Generally, every day can be good, but you don’t always know until the end. Sometimes, the best part of the day gets discovered within a pile of garbage.
I’m guilty of mid-morning expletives that culminate in the phrase, “I’m not having a good day.” It is similar to allowing an umpire to call you out after only two strikes. When you invest wholly into the thought that the entire day will be bad, there is a higher than probable chance that it will be.
The thought manifested under clear skies last night on the back deck, currently littered with empty boxes that once contained flooring and two empty pizza boxes.
For the last couple of weeks, Ellie has been cooped up. The low-budget, poorly planned pre-Christmas renovations have regularly shaken the house. The cacophony of electric and manual tool use has been overwhelming, so much so that poor Ellie has had to spend far more time in the back bedroom, sometimes placing her head under my bed to muffle the alien sounds of someone doing quality work. She had never heard that before because I usually use tools around here.
When I’ve goaded her into coming out to the living room to sit with me while I read or write, she slinks off to the adjacent apartment section of the house, downstairs and a considerable distance from where most of the work is underway.
She’s been locked in a couple of times, too. We use the bathroom on that side of the house, so the main door gets closed and secured while she wiles away the day, napping in peace. I call out several times when I’ve not seen her for a while. After two or three bellows, I realize she’s stuck behind a closed door or two. She’s always delighted to see me, thwapping her tail against the sheetrock walls of the narrow hallway that connects my place to that place.
While the old girl has not complained, I feel bad about changing the dynamics of her regularly scheduled activities and nap sites.
After the renovating stopped for the day, I went out to eat with some friends, leaving Ellie in the house so she could find her couch and have some peace. When I let her out late last night, she took her time sniffing the unsniffed and scouring the brush for undiscovered surprises.
Upon returning to the deck on her own sweet time, she rooted around in the pile of cardboard until she got to the one box containing pizza bones. The bones are the crusts, radiused and stale, three bread-like skeletal remains, some with a bit of burned cheese, one soaked in the scent of pepperoni grease.
Usually, I’d deny her access to a pile of refuse, but I could see that her quest was making her tail wag, feeling that she’d discovered the treasure of Oak Island, but maybe better since there actually was crust in one of the boxes.
A day that didn’t start so hot suddenly turned around. She scooped out the now hours-old crust and chewed like she’d found a stash of Wagyu beef. She slept beside me on the couch for a while before we retired to our separate corners; she was at peace. The crust had been found and digested. Waste not, want not.
Don’t judge your day too early; a magical crust might be nearby. Sometimes, it’s right outside the door awaiting discovery. There will be days when you have to dig for the good stuff. Keep digging.
From the Jagged edge of America, we remain,
TC
&
Ellie
Thanks for the support, for reading my stuff, for the generosity in supporting the writing through BuyMeACoffee, purchasing books, for the notes, and the comments—you are the best. tc