damn printer ink and getting all flustered, NOT wondering if my child would live or not. Just worried about that damn ink.

I was so thankful that printer ink was my biggest worry, my biggest gripe at that moment. And I laughed to myself. I found some refurbished ink for Dell printers. It wasn't all that much cheaper, but slightly.

It's an odd thing, but I'm thankful for unimportant, petty, gripes. I'm thankful that the biggest annoyance in my life at any given time is that my house is messy and I can't keep up, that Target.com's shipping charges suck, or that my computer is running slow. It's petty, it's grounding, and it's normal. And I'd much rather be worried about that then whether my child will make it through the night.

On a lighter note...so what's going on with the Ketogenic Diet?!?!

Good question.

Well, there was a hold up at the health care company. The type of formula Christian needs is not carried by our current HHC (Home Health Care Company). My first thought was that we'll have to change companies. But they told me they were finding a way to get it. Way to step up, HHC! I love proactivity.

With the Thanksgiving weekend, nobody was terribly pumped to get things done so I didn't fight. Not everything has to be a battle or an argument or a blog entry tirade. I can chill. Besides, we should have it by the end of this coming week. And there were a few appointments we needed to complete to get some baseline information for Christian and those don't happen until Tuesday. Mama bear is chillin' until then.