Contrary to what I said the other night, there is one excuse for missing a blog post, and it occurred last night. 

As I sat on the sofa, catching up on the Thursday night shows I’d DVR’d and cuddling with my cats, I started feeling that telltale ache in my head.  This one occurred with no warning, so I didn’t have time to relax away the headache.  I finally lay back on the sofa with a blanket over my face as I couldn’t even manage to get up and turn off the lights by then. 

Waking up an hour or so later, it was all I could do to turn off lights, take out my contacts and crawl into bed, in hopes that the headache would finally dissipate. 

Thankfully, I woke up this morning with a clear head and lots of kitties demanding my attention, but as you may have noticed, last night’s blog post didn’t happen. 

So, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it! 🙂

A friend shared this list and I found it so incredibly accurate and interesting that I decided to share it with my readers.  It was really because of number 10 that I realized it would be nice to have this in front of us so we could refer back to it when that dreaded number 10 reared its ugly head and we needed a reminder to, if nothing else, be kinder to ourselves.

We, as humans, tend to judge whichever human form we currently take as harshly and unkindly as humanly possible.  We would never judge or friends, our enemies or even our frienemies in this fashion, yet think nothing of doing it to ourselves! 

Why is that? 

Some might attribute it to having high expectations of ourselves, which, in and of itself is not bad.  But to have those high expectations and continually berate and castigate ourselves for not living up to our expectations seems to me to be something from the life of Sybil! 

We think nothing of beating ourselves up over the most minor of mistakes!  We are completely clueless as to why something goes “wrong” over and over again.  Hello!  If you learned the lesson the first time and made it a part of your life, you wouldn’t have to go back  and retake the test…over and over and over…

I, for one, keep failing the test of patience, so, naturally, the lesson smacks me in the face repeatedly.  I’d like to think that I’m starting to get it, but as the lessons haven’t stopped, and have, in fact, gotten tougher, I know I have along way to go!

I am also learning that when someone’s behavior strikes a nerve, to look more closely into why it strikes that nerve, and further, what I can do to stop reacting to that behavior. 

So all I’m really trying to say, here, is that life is a learning experience, and we need to treat ourselves the way we treat our children as they learn and grow.  We need to be patient and understanding with ourselves.  We need to give ourselves attaboys instead of “why didn’t you do that better”s.  We need to congratulate ourselves for our successes, and encourage ourselves when things don’t turn out quite like we’d planned.

In short, spread all of that kindness we so effortlessly give to others back onto ourselves.

My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful that I have the right tool at the right time.  When the idiot light in my car went on to alert me that my tire pressure was low in one of the four tires, I pulled out my handy dandy compressor that my daughter bought me for Christmas one year, extracted my trusty tire gauge from the storage box between the front seats, located the troublemaker and, in fact, inflated all four tires to their proper pressure.
2. I am grateful for exceptional nights of dancing like tonight when I feel like I’m on a combination of a caffeine high and floating on pure energy.
3. I am grateful for the help my kids are giving me in caring for the medical needs of my cats.
4. I am grateful for a day of down time which was actually quite productive, as I got all of my laundry done, plus the bedding and some towels (much to the disgust of my felines!) AND vacuumed the bedroom!
5. I am grateful for a house that, while certainly not immaculate, stays cleaner as a result of my own ministrations.

Love and light.