Hello world!

How’s my global family doing today? It’s Wednesday already, can you believe it? I hope that your day has started out on the right foot. Mine started with my alarm blaring my wedding song in my ear, about an hour sooner than I had expected. What a conflicted feeling to have early in the morning. Part of you wants to chuck your phone to the other side of the room, and the other side of you says, “ah that is such a beautiful song…That was such a beautiful day…I remember walking down the aisle to this song…” and then your mind goes back to, “what the heck is the alarm going off this early for? How did I end up picking this song?”

See here’s the deal, last night I slowly made myself to my bed, drained, I recall grabbing my phone and selecting three alarm times and changing the ring tones from “chime”, “timba”, and something else that I had grown tired of, to selecting two more alarm sounds. My wedding song was obviously one that I decided to torture myself with. The title said, “Angel”, I mean how bad could that be for an alarm, right? But with barely 5 hours of sleep, “Angel” felt more like “devil” in my head this morning.

As I looked around the room this morning (the alarm still going off and playing this beautiful song) I began to gather my senses and then I immediately realized that today is trash day, and “I didn’t put the trash out on the curb last night“, so I contemplated for a while what the consequences would be if I just said the heck with trash day, and simply left the trash where it was until next Wednesday. Visualizing the images and smells began to overwhelm me, so I quickly got out of bed, put on some appropriate clothes so my neighbors wouldn’t think that I had totally lost my mind, and I began collecting the trash from my bedroom, closet, and kitchen.

I opened the garage doors and with three bags in hand, I took my first step into the garage. The second step didn’t go so well as I hyperextended my ankle in the transition phase from the first to second step, and the only thing that prevented me from biting the dust on the floor was the fact that my parents raised me to always hold the door knob, handles, and rails when descending or ascending stairs or escalators–thanks mom and dad, you saved me from possibly knocking a few teeth out, or knocking myself unconscious!

Well the immediate pain that shot through my ankle, foot, and part of my calf, almost sent me through the roof. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. The tears were welling up in my eyes. But instead I focused on the trash and the reality that the trash truck unpredictably pops up on my street between 8am and 1pm, and I didn’t have time to wait. So I sucked it up and began to hobble outside to the trash cans. Thankfully I only needed to roll the recycling bin and the traditional trash can to the curb, or so I thought. To save time I took them both at once and prayed that I wouldn’t lose balance due to my weakened ankle. Thankfully I made it to the curb unscathed.

As I looked back up my long driveway something caught my eye. Two wooden loading thingamajigs that my husband’s books were delivered on several days ago. They were leaning against the side steps of our home. It’s like they were staring at me saying, “what are you going to do with us, just leave us here?” Then I began to contemplate whether or not the recycling or trash crews would even pick up these things. Ankle throbbing, I said, “oh well, if they don’t then I will just have them tossed at the appropriate place later, but they’ve got to go” and with a towel I lifted the first wooden thingamajig onto my shoulder and began to hobble to the end of the driveway where I rested it beside the recycling bin. I begrudgingly returned for the second one, and at the conclusion, I walked somewhat confidently back into the house.

Inside the house I set the alarm and then convinced myself that I could benefit from another hour of rest, so I decided to go back to bed. Walking to my back staircase I noticed trash on the outside deck. Uugh. I go to open the door and the voice within, God’s voice (it had to be because the devil wouldn’t warn me), said, “don’t open the door yet“. I ignorantly thought that the voice was warning me to look out for an insect, so in a cocky voice I said aloud, “I’m in no mood for an insect, wasp, or anything else, I will knock it the heck out” and with that I opened the door, only to hear an alarm that made my cell phone alarm sound like a whisper. Aaaah.

I hobbled to the alarm pad and disengaged it, then hobbled to the phone knowing that the alarm company would be calling in 5, 4, 3, 2…”hello“. After exchanging a quick laugh with the rep I proceeded to grab the trash off the deck, and then hobble back to the front of the house to toss this bag into the trash can, making sure to have proper footing when I descended the garage stairs. I successfully evaded a wasp that was looking for someone or something to pick a fight with. Once back inside I gave up on the idea of going back to sleep, and instead made up my bed, and got on the computer to handle some quick business. Afterwards it was back to my normal schedule of Bible lessons, posting to my Breaking Bread blog, whipping up and drinking my morning smoothie, working out TRX-style, and then getting dressed for work.

I think that I need to keep an annoying alarm tone from now on, the one that forces you to quickly press the off button in hopes that you didn’t press ‘snooze‘ so that you’re not startled awake again in 10 minutes. I think that my wedding song this morning only put me in a weird space, and maybe with only 5 hours of sleep, I should have picked a more appropriate tone–a more reliable annoyance. What do you think? I also think that it’s best that I consistently put the trash out at night. There’s no rushing and scrambling involved at night. It’s just a leisurely stroll through the house, outside, and back. There’s no wasps and crazy insects to avoid at night, well at least no wasps.

Oh and by the way, the recycling collectors are just now coming through my subdivision, about an hour or two later than normal, which means the trash guys will be arriving an hour or two from now (because they never arrive before the recycling truck). Hmmm I could have stayed in bed an extra hour and then leisurely strolled to take the trash out. Uugh. Oh well!

I share my story with you today to say, there is a moral to all of this:

If your day has gotten off to a bad, uncomfortable, or inconvenient start, just shake it off and hobble along until your steps get easier!

Have an amazing day family!

~Natasha

 

Copyright 2014. Natasha Foreman Bryant. All Rights Reserved.