My Real Life

Wednesday was a tough day for me.

I had stayed home from school, sick, on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, I really wasn’t feeling any better, but I don’t stay out two days in a row unless I am vomiting or in the hospital.

So, back to school I went, feeling really crappy.

I love my students and I love play practice, but 7-4 makes for a long day when you aren’t feeling well.

After play rehearsal, I headed home and was thinking about everything that needed to be done before my piano lesson arrived at 4:45, when all I really wanted to do was curl up on the couch under a blanket.

I walked in the door and didn’t get two steps inside before the boys were shouting at me, with excitement, about their school parties that day.

Baby Monkey said, “Look what my teacher gave me!”

It was bendy sticks.

They are sticky and bendy and kids love them, but I always find them stuck to everything whenever we’ve had them in the house before.

And what Baby Monkey was showing me was actually an empty plastic backing for the bendy sticks, which meant they were already stuck to surfaces throughout the house.

I didn’t feel well, I was tired, and was imagining the worst.

I was about to start in with “I better not find those bendy sticks all over this house…it will take forever to find them all…” when Baby Monkey took me by the hand and dragged me into the kitchen, happily yelling (because everything is a yell) “Look what me and Patrick made for you!”

…and just like that, the day turned around.

Not sure when my 5, 7 year old and I reached the first name basis status, but still.

This is a good thing for us all to remember in this season of bigger and better, more and more, gluttony and excess…that it’s the little things and the small surprises that matter the most.