Cock a doodle doo

Remember those childhood days when the whole world was against you and the only person you had to turn to was your mother, who promptly told you that the world was not the problem, but your attitude was? And I was hoping for sympathy.

A change of perspective can be like Crest WhiteStrips, instantly brightening even the most obscure surface. Adjusting to new surroundings requires flexibility and a sense of humor...unless you'd rather be crotchety.

I wake up at 6:30. My housemate wakes up at 5:15, which really means that I wake up at 5:15 and she wakes up at 6:20. Yep, she's the one that sleeps through all four alarms. Okay, I laughed at first. Then I started missing that extra hour of sleep. Ear pressed to the pillow and head under the covers doesn't help. Breathing louder doesn't help. Screaming into your pillow doesn't help. We talked and agreed on some preventive measures we could both take. The first night I slept with a fan, I dreamt I was running into the end-zone during the Superbowl and woke with a start to the crowd roaring...er, the fan roaring. I'm learning to live on less sleep.

Rise and shine, then time to shower. I stumble into the bathroom, turn on the water and keep everything but my toe at a safe distance until it's bearable. In seconds, the water changes from bearable to scalding. No, really. The water cools just enough, and cools, and cools while I turn the knob to hot, hotter, hottest. In a mere ten minutes my teeth are knocking and I'm jittering, clamoring for a heater.

The pantry door fell off. The dryer always eats one sock. We thought we locked ourselves out of the house only to find the back door unlocked after six hours of waiting. There's that one spot on the drive to work where I can't see a thing because of glare and a dirty windshield and the discovery that I'm out of wiper fluid.

- a little bit of perspective -

Some days I am Irritable in her rarest form, and it's on those days I realize it's all about perspective. Nothing is different about that day, it's simply the way I look at it. And on those days, that realization doesn't help. But on days like yesterday, when everything seems laughable and the worst possible scenario somehow still contains humor, I realize that life truly is wonderful, and I could ask for nothing more than what I have. My life overflows with blessings from the Lord above. He has given us laughter, pure and sweet, in the knowledge that we have a place to rest our cares and ease our burdens. He truly is all the perspective we need.