I know.  I have neglected this blog for a long time….don’t take it personally.  I just haven’t been in the mood to write here, there, or anywhere.  It’s been a strange couple of months.

So I have two more rounds of chemo under my invisible belt and only ONE left to go.  I hope, fingers crossed.  There is no guarantee that the treatment worked but I should hopefully know by the end of August.  I am trying not to get my hopes up too high by taking the middle ground approach.  There is a whole other blog post about that issue.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of all the crazy stuff going on in the world these days it occurred to me how many really good and positive things surround us every day.  It might be something small – like making someone laugh, or talking to a friend – but it exists.  We just have to find it.  At the time, I had an entire blog post written about the topic but I was in bed and trying to fall asleep, not the best time to be online. But I didn’t forget the theme.

And then the grumpies settled in earlier this week.  Not exactly sure what happened but I fell into a terrible mood where NOTHING seemed right. Everyone was irritating and on my nerves.  Part of it was coming off the chemo fog and crappiness associated with that.  Part of it was going back to work and getting a boatload of stuff dropped on me because we are short staffed right now.  And for whatever reason, the fact that the guy who now mows my lawn hadn’t been here for over two weeks was particularly infuriating.  The arrangement is I owe him the same amount every month regardless of how many times he actually mows the lawn.  Oh, and the heat.  Yeah, it’s been awful here even by Florida standards (33 or 34 days in a row of 90+ degree temps with little rain to cool it off).

I was so angry and fed up and just generally pissed off I could hardly sleep last night.  I started the day by ranting to my manager.  Sigh….

And then, I don’t know what happened, but the mood started to lift and I tried to go back to that prior topic of there are always positive things that happen every day.

Even though I lost my hair for the second time in less than 5 months, I no longer wear a hat when going out anywhere.  It’s just TOO HOT!  That, and I just don’t really care any more.  The positive thing is no one really comments on it much to my surprise.  In fact, I think I see a bit of respect when they look at me now.  Definitely a positive thing.

Went to lunch at a place I go to on a fairly regular basis.  After you order, you give your name and they bring your food to your table.  The guy behind the counter now knows my name and greets me with a smile.  Nice to be recognized, even without hair.  😀

Came home from lunch and heard the lawn guy mowing the lawn.  By then most of the anger had dissipated and I no longer wanted to say snarky things to him.  It was time to pay him anyway, so I went outside and felt the full force of the 96 degree heat, humidity and blazing sun and wanna know what I thought?  “Shut up and take my money!”.  Yeah, he earned the entire month’s pay just this afternoon while I sat inside in the air conditioning.  Perspective.

And then, one more thing.  The county started a new program this year where we have to put out trash out in special trash cans that are picked up by automated trash trucks.  They allowed us to do a ONE TIME swap to smaller trash cans which I opted to do.  The swap was supposed to happen in April or May but never did.  I decided to let it go and not waste any energy complaining about it.

So, two weeks ago (yes, in July) the vendor came by and swapped out one of the trash cans and came back last week to swap out the other.  It was a weirdly random thing.  Anyway, the second trash can came with a defective wheel which proceeded to fall off when the trash was picked up Tuesday morning.  And yes, that was yet ONE MORE THING that pissed me off.

I fired off an email to the county Tuesday morning asking to have the trash can replaced.  A very nice lady called me yesterday from the county (it’s true!) and said she put in a work order and I should leave the trash can out all day next Tuesday or until the vendor can make it out to do whatever they were going to do.

Guess who showed up this afternoon?  A very nice man from the trash company vendor to fix the wheel.  He even left me an extra one in case something happens to another one.  Totally unexpected level of service from both the county and the vendor.  And yes, I thanked both.

I dunno.  After all that, it seemed like things were once again right with the world.  There ARE good people and there ARE kind people.  You just have to look for them and recognize the good stuff.

You get back what you send out into the world.