A horse lesson in attitude...

It was a long day yesterday. The kind of day that feels like 4 days in one but not 4 days at Disneyland. More like 4 days straight at the dentist with no laughing gas and nothing is funny.

G was working a long day, Liv was sick and had been up at least 6 times in the night and I was just feeling bugged. The kind of day where you feel like your insides have lice and you just feel frustrated even if nothing wrong is happening.  I shattered my favorite goblet while trying to put it away (yes, I have a favorite goblet that I like to drink juice out of) and the shards flew into the cake I had just baked so dessert turned into a throat shredding danger booby trap dessert.  Liv was consistently whining for the entire day and I was not feeling Mother Teresa like patience with anything.  I was feeling mega stressed about moving because I stink at organizing and moving, we don't even have any boxes and we leave in 2 weeks. Not to mention my stomach jiggles, and I was just feeling like sometimes being a stay at home mom is the same fate as when Edmond Dante was sent to solitary confinement at the Chateu D'If including the need to scrape tally marks for each day of successful motherhood completed (ok, this is a little extreme but you get the point).

 By the time G finally got home I was ready to throw the whole day in the trash with Liv's putrid smelling diapers and my pieces of smashed glass cake.  G of course came home as pleasant as a songbird even though he had been up since 5 and asked what I wanted to do. I replied with dragon smoke coming out of my nostrils, snarling,

"I want to go to bed."
He said, "Ok, that's great, it's only 6:30 though, are you tired?"
"No I'm not tired. I'm just tired of this day. Some days are just so lame it's like a horse with a broken leg, there's nothing left to do but just take it out back and shoot it. That's what I need to do with today. There's no point in letting it just limp along in misery, I'm taking this take out back and putting it down by going to sleep because the sooner I sleep, the sooner there will be a new day.  It's too late to salvage, this is a day like a horse with 4 broken legs and needs to be put down."

G's response is reason 6 thillion and 2 why Garrett Seibold is the perfect person for me.  Instead of over reacting about my over reacting, he just nodded and said, "I see. But I don't think that the answer is always to shoot the horse or the day.  You just sit right there for a minute. I have a little something for you to watch."
He went over to the DVD's and put on "Seabiscuit" which I had never seen. I starting rolling my eyes. Watching some cheesy horse show was not really want I had in mind for a consolation to my caustic mood but it was humorous to me that rather than feed into my mood, he chose a horse movie. He went to a specific scene where there is a horse with a broken leg and some old guy is fixing it and says, "Just because a horse gets banged up, doesn't mean you always need to take it's whole life."

Ha. I was laughing at G using Seabiscuit as a teaching moment for his cantankerous negative virus spreading wife. The funniest part is that after the cheesy scene, I decided to keep watching.  It's basically a cross between "Mighty Ducks 2" and "Black Stallion" with some feel good music and moral at the end but I actually really liked it.

 After it was done, I apologized for my attitude and how I was acting that day. I asked what would be a sufficient compensation and he said, "Chel, let me explain to you a little concept about marriage that I don't think you quite grasp.  There's no need for compensation. Sometimes you get grumpy. Sometimes I get grumpy. Sometimes it's on the same day, sometimes we pick different days.  Sometimes there is a reason and sometimes there is no reason at all.  It doesn't change a single thing. It doesn't change our love, it doesn't change what we have, it doesn't mean things are going to be bad permanently, it just is a rough day. That's it. One day. Everything will work out. Everything is great."

You know. I think he's on to something.  Sometimes I think a bad day transforms in my mind as the marital apocalypse, that eternity is forever horrendously ruined, that all the negative thoughts and feelings are preserved in formaldehyde and will never improve or disappear, and the day is evidence that I am the worlds lamest human being breathing on the planet but the truth is that all of that is false.  Sometimes it's ok to go to bed early to put a day out of its misery, and sometimes it's even better to watch a scene from sea biscuit, realize that the day was crappy and be excited that tomorrow is a brand spanking new start to it all. Thank you G and Seabiscuit for that little lesson.