perspective

174:365

The sky was absolutely spectacular this morning during my walk. Sometimes there's a brief window where everything is aglow, but this morning the whole hour-plus was beautiful even though it was constantly changing as the sun rose. It was a nice way to start the day.

Tonight I had a rare situation. Zoe spent the night at her friend Anna's house (her very first sleep-over with a friend!) and M isn't home from his business trip yet.

I thought about all the things I could do with my Alone Time. Meet a friend for drinks and dinner. Go to the art museum. Take the Corvette out for a long drive.

Ultimately, I decided to take advantage of the time to get things done a lot more quickly than when I'm dragging a daughter and hubby around.

I ran to:
1. The salon for more shampoo & conditioner
2. Old house to pick up mail
3. Bank for deposit & withdrawal
4. Store to return stuff & buy stuff, including food for the food drive at church tomorrow

Then I came home and unloaded the car, put everything away, and nuked some dinner. Vacuumed the house. Put stuff away that's been sitting around for days.

Then? Then I watched a movie I hadn't seen yet. Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

Wow. Just wow.

It really puts suffering in perspective. I have now forgiven my addled loan officer, my lazy employee, and the guy who cut me off on the way to work this morning. Minor transgressions all, relatively speaking.

The movie answered a lot of questions I had (mostly technical) and raised more. Good thing I've got a monk at work who teaches theology. I'm finding it rather convenient to have monks around. Will have to corner Fr. Dominic next week and pepper him with stupid questions.

So today's perspective is this: life is good and there's a whole heck of a lot we all have to be thankful for, including beautiful skies.