Life and other foibles

Things have been interesting lately for me. I turn to my blog for it's original concept: a log on the web.

Yesterday I was tasked with training a new contracted employee at work. This required that we drive around to different sites, and he watch what I do, and ask questions. We had 6 sites on our plate, and everything was going pretty well...until....

We got to the fifth site, and as I drove down the street immediately preceding the site, I noticed a little noise, and a strange "feel" in the steering of my car. When I turned into the parking lot, the car made a very bad sound. Ever ride a roller-coaster run by a chain? It has that kind of "clink-clink-clink" sound as you approach the top of the hill? That's what my car sounded like. Oi.

The car is a 1999, so it isn't all that old, and it only has 130,000 miles on it. And I had the transmission replaced last year. But I think it's something in the transmission making that noise, and I don't like it.

Needless to say, I was somewhat embarrassed. Here I am training someone who works for me, and my car has a fairly significant failure out of the blue. Bummer. He got a ride home from his brother who lived in the area, and I had a couple great friends make the hour-long drive to pick me up. Oh yeah, I forgot to say I was an hour from home when this happened. So my car spent the night there, and I have to figure out how to get it home today, and what shop it is going to when it gets here.

This post is more for me than you I suppose. It helps me to lay everything out and organize it mentally. Last night when I got home I could barely function. It just kind of hit me with a disappointment about the whole thing. What a silly thing to be down about. It's just a car. I'll be able to get it fixed, and it will be back on the road soon. Maybe it was just one more thing at the end of a long day for me. So while I didn't have the energy or motivation to even respond to emails or check the updates in my Google Reader, I was able to clean our family room, which was long overdue.

Do you ever notice that when things are stressful, sometimes the simple things are the best things you can do? Sometimes you just need to be able to clean, or read a book, or relax in a hammock. It gives you that small sense of control over your surroundings I think. It lets you know you can handle something at that moment, even though it isn't the big problem. Sometimes cleaning (or reading or mowing the lawn, or, or, or...) can be therapeutic. Just those simple actions.

It actually makes me slow down just a bit, and maybe that's why I'm going through this.I know things will get better, and the car will get fixed, and I'll move beyond this moment (after all, it came to pass). I just pray that I learn what I am meant to learn through this, and that I don't miss the message. I'm truly blessed to have my wife, and good friends to help me out in times like this though.






What the heck is a foible anyway? It just sounded right.