Quit Sweating The Small Stuff

I have been working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day for the last couple of weeks; so I did not notice the freezer had some how become unplugged until there was water coming out of it from the melting ice. I opened the freezer to find the food almost completely thawwed out. In the past I would have flipped out about something like this. I figured out what happened and how the plug got knocked out. Someone was trying to help out and do a nice thing; they didn’t realize they knocked the plug of course. I threw out the spoiled food, and my granddaughter and I cleaned out the freezer. Commonwealth Edison is coming to pick up the freezer and give us $35.00 for it. I have been meaning to get rid of the freezer for a couple of years-sucks energy and we buy food that gets old and freezer burned; so this little episode pushed me into doing something I have meant to do for a while.
Filing this under “just one of those things”

Its been difficult this Christmas. My daughters and I are in a tight place right now with our finances. I told my daughters not to bother buying me anything as I don’t need any money and I don’t have any money to buy them anything they need or want. We had enough for my granddaughters presents until each place we ordered from let us know, for one reason or another, that they would not be delivering the orders before Christmas. I can’t believe we ordered from 4 different major retailers and all 4 have let us down so far. We had to spend some of our bill money to make sure there is at least something under the Christmas tree from Santa Claus. Its been a tough year. I hope next year is better.

just took all my Christmas present money. I was lucky to get the plumber who goes to my church to come out and fix my sewer problem so quickly. I am trying to focus on the fact the we are lucky it was fixed in a matter of hours, but it was hard to use my Christmas present buying money to pay for the job. I am trying to focus on the silver lining or rather new lead lining on the sewer pipe. I am struggling with the whole feeling sorry for myself thing. My daughter ran into someone today who has a mentally challenged son and is having a lot of difficulties with something because she was in tears. My daughter asked if she could help and the woman said no, and my daughter said we would pray for her and her family. So, I am going to try to focus on how fortunate I am rather than a little bit of bad luck.

because I have never done this before and I always have the spare key hanging on the key rack just in case. Last night, I had to wake my eldest daughter up to go to my house and get my spare key so she could unlock my van over the cell phone. I felt bad about getting her out of bed to drive the 3 miles to my house at 11:30 at night. She was so nice about it, but when she got to my house she called me and told me that the spare key was not on the key rack. Hmmm…I said to her that it was just there yesterday; so she pulled out the cabinet and looked all around the floor and surrounding area. She tells me she still can’t find the key, and I ask her to check my gym bag, because I used to carry it in there(even though I knew it wasn’t in there). No key anywhere to be found. It is now going on 1:00 am. I have to ask my daughter to my the 18 mile trip out to my work to pick me up, and take me home because I can’t get a hold of my youngest daughter who has the third key for emergencies. I am very angry at myself and embarressed, but my eldest says don’t worry about it mom it happens to everyone. I spent an hour and half looking for the spare key when I got home. I was beside meyself with anger wondering how I could be so irresponsible with the spare key too. I discovered this morning that my youngest daughter hsd taken the spare set for the house key because she didn’t want to take her big set of keys in the Dance Club last night. I am so angry at her right now. She doesn’t seem to understand why I am angry at her, and I can’t even begin to explain how she messed up my plans last night, my granddaughters piano lesson this morning, and the plans I had for the rest of today, because she can’t take me to get my car until after work this evening. I am tired of my life being disrupted by people who don’t think and/or take care of their own responsibilities. I had preplanned in the event of me ever losing or locking my keys in the car, and my youngest daughters actions totally undid my planning. I can’t even talk to her right now. These are the types of things that upset me for days, and I am so trying to put things in perspective.

last night, and I did my best to avoid getting involved or asking any questions. I don’t want to get involved in the drama that goes on with coworkers who do nothing but complain. Complaining is a bad habit. I think that I would fall into a complaining habit very easily if I don’t watch myself. I had a good night at work except for the little bit of stress the tension caused, but I was able to shrug it off and put in a good nights work. I am finally learning to seperate myself from situations that are none of my business.

the little things in life would not upset me so much. I realize that every time I get upset it can be traced back to me not doing something I was supposed to do. It creates stress and then I am unable to deal with the smallest of problems, concerns, or challenges. Its my fault; I know that; I am working on that. Its just that lately a lot of things have been going wrong. I would like one thing to go right, but perhaps I need to make something go right. Make lemonaide out of lemons.

I come into work and my chair is gone. Nobody knows what happened to it. It disappeared before us 2nd shifters showed up. I asked the lead to teach me a couple of new skills on our new inventory program and he said they were too complicated…really? I find out he taught his friend that works midshift the same skills I asked about, and she is not any smarter or quicker than me…I’m being nice here. She told me that the lead said not to teach anyone else because it is job security. I drove out to work on my day off to drop off two co workers birthday cards that I needed the 1st shift girl to get signed by 1st shift workers, and then she was supposed to turn them over to my boss and/or my lead. I came back the next day and they were sitting on the 1st shift bosses desk. She had 1st shift sign them and then put them in the bosses office and never said a word to anyone. That is the second time she has dropped the ball. My fault for trusting her again. These things send me through the roof… I get very angry and don’t want to even talk to anyone. I need to control my reaction to lifes little annoyances. I am pretty old to try and change my whole personality, but since I quit smoking, I am now convinced I can do anything. Maybe yoga…how do I not get upset even if I think people are being stupid or inconsiderate. Hmmmm…I think I need a mantra to recite in my head that will calm me.

I don’t know if I am being picky or overly sensitive, but my work environment is not the happy environment it used to be. I thought it got better when they fired the shift lead and the human resource person that was giving me a problem, but I am spending a lot of time at work sitting in my corner waiting for someone to pass me work they don’t want to do. Its like I lost my job; unless someone doesn’t feel like working or doing the filing or dealing with a crabby driver. Its not my skills that are a problem, because they still call me at home when they are having a problem with the export paperwork. I get good comments from the drivers and I have even gotten presents, candy, flowers, donuts, coffee from trucking compaines and drivers. I just feel sad and useless; so even though I like what I do and I am good at it; I will have to start looking for another job. I have to learn not to get upset, but get motivated to make a change.

There are always problems when you change software or hardward. I wasn’t going to let any of it get me upset as I would have in the past. We had much better IT people at our place yesterday, and I was told they would be back today. They really seem to know their stuff. We had to do a lot of things manually yesterday, but I was able to get it all done in a reasonable amount of time. I hope day shift today had as easy as a transition as we had last night.

I adopted this goal because I knew that I got uptight about things that I should let go of or at least not chew on. I realize that I passed this uptightness on to both of my daughters. I have started telling them that they need to learn from my mistakes and correct their weakness before they reach my age. Let go and move on. I apologized to them for passing on this trait, but I told them they are both adults now and they need to acknowlege and beat this flaw. I am making a concentrated effort to not let things out of my control upset me or waste to much of my time and energy.