I suppose I should take the time to write while I have it.

 

My Musing Moment from yesterday painted a pretty good representation of what I felt for most of the day. Angry. Writing helped a bit. Texting with RB helped as well. I had a message from him saying he was sorry I was having a rough day and from there we had a pretty comforting conversation. I had tried to call my mom but hadn’t been able to reach her. I had thought isolating myself away was the best option, but having interaction with someone I care about helped to balance me out.

 

I did use the left over emotions in my abstract piece this morning, which actually made the assignment pretty easy for me. I’ll be posting that later today as I feel up to it.

 

But yeah. The meeting wasn’t fun and made it hard to enjoy the rest of the day. Lab was uneventful. I was able to finish my winter cross stitch before it ended, which was a nice surprise. I hadn’t realized I was so close to completing it.

 

The bike ride home sucked. Mostly because the back tire refused to rotate properly, back peddling caused the chain to go slack, and there was an awful clanking sound that made me think my poor bike was dying…

 

Let me tell how that was so not what I needed after the meeting I had earlier… Can nothing go right in my day? Please? Just one thing? Can I just get home so I can have a breakdown alone and not on the side of the road?

 

I ended up texting Zane to let him know there was an issue with the bike, looked up when the bike shop closed (7pm), and then walked the bike the rest of the way home. I was pretty happy I had left my backpack at school. It would have been way worse to have to walk home with that on my back.

 

When I got home I was so close to breaking down. I was cold, had been all day, I was tired, I was frustrated, I still had all of the BS from the meeting to sort through… I knew good stuff had happened throughout the day. I knew it wasn’t the terrible day. But I couldn’t see or remember any of the good things. I knew that if I took the time to recognize ALL the events of my day rather than focusing on the negative ones that I would see there wasn’t a reason to feel the way I did. There wasn’t a reason to break down and I wasn’t going to let myself sink into the pits of undeserved misery just because I wanted to be selective in my memory.

 

While I stood in the kitchen I looked at the dry erase board on the fridge and got an idea. I would write down every positive thing that I could remember. Physically write it down rather than type or think it. If I wrote it down it was real. It existed. It happened.

 

So that’s what I did. I took the blue dry erase marker we use for our grocery list and wrote everything down. The more I wrote the more I could remember. The more I thought of that made my day nice. I meant to take a picture of the board before I left the apartment today, but I ran out of time and in my rush I forgot, so in no real order here are some of the things that happened yesterday.

 

The heat was on when I got home.
I had tuna already made so I could eat without having to cook.
My mom got a job.
Samantha got a job.
I was able to get home.
It was still light outside when I did get home.
I have money to fix the bike.
I could take the bike to the bike shop.
Carol helped replace the computer monitors in the break room.
I finished my cross stitch.
I got to talk to a friend.
I can fix my problems.
Today wasn’t a bad day.

 

So yeah. Some pretty awesome stuff happened yesterday.

 

On my to-do list I had things like, “do nothing,” and ,”eat ice cream.” No joke. I feel like I should take a picture of that just so it’s Internet official.

 

When Zane got home he took a look at the bike. The wheel was super bent some how. I wanted to take the bike to get it looked at since I think of it as my transportation now. I mean, the car is still my car, but I hardly ever use it anymore, at least when going to and from work. I felt crippled at the thought of not having the bike.

 

Even though he had just gotten home, and even though we had originally made plans to stay in and do nothing, mostly so I could try to recover from the emotional nonsense going on inside myself, Zane went with me to have the bike looked at instead.

 

Zane was frustrated for a majority of it. He hadn’t wanted to go. But I’m grateful he did. And in the end I think he was ok with how the night worked out. I’m glad we were able to spend time together instead of me being out at night by myself, trying to hold my world together even though I had already established that it wasn’t as bad as I was feeling.

 

The wheel was able to be corrected. There was also a broken spoke that needed to be repaired. When I mentioned about the back pedaling issue though that got me an “uh-oh” look from the tech. While the wheel was messed up, there was a bigger issue with the wheel. At the time it made perfect sense, and I still sort of know what the issue is, but I don’t remember all of the fancy, bikey, techy terms that were used to explain it to me.

 

Basically there is a housing unit that the gear cassette goes on. They think that’s broken, but can’t verify it without taking a bunch of stuff apart. I could replace the whole wheel for $60, or the gear cassette for something like $300… So we left the bike for them to replace the wheel.

 

It’s actually working out pretty well. They waived about $40 worth of fees and aren’t charging me for the previous work of straitening out the tire and fixing the spoke since I’m getting a new wheel instead. At first I was feeling pretty angsty because I literally just got the bike tuned up before Christmas. Can I not have it run good for a month?

 

But I guess this is a normal wear and tear thing, and with the tune up package I bought there wasn’t a way to see this particular part. Zane’s bike is pretty old and we leave it outside on the back porch of our apartment, so really I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky with the bike. I put about 200 miles on it in a month. I feel like I’ve been pretty fortunate to not have had the bike seriously mess up on me in such a way that I’ve been injured. I’ve only been minorly inconvenienced, and even with having to leave the bike at the shop last night, I was still able to get to work and enjoy my morning.

 

It might be annoying. I might be having to spend more money. But it is a good investment. Just like getting the car fixed is a good investment for continuing to be able to earn a paycheck. I’m fortunate that I am in such a better spot right now that I can afford the maintenance fee without cringing or worrying about how to cover something else. It’s annoying. I would have rather not had to spend that money. But I can spend it. I can fix the problem and things are still ok.

 

Because it was late-ish by the time we had the bike settled Zane and I went to Chick-fil-a for dinner, taking it back home. I was able to use money from the Food Fund, so it wasn’t extra spending, which was nice and made it feel a little more ok. Before eating I ran back out to school on my own. I put gas in the car while I was out. Zane doesn’t get paid until Friday, and I had done a lot of running around which used more gas than he was expecting. It’s only fair that I pay for the gas I used since he’s been keeping the car filled.

 

I retrieved my backpack then came back home to eat. We watched the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie while sitting on the couch under Zane’s new blanket. So much warm and softness. It was hard to stay awake towards the end of the movie, but I made it through the whole thing.

 

We went to sleep afterwards. I woke up around 1am unable to go back to sleep. I took my blanket and pillows, moving out to the living room where I eventually slept the rest of the night.

 

So that was yesterday. Long, crazy, frustrating, one road block after another type of a day, but I made it through. Suck it, Life.

 

I woke up this morning. I had breakfast. I’ve refused to let yesterday have any say in how I feel right now. Yesterday is in the past along with those emotions, and today is my present. It’s had its own frustrations, but I am happy to report that I am handling things with more grace.

 

Here’s to the rest of the day since it’s halfway over. Onward to keeping it relaxed and calm.