The Great Thing About Being A Pessimist

The great thing about being a pessimist is that when things go right, you're always surprised.

Anyone who read my post yesterday may have surmised that I didn't exactly have a good day by any stretch of the imagination. While it was a 100% accurate representation of how many wildly different thoughts run through my head throughout the course of a day, yesterday was not typical. Thankfully.

First, I was lamenting the fact – over and over again, actually – that I was possibly one person short for the drama, and that fear/worry/apprehension doubled once I got to church and realized that not only was I one person short, I was now two people short, as someone who had previously signed up had crossed their name out.

(Apparently, my unease took on a physical manifestation, as one of my church friends, upon seeing me remarked, "Wow! Your face is really RED!" I remarked that it also felt as though it were really red, and that I felt flushed, and my face was somewhat warm to the touch. This flushed feeling – and look too, I'm sure – continued throughout the evening, but went away sometime during my sleep.)

So, I was now two people short heading into the final audition, and panicking more than was reasonable. But then the most curious thing happened last night and this morning – the guy who couldn't do it before, and the lady who had crossed her name off last night both decided that they could, wanted to, and would participate after all. Wow! Problem solved. Didn't see that coming.

Second, there was the apprehension about the plumbing situation. The guy never did call yesterday, and I didn't call him. Until this morning, that is. I was headed out the door, when my phone rang, and it was the plumber. "We're coming this morning to start the job, if that's all right with you," he says to me. "Absolutely, it's all right with me!" I said. "Of course it's all right with me!" After checking that I didn't need to stay and wait to let them in the house, I left for work, marveling at the unexpected excellent timing of the plumber. Didn't expect that either.

I hadn't been at work more than 30 minutes when the plumber called me back. Bad news already? Nope, they just needed to get in the house after all. So back home I headed.

While I was securing the scared-of-jackhammers kitties in our bedroom upstairs so that they were out of the way of the plumbers doing any work they may have to do inside, I heard a sound outside the second-floor window.

Errant birds smacking into the window panes? Nope. A ladder being set up against the house. What in the world?

Turns out it was the roofing guy, returning unexpectedly to fix the flashing around the dormers in the front of the house so rainstorms would stop ruining our bedroom ceiling (the same guy had fixed our skylight flashing for the third-floor ceiling leak a couple of weeks ago). Wow! Didn't see that coming either.

Don't get me wrong – not everything has achieved hunkydorydom in one day.

I still haven't called the Honda guy about picking up the keys.

I still didn't make it to the gym at lunch today (I had to pick up some cat food – our fat cat, Winnie, is an emotional eater, and he'll need to have plenty of food after today's trauma).

The "check engine" light is still on in the van, and I still don't know why.

Mary and I ran out of time this morning to make the marinade for the chicken, so it's just gonna be plain, and we'll make a dipping sauce.

I still don't know any more about Scotland than I did yesterday. But Wikipedia isn't blacked out anymore, so that knowledge is at my fingertips, should I choose to acquire it.

But things are looking up. Or down, in the case of the maybe-it-needs-batteries-and-maybe-it-doesn't scale. I weighed two pounds less this morning, if you can believe that. (Maybe I worried it off?)

And best of all, I finished writing about that stupid flannel shirt. And a few more after that. I've moved on to pants and hoodies and t-shirts. Plugging away quite nicely, in fact...

Maybe I should pessimistically whine about everything else that's wrong with the world. I just might wake up tomorrow and say, "Wow! Didn't see that coming either!"

You never know...