My mom often says "It never ends. You have to laugh to keep from crying." The ability to laugh in the face of everyday adversity is the miracle that I claim today in light of the events of the past twenty four hours.


Yesterday I woke up, claimed my miracle with thanksgiving, a habit of faith that I started a few days ago, and went into my office. There I immediately found the cable was down leaving the phone, TV and internet out. Hours went by before the repairman came to discover it wasn't the modem that was diagnosed over the phone by a tech. Instead, it appears that someone ran into the cable box located between my and my neighbor's drive way. It wasn't me - so gee I wonder who could have done that? I was told that it would be several more hours before someone would come back to fix it. No one ever came but around sunset suddenly every thing came back up anyway. So where the problem was really located at only Comcast knows. And that still leaves the cable box damaged but here I throw caution to the wind and celebrate the wonders of modern technology and just run with it. It is fixed. Yay! Was this magical restoration of services my miracle?The lack of connection caused me to get some work caught up and I started back on rebuilding my private website which I need to finish before I go forward with other plans to save myself from larger looming perils. As "they" say, all's well that ends well.


Later last night I fell asleep in the chair in front of the TV where I had positioned myself in hopes of finding relief from the pain in my shoulder caused by a torn Rotator cuff. The goal was to avoid taking a pain pill which I hate doing for the fuzzy headed feeling that lingers in my body for days. Then the phone rang and scared me awake because it was so late. It wasn't an emergency, thank goodness! I couldn't go back to sleep and figured that I might as well continue to get a few things done. I was feeling better. The Chair potato position must have worked.


Finally exhausted, I looked forward to crawling into freshly changed sheets under a tightly made bed. This luxury has eluded me being it is very difficult to perform this duty on a California King mattress with one arm. Yesterday was the day that it finally got done. It was pitch dark and with my good arm I stretched the covers back and found one of two of the spare pillows I've been placing under the sheets to prop my foot up on. This has been necessary to address another issue I have with swelling in my ankles and legs. With a concerted effort I began positioning myself, my foot and the covers all with one arm pulling and pushing things into place. This seemed to take forever! Although I've begun using the spring covers, the combined weight felt like someone had placed a load of bricks on top of the bed. Finally I became worn out from the struggle and simply fell backward to lie down. Unfortunately, I landed in a position that hurt my shoulder and I let out a moan. After all of that effort in anticipation of a good rest, instead I laid there with my eyes open in nagging pain.


While I wrestled with the decision making process as to whether I should fight my way out of bed and take a pain pill, it became all to apparent that I had failed to pull back the sheet and was laying directly under the quilt. Now, I'm not that obsessive about my sleeping conditions usually. I've drifted to sleep in many less than perfect conditions including outdoors on damp ground, on boats being thrashed by the sea, and even while house sitting a friend's rain forest abode with creatures large and microscopic to watch out for. But on this night I knew that between the pain and the cover situation that I would probably never fall asleep. I figured I might as well deal with it rather than prolong my discomfort.


Again with one arm I began to slowly peel the layers of bed covering back, up and over the foot pillow. I might as well have been wrestling with a tiger for the difficulty it seemed to be. Finally I freed myself and rolled out of bed, pulled back the sheet and started the getting into bed process all over again. I got the foot pillow and myself in bed under the sheet this time, and with my good arm I started trying to reposition the layers of covers back over me. I was doing pretty well for a while there until I realized the pillow had doubled up and was now at the foot of the bed out of reach. The fight was on. It was me against the covers. I pushed, pulled, fought and kicked to almost get things situated when my beautiful precious cat decided that she wanted to jump on the bed for her night night petting. She meowed loudly and walked over me as I continued to push and pull. I was so close to being finished and there was no stopping me now! But no matter what I did I could not get it right. My frustration was growing and so was the cat's until she got right on my chest and put her face in mine letting out a whiny meow to demand her petting.


That was absolutely the last straw and in an instant I had to decide whether I would laugh or cry. I imagined what my wild maneuvers must have looked like with the cat finale' to boot and my decision came easily, I laughed out loud. I gave up on the struggle, laid down, petted the cat until she was satisfied and then tried to get my body in some kind of comfortable position. Finally I had the covers at least pulled up around my neck when it struck me that I didn't even address the fact that I might need a pain pill while I was up! This meant that if I was going to need one I would be starting all over again! All I could do was laugh some more. I guess the old saying, "Laughter is the best medicine." is the truth because I fell right to sleep.


The next thing I knew I was waking up this morning and once again claiming my miracle. It's a new day; I reasoned as I tediously peeled my way out of bed. I went straight to the walk in closet to get dressed. When I flipped on the light switch, one of the light boxes which had suddenly stopped working a few days ago, came back on unexpectedly. It is an L shaped room and the section straight ahead where most of the clothes hang has been shrouded in darkness due to this lighting issue making picking out clothes difficult. On occasion, this left me wearing a few interesting color combos as a result. I looked up at the lights and let out a happy "Yay!" thinking well there's a miracle right off the bat! It fixed itself just like the cable outage! Smile


Standing there in full lit glory as my eyes dropped to look ahead at the clothes rack where I anticipated being able to choose clothes that actually matched for a change. But, alas my exuberance was short lived when to my utter surpise I saw that ahead of me awaited an unexpected disaster. Several supports holding up a clothes rod had given way and the rack had fallen down!




My "Yay" was replaced by a word that I won't repeat here.


Well on the bright side, (pun intended) at least now I will have an opportunity to consider getting rid of more clothes I don't wear any more.


Still barely awake, as I pondered what I should do next with this one good arm that I have in order to deal with this, I shook my head in disbelief and then I realized that mom was right, "It never ends. You might as well laugh to keep from crying." So I laughed and now here I am gathering the humor that I can find in my last few hours and clinging to the miracle that I claimed in faith and thankfulness this morning. Maybe it was a miracle that it fell before I was standing in the middle of it! I'll take that and run with it. Weeee!


Copyright 2015 Wanda Hope Carter all rights not otherwise assigned are reserved. No duplication, downloads, screen shots, archives or other uses without express written permission. Pasting a link to this article is permitted.


 

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Marge Pauls
Mother told me there'd be days like this, but not so many and so close together! LOL, Wanda! I empathize, I really do! For me it was Slop City all week--no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't keep anything clean. So I sat at the computer and played games, laughing all the way. Didn't feel ...
  • April 2, 2015
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Wanda Hope Carter
lol I'm so glad that you could laugh too. Now I'm thinking of this old saying that is also correct - "If it isn't one thing, it is another! "
  • April 2, 2015
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Rocky
lol.....but at least you can laugh! I'm a fanatic about the bed I sleep in too. Has to have been made up, clean sheets and tight. Top sheet has to be turned over blanket for 6-8 inches. But with one arm, I just may sleep in a hammock.
  • April 2, 2015
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Wanda Hope Carter
lol Rocky! There is nothing like squeezing into a fresh bed. But I tell ya what, if I'd had a hammock to crawl into I'd probably have chosen it!
  • April 2, 2015
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Linda Mihalic
My kinda girl, Wanda. We might be sisters. And your luck has been great! LOL.
  • April 3, 2015
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Wanda Hope Carter
lol! yep - just call me lucky Wanda. ... Oh and this soooo wasn't ready for prime time when you read it. I edited it since then for a few hours.. lol.. My theory for the moment is that I just need to do what ever I can and wait for the rest of me to catch up when ever I can. I call it busting a mov...
  • April 3, 2015
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R Potts
How did you tear your rotator cuff? Were you in the pit again? lol I'm sorry to hear about it. One time the shelf in my closet along with the clothes on the bar fell on me and knocked me to the ground. I was buried under a pile of clothes and everything stacked up on the shelf. I'm glad that didn't ...
  • April 4, 2015
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Sharon Knight
It seems like everyone has a bad closet story at least once in their life. LOL
  • July 27, 2015
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