Butterflies and landslides...

It's been a week since my last post, and what a long, trying week it was. I could make a list of all the trials and tribulations that happened, the bits of bad news received, and the battles with my daughter (of which there were many) and I'm tempted to dump it all out here and let you have it. Apparently April showers don't just mean the weather; we've been rained on all over with a black cloud of bad news and bad behavior since this month began. But today the sun is actually out and I'm going to put all that away. I was blessed enough to have a good venting session with a friend the other night and I'm going to let that be the end of the discussion. What's done is done; some of it will continue and will have to be dealt with but I'm looking a fresh start today.

So far, so good.

Whenever things start going downhill, it seems like an avalanche. It all happens at once, and it's a trap to start taking inventory of the components of the disaster. If there was any good in the mix, it gets lost in the rubble and buried under the boulders of bad news. And then comes the search and rescue mission--the looking for answers so we can figure out why we deserved it all in the first place and save ourselves from more of the same. We vow to be better, to do more good and save ourselves from another landslide of bad. If it's a you-get-what-you-give system, what to do when the getting is all bad while the giving is all good?

You do nothing. You keep giving because it's the Golden Rule and you get what you get. And that's that. Handle it all to the best of your ability and move along. If you stand on the hillside, yelling about all the injustices of being dumped on, the rocks are going to start coming loose again and knock you right down on your arse. Quiet and calm is the way to go. This is what I'm telling myself these days.

So amidst all the rubble this week, I did have some flowers peeking through the cracks. I bribed my daughter into behaving at Old Navy by buying her some butterfly wings. She adores them, and her best moments were when she was wearing them. Maybe they are angel wings in disguise? They work wonders. The sight of her sitting in her wagon as her dad was gearing up to take her for a walk, wearing those wings over her coat and grinning from ear-to-ear, will be my go-to memory of the week. It is the bulldozer that clears the remains of this latest landslide. Maybe I should see if those wings come in my size...