Silver lining

When life gives you lemons, what do you do? Do you make lemonade? Or do you allow yourself to feel sour and bitter?

Yesterday I was feeling annoyed about a few things. Just silly little things that really “ripped my nightie”, so to speak.
But today I have made a decision. Being annoyed uses way too much energy! So I am attempting to look at things a different way and find the silver lining in each seemingly sour situation.

* I found out yesterday that Tyler’s preschool (daycare) fees are going up. By about 25%.
I was bummed, because we were hoping to save some money by reducing his hours at preschool. Now that he is going to afternoon Kindy, he only needs to be at preschool on Tuesday & Thursday mornings, instead of all day. We should have been saving $40/month. But with the fee increase, we are now paying THE SAME AMOUNT that we were paying for 2 full days!
Silver lining :: I also found out yesterday that Tyler’s preschool will be finally opting into the Government’s optional 20 Free Hours scheme from 1 July. Which means, since he is only there for 10h/week, that preschool will cost us NOTHING. We will be saving over $300/month!

* Rob was feeling sick last night, with a suspected tummy bug. The nausea was getting progressively worse as the afternoon/evening wore on. Rob rarely gets sick, so for him to get the barf bucket out, I knew it must have been bad. The thought of a tummy bug weaving it’s way through the entire family? Not worth thinking about.
Silver lining :: I prayed for him. His nausea went away. By the time he went to bed, he was feeling completely fine.

* I have been having some issues with the database I use for doing my work at home. The internet platform they use for remote access is, er, temperamental, to put it mildly. Any miniscule internet outages cause it to disconnect (and cause me to lose whatever work I had done since the last Save). These are the “normal” internet outages that Outlook and most websites are able to recover from without any problem whatsoever. They are outages so small and unimportant that you normally wouldn’t notice them. But with the platform I use? They are definitely noticeable. I am tired of saving my work every nano-second and turning my modem off and on a million times a day. Slight exaggeration, but you can sense my frustration, no?
It’s nothing that I can fix. The IT department at work are “hoping to make the platform more stable in the future”. Hmmm … the words “in the future” don’t exactly fill me with hope.
Silver lining :: I know I am incredibly lucky to be able to work from home. A few little blips during the day are TOTALLY worth it to be here 24/7. I must always remember that. I know that many other mums would give anything to be able to work from home.
If anything, I am getting a lesson in patience!

Okay, I’m off to make some lemonade.