Yes! It’s been raining, and some of the snow has melted away. If it doesn’t get too cold, we won’t have ice.
Someday, I’ll be an old-timer, telling tall tales about the winter of ought-8. “The snow was SO deep, it was over the horses’ heads” or “You could walk straight out of a second-story window like you were on solid ground” or “We dug down the driveway and found the top of a UPS truck.” 🙂 And my grandchildren, should I ever be so blessed as to have any, will roll their eyes.
What I would actually say about this storm and the minor meltdown it contributed to is this: I learned a lot about myself. I learned that if I think depressing thoughts, I’ll BE depressed. I learned not to be so darn bull-headed and ask other people to help me. I don’t know what I would have done without Sally and Jim, who drove seven hours over bad roads just because they love me, Mary Ann and Jenni talking me through, Larry plowing roads and around the barn at all hours, friends Sandi, Althea and Ozma and Cheri, all of whom ministered by telephone, others by email. To one and all of you: Thank you.
I’ve also been listening to a Richard Carlson (The “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” guy) book on my iPod. He reminds us that thoughts are just that, thoughts. They come, they go. But you don’t have to land on them from a running horse like a bull-dogger at the rodeo, wrestle them to the ground, and hog-tie them before the buzzer goes off. (That last image was mine.) I have a tendency to view every thought that crosses my mind as the gospel reality–but until recently I wasn’t aware of that tendency. That and several other insights I’ve had have been worth it all, and I don’t say that lightly.
Today, I’m only going to bull-dog the happy ones.
