Mind Games
I gave up on New Years resolutions a couple of years ago and instead decided to pick ONE WORD that would be my inspiration for the year ahead.
Last year my one word was #gratitude and as such I spent the year being mindful of all the good things that you tend to overlook on a day to day basis – simple things like how beautiful the sunrise is, how amazing it feels to nuzzle into the softness of the kids neck when they come up for a cuddle and how coffee tastes so much better when your better half makes it for you.
To be fair, it’s relatively easy to find things to be grateful for each and everyday, to find the good in each and every situation is a FAR GREATER task – I’ll use last night as an example …
James got home late (mostly because of the crappy Auckland weather clogging up the motorway system) which in turns means that the kids go to be later as they are waiting for James, which in turn means I go to bed later as I do Elias’ bedtime routine. So needless to say I was tired – a tired Julia is probably marginally worse than a hungry one .. then just as I’d crawled into bed and was drifting off I hear James yelling “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” (Yeah I’m not even bothering to censor the F word, you’ll see why in a second).
So – I’m “that wife” and I roll my eyes thinking to myself “what’s his problem?” all the while James continued running around in circles flapping his arms (although as I was still in bed I can’t actually confirm that, but it’s definitely what it sounded like he was doing) whilst screaming the F word. As I walk into the lounge screaming “what’s your problem!” I see a river coming towards me …
Oh – so THAT’S the problem ..
At that stage there was a pool of water on the other side of our ranch slider about half a metre higher than the bottom of the door and the river in my lounge was the water running under the door. James ended up jumping out a window and lying in the middle of our newly installed “rainwater swimming pool” trying to unblock the drains while I carted buckets upon buckets upon yet more buckets of water away.
We were both freezing, tired, dirty and wet and to top it off, poor James hadn’t eaten yet so he was hungry too! To pass the time and stop myself from bursting into tears (as I tend to do that when I’m tired) I started keeping count of the buckets of water I carted away reminding myself that farmers carries are an awesome full body exercise and as the hours past I became quite proud of James and I out in the wind and rain “protecting” our house and the family within it.
After showering James finally got to eat some food and I crawled back into bed, but almost immediately we had to go back out into the wind and rain and cart away yet more water. By that stage I was resigned to the fact that this was going to be “one of those nights” and I just assured myself that this was great practice for when the Zombies take over the world … (yeah well it was nearly midnight by then and I was tired hours before that). 😉
Just after midnight we both crawled into bed exhausted but too scared to fall asleep. Now I’ll be totally honest and state it’s FAR from easy to think of anything to be grateful for when you are exhausted and know that your alarm clock is going to go off in less than 4.5 hours BUT as I lay in bed listening out for rain drops I did my best to find something positive to go away with ..
- We are lucky to live in a two story house, SO if the worst was to happen and our bottom floor flooded at least we would all still have somewhere safe and dry to sleep upstairs – that’s far more than some families have.
- As James lay shivering for hours immersed in water clearing sludge out of the drains with his bare hands it allowed me to see him as the “man of the house” and our protector whereas before I’d probably always put my Dad in that role.
- All that “training for life” that I babble on about – it’s paid off, I’m a pretty useful human!
Till next time
