Maybe I'm amazed

Funny thing happened on my way to run errands on Sunday: I checked the mailbox. Given that I rely on snail mail for very little, in that I manage all financials online, I'm not the world's most fastidious mailbox visitor. On this day, however, after I pulled up out of my too-steep hill of a driveway, I swung the car around, stopped, and hopped out to empty the mailbox.

The one single thing that stuck out among the sixteen pieces of spam was an envelope hand-addressed to me, with a return address that I recognized as being that of a friend in the Southwestern US.

What a surprise this envelope contained. Totally unexpected, completely unwarranted, utter out of the blue-ness... and it hit me. Hard. Right upside the head. This should have been the other way around. I should have sent her a thoughtful how-do-you-do, and I was completely gobsmacked, touched, agog that she would be thinking of me and not focusing every bit of energy on taking care of herself and her boycub. She's dealing with her own life, loss, trials, tribulations... and yet she stopped to take the time to do something nice for me.

And, you know, I've been wallowing. There, I said it. I've been sniveling and snorfling and generally being a whiny little bitch, and it was high time that I grabbed hold of my proverbial bootstraps and hauled my big ass back up.

This sort of thing my mother calls a "God shot"; I've taken to calling this particular event a "Goddess shot".

Thank you, friend. I don't know if you knew what you were doing when you popped that envelope in the mail, but when it arrived, it made all the difference in the world for me and for my outlook. My children, husband, job, friends... are benefiting from my renewed focus and better mood. I'm still wallowing, but nowhere near as deeply.

Thank you. Thank you.