Last week was not so great. I spent a lot of it pathetically moping around because I was so unhappy about my work situation. I also accidentally dropped a drinking glass on the induction plate. The glass did not break, but the far more pricey induction plate shattered and had to be replaced. And then yesterday I found out that someone in my family has a life-threatening illness.
There are few things more destructive than self-pity, and I refuse to give in to it. I remind myself that the week was not all bad. Here are some of the happier occurrences.
- The kids finished the school year. Hooray! Just one more year for Marshall and three for Livia.
- My husband called me downstairs to see something in the back yard. It was a mama turkey with a slew of tiny baby turkeys. We could only track the babies’ progress by the movement of the grass around them. Occasionally one would pop up high enough that we could actually see it, but only for a second. They were moving too fast to count, but there might have been as many as a dozen.
- I learned a new word: Panglossian. It is similar in meaning to “Pollyannaish” and, like that word, comes from a literary source (in this case, a character in Voltaire’s Candide named Dr. Pangloss who is an overly optimistic chap). It’s a good word to have at the ready. If we are going to stubbornly cling to optimism, we will need the right words to describe ourselves.