Owless in Blunderland

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Tripping across my own foot, lying face in the ground…do you ever look up from the depth of your stupidity and notice how big the world is? How large a person's head can be from way down there? How looooong those legs are that are attached to the feet which just might be, about to stomp on you? Are the sounds warping and coming to you in waves, instead of clear-sounding or intelligible thoughts?

I made a mistake. I hate making mistakes- I always have. For someone who puts so much thought into everything I do, think about or put forth- it really sucks to miss such a beat. I'm wondering if Sunday night's freak dream was my warning that I was about to fall into a big, deep hole. I was fairly normal in the dream, but my guests weren't. There was the sweet little girl who continued to eat gobs of butter despite my fruitless dissuasion. The librarian from the high school next door, who kept tripping and talking like Porky Pig, never got it out to us all, folks! And there was my youngest son who wouldn't talk to me, but kept stuffing pizza into his enormous mouth, motioning for me to lick his fingers.

Maybe I shouldn't have heeded the margarita's call to "drink me..."  Perhaps Pete's party tequila really was more special than others!

When I got the phone call from my sister who wasted no time in dropping the bomb on my head and doing her best to make sure I felt worse than she did, I don't know if I was more angry at someone else, or myself. The "someone," for being rude and ridiculous to my sister, my sister for not having the gumption to stand up for me, or ME- for being the reason that the mistake happened in the first place.

Being a little too frazzled to actually remember what I was shopping for (oh right- the COMPUTER I'd promised myself), I raced to the checkout stand as if I was late for something.

The ride home was dizzying at times as I expanded in my self-assurance that what I did, although imperfect, was not really a bad thing. But then I'd shrink back to feeling really badly that there were repercussions of my error, that my sister had to pay for. Before I turned the corner onto my road I was secure in the knowledge that my mistake wasn't the end of the world. I called my sister back and shared my enlightened take on the matter. She wasn't as agreeable as I, but I know that she heard me and even she, who was madder than a hatter, was no longer calling for the offing of my head.

Earlier this week I surmised that there is no such thing as failure.  There is simply an  ever-present opportunity to do things better the next time.  You need to begin at the beginning and go to the end.  Then stop. 

When I awoke the next morning after a very peaceful sleep my second thought was related to my blunder. My third thought was that what I did was with good intention and no one was going to take that away from me. The animosity and anger didn't house enough fuel to make me care. (My first thought, in case you were wondering, was THANK YOU for my beautiful life.  Seriously- WHO could be luckier than me??? )

"But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." -Alice