My Refuge & Strength

For all you 90s kids out there: good old Hey Arnold!

Today I woke up and realized that I hadn’t done my homework for my first class. So I threw on a pair of unflattering sweat pants and burned through my homework over a bowl of Corn Pops. I was already 8 minutes behind schedule, but hitting every traffic light didn’t help, and it just so happens that the homework is collected right when class starts in this particular class. So I walk in one minute late and I see that all the homework has already been collected, but I figure it’s worth a shot to set it up there - just in case. I believe he took it, but he may have just thrown it in the trash.

Then later, after all my classes, I headed home because I still had 2 hours before work. And I remember telling my self, “Don’t fall asleep. You aren’t going to feel rested and you’re probably going to sleep late.” But do I listen? No. I don’t. I fall asleep and wake up to see that I had only slept for about ten minutes, which was weird. But then the phone rang and it was my boss, wondering where I was. See, that’s the trouble with analog clocks (and being generally stupid). I’d really slept for an hour and ten minutes. So I rush into work, apologizing profusely because - believe it or not - this isn’t the first time this has happened. My boss was incredibly gracious, God bless her, but I still felt awful.

Then, I get a call from my mom asking where all the manicottis had gone. The night before, I had a few friends over and, being the young adults that they are, were extremely hungry. I saw manicottis in our fridge and I figured they were probably for dinner sometime, but I also figured [in my aforementioned stupid head] that I could just make myself some dinner and my parents could have the remaining four manicottis. Anyway, she calls me and asks me what happened to the rest of them and I respond with, “Uh, well, I may have, uh, made them for my, um, friends last… night.” Then she tells me how she bought garlic bread and was going to make this nice meal out of them when we had company over tonight - which just made me feel worse.

So, as I sit here looking back on all the low points of my day, it has come to my attention how very much I think about myself. Yeah, I had kind of a lousy day. Boo hoo, poor me. But at least I have a mom that cooks me dinner. At least I have a job to go to. At least I have the luxury of an education. Really, the only thing I don’t have is a good sense of responsibility, but I’m working on that. Sometimes “bad experiences” really blind me as to how blessed I really am.