Midway through the week. There is no way I will survive it. My world is just too upside down. The flooring people all but finished the job at our house on Friday. I was so excited to finally get our stuff put back together so that we could start functioning with some normalcy. As I walked around the house Friday and Saturday I heard cracking after cracking. I turns out that the grout in between the tiles was breaking apart. Upon further inspection, many of the tiles were flexing with the give of the floors. I wish I could say that it was an isolated incident, but it was happening throughout the entire house. I paced and I paced. Examination upon examination, I beat upon the tiles with my knuckles to reveal the hollow areas underneath large portions of the tile. I spent the majority fixated on my floor problem. When I did not have my face stuffed in a pizza, or my nose depressed into the chill of an ice cream tub, I was face first in the newly tiled floors, inspecting for the newest damage. I have communicated the problem with the contractor who is agreeable and willing to remedy the situation. The problem is not the floor, the problem is the disarray of the house which is being caused by the floor. On top of this, the kids are both feeling icky and we are praying that the sore throats, sinus headaches, coughs, and runny noses hold out so they can make it through the standardized testing at school. The testing presents my oldest son Grayson with some anxiety. He gets the anxiety from his dad, and I can sense his dread before dropping him off at school. I hate it for him. It actually makes me feel sick as well. I don’t believe that I am the first person to ever feel emotional pain by virtue of their child. On top of all of this is the weather. I have a window of opportunity for which to optimally service my weed control customers, and I want it to be done on my time. I provide my customers with 7 applications a year, and I will feel rushed during all 7. I have had the same feelings for 13 years, and for 13 years we have always made our window…yet I continue to worry. Yesterday, my carburetor was leaking on my spray rig and I went to the darkest place I could find to look for self pity. It turns out that all I needed was a hammer to fix the problem. Actually the hammer fixed the carburetor, but not the problem, cause the carburetor was never the problem.

None of the things mentioned above are problems. The cracked floors, the sick children, the weather, the carburator, none of these things are the underlying issue for what is truly going on. They are all symptoms of a larger problem, and that problem is a lack of control. I don’t really consider myself a control freak. I am really more like a child who wants to have everything go his way, and if it doesn’t go my way then I want to re-align things in a manner that is more suited for my liking….or otherwise known as controlling (so control freak is an accurate label). My perceived lack of ability to control the decisions and schedule of the  floor contractor leaves me with all sorts of scenarios that I will endlessly play out throughout the day. The dissarray of the house will cause me to produce “what-if” scenarios that lead to me not being able to find things that I will so desperately need (which I can’t find regardless of the condition of the house). My kids declining health will cause me to become agitated at them, as I want to order them, “don’t you dare get sick.” The weather will cause me to resent the world and focus on only the times that my work has been pushed back because of weather. The carburetor is a wonderful opportunity for me to demonstrate my most melodic, “why me?” performance that I have been rehearsing my entire life. When I feel like I don’t have control of one aspect of my life, it is easy for me to look for my lack of control in other areas. Before long, I have a big fat snowball of non-controledness, which pisses me off. This does not make me happy, and this is not who I am. I am not practicing the things that I have been taught to embrace my lack of control, and try to control nothing. When I see that everything is as it should be, then I find the gifts in my situation and don’t perceive them as problems.

I am glad to have floors to fu*k up, and finances to worry about losing. I am lucky to have “stuff” to misplace, even if it’s not as accessible as  I would like. I am fortunate to have healthy kids, and their minor illnesses should help me appreciate their overall health. They have tests to take and education to be received, and I should be grateful that attendance is a priority. The weather? Well, I am really reaching if I want to consider a few rainy days to be a problem. My business does not exist without rain. Rain is the most active ingredient that I can use, and I don’t even have to apply it. I need rain for every product that I put down, and everything that will come up. I few months without rain, and my services are not really necessary, and certainly not very beneficial. Well, carburetors clog and equipment breaks. I have been running the same motors for over 7 years, and you cannot ask for much more than that. Everything is really going great. I was really afraid that this post was going to be a few paragraphs of bitching and moaning, but I think that the pen to paper (per say) has once again shed a lot of light on what is really going on. It is going to be a great day. A great day full of situations that are not the way that I would necessarily have them arranged, but with dividends paid infinitely greater than anything that I ever invested. Look for the good, and let me know when it hits you. If you don’t find the good, you are probably not looking hard enough. That has been the case for me personally, anyway.