Eggs on the Wall

I have a few eggs on my mind that I need to just throw against this wall so this may not be the most cohesive entry I've ever made but what the hay. I do what feels right and generally speaking that always seems to lead me in the direction I am supposed to go. Which is a funny thing 'cause that is just "The Secret" at work. Anyway, about those eggs ...

The first thing is regarding an event that happened in my life just this morning. Our girls like to ride the bus to school. For us that means getting up at 6:00 frickin' a.m. to be at the bus stop by about 6:35 frickin' a.m. as opposed to one of us dropping them off which would mean getting up at 7:00 a.m. That I can handle. Clearly the girls REALLY like riding the bus because we have basically told them that they have to get up with their alarms, get dressed and then come wake us up. Amazingly, they have done this almost every day since we started this ritual.

Now, if it isn't clear, 6:00 frickin' a.m. is might as well be 2:00 frickin' a.m. for me. I am not a get up smiling kind of person. I like to sleep. When I wake up, I'd pretty much rather be asleep. It's not that I am a jerk or grumpy (at least not most of the time), I just don't like getting up in the morning. Marcia isn't quite as bad but she likes to sleep too. So clearly we struggle with the 6:00 frickin' a.m. thing. As a compromise, we take turns letting each other sleep in. I guess we really love each other.

So anyway, this morning was my turn to sleep in. However, at least for me, sleeping in on school days is not really sleeping in. It's more like dozing in. Mainly due to the fact that our bedroom is 5 feet from the kitchen which in the morning is where about 50% of the getting ready takes place. So this morning I am dozing in and I hear one of the girls go out into the garage. I was assuming whoever it was was going out to get shoes. I was wrong. A second or three later I heard my car door shut and a short beep from my horn. When you lock my doors and shut them, my car beeps. My keys were in my car. Not only that but the spare key was too. I immediately had a complete and full understanding of the situation at hand.

Now, not long ago, even as little as several months ago, this would have caused sun-like degrees of agitation in my mind. I more than likely would have immediately gotten out of bed with the attitude that my day was now going to be all f'ed up because of course how the hell was I going to get my car unlocked. It would not have been good. However, this morning was not several months ago. This morning was a new day. A lovely, grateful day. Instead of reacting essentially in any way, I just sort of said to myself "Oh well, I'll figure it out" and basically tried to doze back off pondering what the figuring would consist of but all-in-all not all that worried about it.

Unfortunately, I heard Melissa's reaction to the whole thing which was one of sadness because apparently Mommy told her quite sternly how upset I was going to be when I found out. And who can blame her? I'm an ass sometimes. That made me feel bad. But it also made me conscious of how I was reacting THIS time to THIS situation.

Shortly after that I did doze back off as the girls left for the bus stop and the warmth and darkness of our bedroom overtook me again. A short while later, Marcia returned and was getting herself coffee which kind of woke me up again so I decided to finally get up. Upon entering the kitchen, the dialog was thus.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," Marcia replied slightly frowning.

"What?" I said.

"Wellll ... Melissa locked your keys in your car." She said.

"I know." I said.

She paused, looking at me sort of sideways. "You know?" she asked somewhat incredulously.

"Yep."

"Aren't you mad?"

"No. Why would I be mad? I'll figure it out."

We then proceeded to sit, drinking coffee and enjoying each others company for about 30 minutes. It was quite nice. The whole time I just kept thinking, "I'll figure it out."

When it was time for Marcia to get ready to go to the studio, I decided it was time for me to "figure it out." My car is a Subaru Outback. On the model I have, the windows just so happen to essentially press against a rubber seal along the sides. The top slides up into a molding channel but the sides are basically exposed. The great thing about this is it allows one to wedge things like screwdrivers under the glass and get a tiny bit of a gap to appear. It's not much but enough to get a hanger through which was the plan I had essentially hatched in the back of mind whilst dozing and sipping coffee. What I didn't think about was the distance from where I had to stick the hanger under the window to where the tiny, itsy-bitsy little door lock button lever was. I was able to get the hanger in there but it simply wasn't rigid enough over that distance to do me much good.

I must admit that at one point, briefly, the "F" word did leave my mouth. However, instead of going with that, you know what I did? I stopped myself and basically told myself that that wouldn't do me any damn good. So I proceeded.

I went back to the closet, found a mutant hanger that was like three times the thickness of normal hangers (must have been made in the U.S.A. before Chinese imports). I took that hanger, bent it out to the shape I wanted and started threading it along with my original Chinese hanger into my car. My goal at this point was to simply get the two hangers as close to the door locking mechanism as possible so that I could assess whether or not this scheme was even going to have a chance in hell of working.

Funny thing happened. I was focused completely and utterly on the point of insertion when "ka-chung," my doors unlocked.

I reached down, opened the door to the sound of paint stirers and hangers and a screwdriver hitting the ground. I smiled and walked back inside leaving my door open and my paraphernalia sprawling. It was beautiful.

Moral of the story? Patience. That's it. Well, and gratitude too because get this - I then proceeded to be grateful that Melissa had done this wonderful thing for me. It was a great morning!

Alrighty then. On to another egg.

I've been approaching my spiritual practice in a new way in the last week or so. I had a realization that maybe because I am 34 or maybe because I am human that many of the things that I wish were different about me are not going to be easy (or maybe impossible) to change. This has been a frustrating admission for me to face but one I have reluctantly turned to.

What I've decided is that instead of trying to re-train myself on these various bad habits I have, I am going to try and create and maintain an awareness of myself that is not me. Well, it's me but it's me looking at myself, watching, waiting and politically correctly giving me pointers and suggestions when the other me does things I don't think are spiritually in line with my Path. I figure it's easy to train a new dog rather than trying to train an old dog.

I like this and so far it seems to be working. I think this morning was a good example.

I was going to throw a few more eggs but I think I'll save them for next time.