MORNING FRESH WITH JODY BRESCH, Tuesday, December 23, 2014: Be happy and live in the moment. I think Buddha gets some credit for having said this. I can find additional credit given to Mother Theresa for saying something similar to it. Whoever, actually said it, its a lot easier said than done. At least thats been my experience. My day started out in pretty good shape yesterday morning. Teonia and I sat around talking over a cup of morning coffee while Orion ran pell mell through the kitchen like an out of control Ferrari. Then Teonias mother called to say her brother had gotten hurt in PE playing Dodge ball, and was coming home. Would she come and pick him up. She said he was walking very carefully when she picked him up. Orion and I puttered around at home, getting dressed and having a late morning snack. Then I was going to the bank to deposit a check. On the way I stopped at Good Will and the grocery store. Then I realized I was taking longer shopping than I had planned into my schedule, and I headed home. I was still in a pretty decent mood at this point, having been to K-Mart to find a couple of gifts for a special someone, and after the fact, learning I had point to spend there on the new points card I had signed up for last week. How come I didnt know this before I paid my bill, Im not sure. Anyway, I went back through K-Mart and bought 4 boxes of cereal for $12.00, which wound up costing me $2.00 with my rewards card. I was still trying to figure out how that works when one of my former students asked me if I had left my Hy-Vee Fuel card on the conveyor belt. Of course, I had, because both of my hands were full of receipts and coupons. By the time I arrived at home and Mark and I had unloaded the car we realized Hunter was late. He hadnt said anything about staying after school so we were all a little baffled about where he could be. Having raised four sons before this one, Ive had boys who didnt come home from school without saying they would be late before so I tried not to panic. It took us about 45 minutes to learn he had been chosen for a part in the 7th and 8th grade musical, which had been posted that day, and he was still at school in a rehearsal. I had supper in the oven when h e finally came home and told me he had to be back at school for an orchestra concert by 5:30. I was still in good humor at this moment, even though I realized we would not be eating supper before we left. Mark and Teonia helped us load up the van before they left for pool league, and then we wound up in a line of traffic back past Dominos when we headed across Wappello Street Viaduct. Cars started turning into the Sonic parking lot ally after we had sat there for several minutes. We could only speculate there was a bad wreck on the bridge and pray it wasnt somebody we knew, and pray that nobody had been hurt. I dont know how long it took us to get through downtown Ottumwa and to the Jefferson Street Viaduct, but it was quite a while. Traffic was bumper to bumper on Main, Second and Fourth Street. It seemed to be moving at a snails pace. By this time Mark and Teonia had called us and told us they were stuck in downtown traffic because of a bad wreck on the bridge. I could tell my mood wasnt quite as happy as it had been for the better part of the day. I was hungry, and we had a concert to make it through, and right before we walked out the door, Mike asked me to buy a box of chocolates for the nurses at Fresenius so that was going to slow me down too. When we arrived at Evans I knew something was wrong. It was almost 5:30 already and there were only a handful of cars in the parking lot. We found a janitor who said, Yes, theres a concert in the auditorium at 7:00 PM. I looked at the time on my cell phone. It wasnt quite 5:30 PM yet. Hunter, we are an hour and half early, buddy, I complained. He decided to use the time to practice. Orion milled around the orchestra room, and another little gal who plays violin asked Hunter if they could practice together. So we listened and I chased a bored baby, and whiled the time away until the concert. We walked in circles. We greeted people. We munched on cookies. We walked in circles. Finally at 6:50 PM Orion laid down in an aisle in the auditorium and whined for his bottle. Thank goodness he waited that long. The bottle actually kept him occupied for the better part of the concert. He didnt start melting down until they only had the last Christmas suite to preform. Hunter grabbed a fist full of cookies and Orion and I grabbed one and we headed to the car, but I was starving and we still had to stop at a store for chocolates. I tried Target first, but when I hadnt located what I was looking for in 5 minutes, I left. We went across the road to K-Mart, and they actually had what Mike wanted. I will not complain about what they cost. I didnt have to drive all over the retail district in the dark looking for them. Supper was still warm in the oven when we made it home. It took us about thirty minutes to devour it and then Mike needed a trip to the bathroom. Orion needed a dirty diaper changed. Mike needed his wound dressed. Hunter wanted a knee wrapped that was aching and wanted me to help him look up an elastic bandage. It was 9:00 PM and I was still going full-steam ahead, and Mike asked for help to go to the bathroom again. Nobody would have been proud of me. I yelled, Okay, this is the last thing I do and Im on down time for the rest of the evening until I give Orion his bed time bottle. Mom is taking the rest of the night off. It wasnt a nice thing to do to a guy in a wheel chair who needs help getting to the bathroom. Im not proud of myself, but I was exhausted, and irritated, and ready for a break. Now here the thing that really leveled me out. I picked up Orion to carry him back to the media room, and he leaned his head on my shoulder and started patting my back to calm and comfort me. This baby is sixteen months old. He has a vocabulary of one word utterances, a slim one at that, but he understands how to comfort, and he was trying to make his stressed grammie feel better. Not only was he trying, but he actually did make me feel better. It leveled me, calmed me, reminded me of how much had actually gone great on this day three days before Christmas. Once everybody was settled down for ten minutes in front of the television, I went on Facebook to catch up on any late and breaking news about the wreck. Imagine my surprise when I found up that my cousin, Elaina Abbott, her husband Greg, and their two kids, had been in the middle of the wreck on the bridge. Elaina said a Subaru ran under the back of the pick-up, lifted it up in the air and for a moment, they thought they were going on the railing on the bridge. It pushed them into a vehicle in front of them. Somebody hit the Subaru and pushed it further under their vehicle where they were suspended in the air and holding on for dear life. The paper said six vehicles were involved. Elaina said there were seven. When she finally realized none of them were hurt and she climbed out to check on the people in the Subaru, she couldnt believe the tires on their truck didnt go through the Subaru window. Somebody was transported to the hospital, but still, all involved were thanking a higher power that nothing worse had happened. We were thanking that higher power too. I decided it had been a fantastic day, and I owed my loved ones an apology for crabbing at everybody and I gave it. I complained not at all when Orion took an hour falling asleep, wiggling and poking the book I was trying to read. I was too busy counting my many blessings about how great things really are going around here. I am truly blessed. We are truly blessed. Im working on being happy in the moment today even though my wrist is in a major world of hurt from walking Orion around the auditorium for an hour and a half last evening to entertain him, and I have this runny nose, sinus drainage, and a pesky cough. Im having no trouble reminding myself it could be worse, while I work on putting a few last gifts in gift boxes. Have a great day, Ioway, and if its not going perfect, hey its still going. It is still the season of Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men. *These are pictures from Christmas 2012.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 18:47:12 +0000