A Change of Plans

Yesterday began like a "Christmas... Bah humbug!" kind of day.

Naomi got annoyed with Tom and me. We both got annoyed with her--and then we got annoyed with each other. Not a big, hairy kind of thing, but just enough to set the perfect day I'd had planned off the ol' train track and into a ditch.

And yet after you've reached your 40's, you stop expecting people and days to be perfect. And when you're really grown-up, you learn to enjoy life in the occasional ditch. You look around the walls and think, "Hmmm. Maybe this isn't so bad. Just needs a little light. A little decoration." Rather like when Linus says, "You know, I never thought this was such a bad little tree." And then all of Charlie Brown's friends gather together and make the tree beautiful. At least, as beautiful as that tree could ever possibly be.

That's a bit like what I did yesterday. Camped-out in my sunny yellow room with my lamp and books and a cat on my bed. Watched Prancer (yes, again). Read a little. And then Tom even brought me lunch which he'd gone out in the 12 degree F. weather to get me and we both apologized for letting small things annoy us so that we, in turn, get annoyed with each other.

But we still needed space, so he went back down to the computer and I ate my lunch in bed and watched The Honeymooners. Talked with God (listened, too). Took a little nap. Had popcorn for dinner. Later Tom came in and read the newspaper and we talked a little while.

And I was reminded that a day spent in a Derailed-Plan Train, in a ditch, can be peaceful. Can even turn into one of the best days of the year. Just depends upon my attitude while I'm sitting there. 




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"But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely."--Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)


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