My new favorite quote

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."

- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

Lessons from Garfield

You know what happens to liars, don't you? They end up doing the weather on TV.

Quote

The tragedy of man is not that he cannot find happiness, but that he looks for it in the wrong places. Because the desires of man are boundless, no particular good, whether outside himself or in himself, can perfectly satisfy him.

- from Thomas Aquinas' "My Way of Life"

"Good manners don't cost a thing."

Yesterday I closed out our post office box. We've had the box for years, since just before we moved to this area.

We haven't lived in that part of the city for almost five years, but we kept the box for a number of reasons. We still went to that part of the city relatively often, and it was easy to pop by and check the mail.

A couple of years ago, the post office started locking the doors during non-working hours. That made it much more difficult, since Skeeter and I weren't often there until evenings or weekends. Still, we didn't have much of our mail sent there. Mostly I used it for my eBay sales so I wouldn't have to give out our home address. I was lucky to get there once a month, and usually only if I was expecting a letter or package.

But this week I decided it was time to close it. And even after all of the inconvenience and such, I really closed it because of one of the clerk, a rude and hateful woman who started working there about two years after we got the box. Most of the time I didn't have to deal with her because, hey, I was just there to get the mail. It was always a 1-in-4 chance of getting her when I picked up a package, so it wasn't too bad.

All that changed last year, when she was put in charge of the boxes. Because I don't get there often, and sometimes less than once a month, I didn't get last year's box notice the month that it was due. When I came in a couple of weeks after it was due, she informed me that the post office wasn't in the business of letting people have the boxes for free. She had sent back all of my mail and changed the locks. And she told me all of that in her oh-so-haughty manner.

At the time, I wasn't considering changing and I was still selling on eBay pretty regularly, so I paid the changed-lock fee, renewed the box for another year, and moved along. But this year, as the time approached, I thought about it before I renewed. I don't sell on eBay as much any more, and there was really no need to have the box. I didn't renew it when it was due at the end of May.

Yesterday I happened to be in the area during post office hours, so I stopped by to officially close the box, set the forwarding order, and turn in the key. Haughty Hateful Clerk was there, but thankfully, she wasn't the one who waited on me. The woman who did wait on me has been there for longer than we have been customers, and she's always so nice. Not overly, grandmotherly nice, but pleasant and efficient, which is all the better in my opinion.

When I told Nice Clerk that I was there to get any mail that might be there and set the forwarding order, Haughty Hateful Clerk must have been eavesdropping. Haughty Hateful Clerk turned from her customer and called out from two stations over, "Your box has been closed. You don't have any mail."

I turned to Nice Clerk and said, "I understand if the mail has been sent back, but I do want to set a forwarding order." I told her the box number, and Nice Clerk said, "Wait a minute. You're [last name], right? There's a stack back there for you." Nice Clerk immediately went to look and came back a couple of minutes later with a stack of mail (mostly junk) and a small package that I had forgotten about.

I have a sneaky feeling that if Haughty Hateful Clerk had been the one to wait on me, there's no way she would have given me the mail. And now that makes me wonder about the last time. Last time I was there 17 days after the box was closed. This time, it was 45 days. If they had it this time, surely they had it last time as well.

But, interestingly enough, Nice Clerk and the clerk who stands next to her (another very nice woman who is more of the grandmotherly type) were having a discussion about manners while I filled out my forms. I can't remember how the discussion began, but they were talking in very vague terms about manners, specifically good and bad manners between a clerk and customer. I think that one of them must have had a bad experience earlier that day, although neither one of them said that.

Nice Clerk came out with the sentence I was expecting as soon as the manners topic came up. "Good manners don't cost a thing."

I hope that Haughty Hateful Clerk was eavesdropping then too.

Quote

Always be happy. When people are in a bad mood, the last thing they want to do is hang around with happy people.

-- Kermit the Frog, from "Before You Leap"

Welcome to Holland

Encouragement can come in ways you never imagined.

A friend sent this to me tonight. Her son has just been diagnosed with an "autistic spectrum disorder" and she is coming to terms with that and what it means. While my children don't have those issues, I found encouragement and meaning in it anyway. I have a feeling that I'll refer back to it on those days that I feel overwhelmed by this life I've chosen.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Quote

Fast from bitterness - feast on forgiveness.
Fast from self-concern - feast on compassion for others.
Fast from personal anxiety - feast on eternal truth.
Fast from anger - feast on patience.
Fast from words that destroy - feast on words that build up.
Fast from discontent - feast on gratitude.
Fast from discouragement - feast on hope.

- Susan Tassone

Quote

You do the best you can and that is all you can do and don't worry about living up to someone else's expectations or ideals. Never give up and try your best. Sometimes you will far exceed the goal, sometimes you will make the goal, and sometimes you will miss the mark all together but none of that matters ... what matters is that you take a chance.

-- Janice LaBella

Quote

[Many people] live as though they depended, not on God, but on themselves alone. They do not deny God's wisdom in theory. They simply disregard it in practice.
- from "My Daily Bread"

Words to live by

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

Psalm 143:8, NIV

Quote

Negative identity, shallow as it is, comes more easily than dedicated choice. It is frankly much easier to be against than to be *for.*

-- Richard Rohr, from "Everything Belongs"