June 16th, 2021

This is one of my favourite summer tops.   It is nearly indestructible so it's great for packing, it does not require ironing, it fits well, goes with the majority of my shorts, fits well and is very comfortable.  The fact that it's yellow is beside the point.  Yellow is not a colour I look particularly good in, but when a person (me) tends to shop on the clearance racks of outlets stores, a person get what they get. And in this case the good Far outweighed the bad.  Even though currently it is one button short.

But I'll get back to the shirt later.  I'm going to start with a statement.  I honestly believe that there is some sort of balance in the universe and that when people live similarly well balanced lives (physically, emotionally, mentally....) then, things are pretty darned good.  But sometimes, maintaining that balance can be a little tricky.  And that's when mind set comes into play.

For instance,  Monday morning, bright and early, when I went outside to get the newspaper. " Hum dilly hum, what a beautiful morning!  Hello Mrs. Woodpecker!"  I said as I walked down the driveway. As I bent down to pick up the newspaper, I came to realize, very quickly, that somebody had allowed their dog to pee on our newspaper!  Dang it!    Just as an aside, our neighborhood is especially "doggie" and in the summertime,  lots and LOTS of folks are out at the crack of dawn, walking their pets.  Also, while our newspaper delivery person, who faithfully delivers our paper every day (well almost every day, there have been a few misses over the years but not many) does get the paper onto our property in the driveway each time, but only just barely.  So the paper waits patiently for me only a few feet in from the very edge of that spot where the driveway meets the road.  Which is where people walk by AND their dogs walk by.  

I like dogs.  I like them a lot.  I have owned quite a few in my lifetime.  But I am not fond a newspapers that have been peed on.  Can you blame me?  So I stood there, looking down at the yellow spotted newspaper that was fragrant with urine and said softly,  "So that's the kind of day it's going to be eh" which I now realize is a rather negative statement. At the time I merely considered the situation.  Should I just put gloves on to pick it up and throw it away? Then I saw that our newspaper delivery person, bless their hearts, had double bagged the newspaper!  Woohoo!  I was able to scoot out the second bag with the unsullied newspaper still inside,  then remove the newspaper from  the clean bag and use it to pick up the icky bag, throw both bags in the garbage (not recycle because recycle has to be clean). And I went inside with my precious newspaper and washed and washed AND WASHED my hands ready to have a crappy day.

The immediate problem was solved. But I already had a poor mind-set.   My feeling had always been that days tend to end as they begin.  However, by the end of that day, when I mentally stepped back and really gave is some consideration, Monday was a actually, over all, a pretty good day. Dog pee aside.  Once I gave myself a serious attitude adjustment it occurred to me that it was entirely my choice. I could be annoyed all day about the dog pee and continue to have a bad day OR I could get over it, move forward and have a good day instead. 

And since I would much rather have a good day, I realized that for every rude person I encountered, I interacted with at least 3 perfectly lovely people.  Each time I dealt with a terrible and inconsiderate driver, it was balanced out by countless other thoughtful and ultra considerate people behind the wheel.  

I found great sales at the grocery store and my car's gas tank was still half full.   Despite the LARGE piece of pie I had scarfed down the night before, the number on the bathroom scale did not change and it was a perfectly lovely sunny day.  And that should have been my focus Instead of the dog pee,  the person who kept insisting that I take advantage of a BOGO at the grocery store that I wasn't interested in, the driver who cut me off and nearly took out a bicycler in the process or the fact that my favourite shirt lost a button.

Back to my favourite yellow shirt with polka dots.

Sounds like no big deal right.  So I lost a button, so what?  Big Fat Hairy Deal.  Welllllllll, for one thing I am a non-sewer.  A seriously big time non-sewer.  It's not that I don't want to sew anything, it's that I'm terrible at it.  No matter how hard I try, my sewing, frankly, stinks.   60+ years of trying tells me that I'm not going to get any better at it.  So there's that.  And the buttons on this shirt are unusual. Odds are really good that I'm not going to find any more like them. So I sighed and assumed that once I finished putting bandaids on all my fingers from the needle sticks in the sewing attempt, I would then have a shirt with one odd button.   Or my third choice which was to sew the button hole closed, sew it to the other side and have no button there at all.  Or replace ALL of the buttons.  Sucky choices all around.

​Here's a better look:

The button parted ways with the shirt at some point on Sunday.  And Tim and I were lots of places on Sunday. Lots and Lots of different places including a hike.  So the button could have come off anywhere.  So it is logical to assume that the button was lost forever and ever, amen, amen.  

I do laundry on Mondays and even with the missing button I still washed the shirt. Of course I did! And that's when, shockingly, in the process of doing the laundry, I found the button!  Seriously I did!  I was folding clothes in the kitchen.  I shook out a towel prior to folding it and heard a tiny little "ping". I tracked down the source of the sound and there it was, on the kitchen floor!  the missing button!   I couldn't believe it! 

Once again, balance in my personal universe was restored.  Button lost, button found.  And as it so happens, button also sewed (poorly but still sewed) back on my shirt!  I was excited about it all day long.

It takes so little to entertain me.

Anyway, there it is, me taking charge of keeping my own personal balance, balanced.  I honestly believe that it's up to each individual.  We can choose to be happy, to focus on the good stuff or we can choose to not be happy and focus on the not so good stuff.  

AND, bonus points,  it finally has begun to rain.  Another Balance Restored!