Last week I had a moment of truly understanding just how blessed I am. In my profession in Human Resources, this is the “busy time of year” with benefit plan changes, explaining benefits and trying to get hundreds of people to make a decision and return a form. This year the HR staff I work with wanted to offer an incentive for those who returned their forms early. Who ever knew that of offering a gift card for coffee and donuts could cause so much excitement? We had forms being walked into our department, our online faxes was multiplying by the minute, e-mail boxes were full. And lots of questions. People were excited and told us how much they wanted that card. I would come home in the evening and take a nap before I could function the rest of the evening! Add a week of weather that everyday started out proving the old Maine saying -if you do not like the weather, wait a minute”, as each day held rainy, icy, snowy surprises. The weekend going into this week I had not gone to the grocery store due to weather and just a general I was having so much fun being home I did not want to go out. So our cupboards were bare in the literal sense. Living in a small city we have some shopping choices for groceries. Trader Joe’s , Whole Foods, but I normally go to a chain supermarket that is near our neighborhood. It is not a mega store, and I can make the loop around it in fairly good time and know where every item I need is located. A work person’s store is what I call it, not too fancy, has all the essentials. No displays of organic salsa here. Have I mentioned that I am also a bit of a creature of habit? I love tea, it is a daily ritual of selecting my favorite mug, opening our stone crock where the tea bags are lovingly stored, using my stainless steel tea kettle filled with our water to a certain level. When the water reaches just the right temperature, it is poured into the mug and let sit for just the right amount of time. My special sweetener is added and then the tea is ready to be enjoyed. You can see that drinking tea at other places just is not the same, and I often forego tea out as it is not exactly as I want it. I am a person who loves my routine. So last week with the weather and the busy work week, I opted to stop at our Whole Foods, as it is literally just down the road from where I work. I enjoyed the samples, picked up the lush looking fruit I needed, and had a scratch my head moment of indecision when choosing some butter as they did not carry my work person’s store brand of butter in a tub. So I bought a few different kinds. All week I fussed and moaned that the butter did not cook the same, did not taste the same, and could not wait to get to the work person’s store to be able to buy the brand I normally use. I rather surprised myself at how much I thought about this during the week, and how much it bothered me to not have the old standby butter. Good heavens what if I moved to another country and did not have the brands of food I was use to? How would I ever survive! It made me think of all of the folks I have been privileged to meet thru the programs at my place at work who have come here from other countries with literally just the clothing they are wearing. How elusive that piece of “home” must be in a favorite food that you not longer can find in this new place. A spice, a soda, food the way your mother cooked it, all just a memory. In that moment I could see the silliness of my distress, a week of using another brand of butter- life sure is tough here in Connietown. Was it just getting older and not being as flexible? A stressful week when something as minor as what butter goes on my toast became magnified? But it made me stop and realize that if that is all that is causing this bit of stress, I sure am a very blessed person! PS- Life has returned to normal as I trotted right to the work person’s store first thing last weekend and bought several tubs of love my brand butter!
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:47:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015