Turning around a bad day…

Thursday night I fell into bed utterly exhausted. I had struggled to stay awake until 9:30, admitted defeat and trudged off to bed. No sooner did my head hit the pillow than my eyes popped open. I tried, oh how I tried to go to sleep. At 12:30, I got up and went to find an over-the-counter sleeping aid which I grudgingly took. I hate taking pills, but I needed to get some sleep and it just wasn’t happening on its own.

At 5:50, the first alarm went off. I whacked the snooze button twice before remembering I needed to be out of the house half an hour earlier than usual. I had agreed to take my neighbour’s dog to the groomer. No big deal, I’ve taken the him to town before, but holy Toledo, was it cold out! -32C with a frigid breeze!

The little dog refused to walk to the car in the cold; his little feet don’t like that kind of temperature and who could blame him, I don’t like it much either. So I packed him to the car and put him on the towel I had laid out on the back seat. Away we went, but I could hear him snuffling in the back seat while he tried to get his bearings.

KC is an old dog. He’s a sweet, affectionate little shi tzu, white and brown, the kind that look like a Star Wars Ewok. He is mostly blind and mostly deaf with a penchant for licking ankles. He snuffles a lot because he’s kind of fat which makes his breathing labored. And…he farts. So when we turned onto the highway and I got a whiff of eye-watering stench coming from the back seat, I figured poor old KC had just let one go. But the smell didn’t go away and I started to think maybe there was a little more than just passed gas going on.

I pulled off the highway into a rest stop and, praying I was wrong, opened the back door. KC had slid down onto the floor, leaving a trail of poo all over my leather seats. The towel I had so carefully laid down was shoved against the back of the seat. Nasty. Just plain nasty. And worse, as soon as I opened the door the cold arctic air whooshed in and froze that smeary poo solid.

I cleaned it up as best as I could, which wasn’t great because like I said, everything was frozen. Not for long though. I still had a 25 minute drive to town, giving the nasty on the backseat plenty of time to thaw. I dropped KC off, picked up a coffee, and went to work unable to quite get the smell out of my nose.

At lunch, I found my leather wipes in the trunk, frozen, of course. I pulled the roll out of the container and laid them on the dash to thaw. Which they did…one at a time…and I was able to get most of the mess off the back seat. I bought some carpet spray cleaner and saturated the messy spots on the floor. I figured that would freeze too, but at least the chemicals in the cleaner would cover any lingering smell.

After lunch, I was finishing up the company Christmas cards so they could be sent out in time to make it to the recipients before Christmas Day. I took the big paper cutter, set it on the new table in the arrangement office and proceeded to trim each card to size. I had done about half the cards when I heard a strange sound. Kind of like the scritchy sound a snow shovel makes when you push it into a crusty snow bank – that kind of sound. I looked up and my stomach dropped.

There was a HUGE scratch in the finish on the new table. I hadn’t realized the paper cutter had a broken foot and a screw was exposed which gouged right through the beautiful, shiny finish.

I admit my first thought was not good and I won’t repeat it. My second thought was “How can I hide this?” (Don’t judge me, I was seriously sleep deprived.) My third thought was, “Don’t be an idiot, you can’t hide this. Suck it up and take your medicine.”

So I did. I confessed to the ruination of the new table. I felt terrible.

After work I went straight home, not so I could wallow in self-pity, although I admit, I felt like doing a little wallowing. No, I changed clothes, put on a smile, and went to a Christmas party! And you know what? I had fun.

The day up to that point had been so monumentally awful that it was funny. I wasn’t quite ready to laugh about it, but I could certainly understand how everyone else was finding the entire debacle entertaining.

Some days are like that. It seems like they are lousy from the minute you wake up, or in my case, from the minute I couldn’t fall asleep.

It’s all about choices though. Every time something went badly, I chose how I responded. I chose between getting angry and frustrated or I taking a breath of crisp, Canadian winter air, and forging ahead, and finding something good to take forward.

Anger and frustration are awfully heavy traveling companions. The longer you carry them, the heavier they get. Letting go of negativity and embracing honesty and humility lightened my load and my mood. I left the anger and the frustration, along with a well-soiled towel, in a dumpster at the side of the road and carried on with compassion for a little dog who was feeling stressed. I left my pride with the paper-trimmings and experienced mercy and grace.

A lot went wrong and I could have been miserable about it, but my mood would have only spread to those around me. I think that by shrugging at the awfulness of it all and still finding a way to smile, those around me responded in kind.

My boss and my coworker put my car in the garage at work to warm it up, then washed it and helped me clean the interior. Both my bosses were very understanding about the table and didn’t make me feel bad about it. I left work still feeling bad about the table, but feeling great about the people I work for and with.

It seemed like a really bad day, but it didn’t really turn out that badly. More often than we realize, attitude is everything. Perspective helps too. Nothing that happened was earth-shattering, nothing had life-altering consequences.

Next time you seem to be having a bad day, take a moment to catch your breath, and check your attitude and perspective. A little adjustment could make all the difference.