Hugs, Hearts & Cupcakes

Ever have one of those days where you don't know whether to laugh or cry?  Yeah, m e too. We all do from time to time. In those moments it's hard to keep a good perspective on life. I love the quote ( I don't know who it's by) that goes " I'm trying to take things one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once!"  hahaha.
I've had a lot of things to deal with today - I had to deal with a work issue involving a screw up that hadn't been caught and snowballed pretty badly Sometimes I really hate how much we count on the accuracy of computers. - especially when we assume certain things are accurate and find out later that some automatic updates had caused minor alterations resulting in pretty serious complications!  Then I had some major scheduling conflicts with my school that I had to deal with - and the only person there who can really help me is away until my start date. This was all added to the fact that this past weekend we had a serious emergency in our household. We called the gas company to report what we believed to be a gas leak in our fireplace only to find out that it was in fact a CARBON MONOXIDE leak!  The technician said the levels were so high we wouldn't have made it even 6 hours in those conditions   It was Sunday afternoon, and according to him it had started quite some time before then.  He just stared at his meter and shook his head in disbelief that my children and I had even woken up at all that morning!  I was shocked and we were pretty shaken after that - you hear awful stories on the news about things like this were there is a CO leak in the middle of the night and entire families go to bed and never wake up again. How tragic and awful and scary to find out that we were so close to being one of those stories!  And since Co detectors are not mandatory ( they sure should be though!)  the house we are renting does not have one and so we had no idea we were even at risk.  Let me tell everyone who has natural gas in their house, whether it is for a fireplace, furnace, hot water tank or stove range - PLEASE make sure you have a Co detector in your home! They don't have to be hardwired into your house, you can buy one that just plugs into any electrical outlet in your home. ( I didn't know this till my uncle told me - I will be buying one before I have the gas hooked up again, once we get our new fireplace  - the other one didn't work properly, hence the leak) Again.  I urge anyone who doesn't have a carbon monoxide detector to get one - I don't want any one of you precious readers to fall victim to a horrible tragedy.
Getting back to perspective . . . .    We all have days where everything goes wrong and we just want to crawl into bed and stay there and wait for tomorrow. But given how unbelievably fragile life can be during times of near-miss disasters,  sometimes keeping those times of saving grace close in our hearts helps us keep our perspective. It allows us to focus instead on the little things in life that we can be thankful for because we almost missed out on the chance to enjoy those things.  I picked up my kids from their afterschool activities. It was Junior Chef cooking class day, and they showered me in hugs and shared their freshly baked CUPCAKES with me!     And you know what?  Their precious little hearts so full of love and their warm hugs ( not to mention the yummy cupcakes - they're good little chefs!)  were all it took to turn my day right around and make it a pretty awesome day.
The storms of life can rage all around us, kind of like the blinding snow blizzard roaring outside my window right now. But keeping a little perspective goes a long way to reminding us how the little things in life - the best things - can't been seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.

Sending you all hugs and yummy virtual cupcakes to turn your day around!
-J