Thought for the Day - but really for me

Yesterday was not a good day. It started out well and I was really cheerful - and it was even a Monday. I'd scheduled most of my week in the office, so no stressing about driving across the state - home every evening - petting cats, writing and reading. All in all a good week, right? Maybe not. Monday was not good. The problem revolved around a personnel issue and the ineffective and poor way it was handled. Then I found out that someone was spreading the word of this issue all over the office - someone who should realize that personnel issues are confidential. I wasn't involved, except that I'd known the person who was disciplined for almost 20 years; she came to me distraught. I was not about to turn her away - I tried to calm her down. Evidently I was supposed to walk away.

Sorry, folks, can't do that. As the only nurse and now I believe the only adult in the office, almost everyone comes to me with their problems. If I can use the "company time" to do that, then I can use it to calm someone down and possibly prevent a major problem.

Each day I receive an Abraham-Hicks Daily Quote. Today's was very appropriate and I will follow it. In fact, I'm printing it out and sticking next to my work computer.

It's Not My Role to Make Others Happy. . .
It is not your role to make others happy; it is your role to keep yourself in balance. When you pay attention to how you feel and practice self-empowering thoughts that align with who-you-really-are, you will offer an example of thriving that will be of tremendous value to those who have the benefit of observing you.
You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive or sick enough to help sick people get well. You only ever uplift from your position of strength and clarity and alignment.
On August 12th, "Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness" will be available in stores. On August 13th, we’ll resume our standard Daily Quotations.
If you would like to pre-order your copy now, click here
Our Love,

Jerry and Esther

Words of Wisdom

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can get going without pep pills,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when, through no fault of your own, something goes wrong.

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,

If you can face the world without lies and deceit,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

If you can say, honestly, that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against colour, creed, religion, or politics...

Then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog! (or cat)...or horse or bird or rabbit....or wolf or lion...

Anonymous - from the Lilian Jackson Braun (The Cat Who...) loop

No hunting of wolves

Sometimes the "good guys" win.

http://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&tab=wm#inbox/11b4778dcf170a4d

It's time we realize that all life is important to human life.

Doing the right thing....

...is sometimes emotionally exhausting. And some people wonder why I do it.

Heather's dad is back in the hospital, needing another stent. I am, again, the go-to person for him. The rest of his family (I guess even after almost 28 years of being divorced, I'm still "family") is on vacation hundreds of miles away. And of course, Heather, is 3000 miles away.

I didn't do anything physically for him yesterday - just phone calls to him and then to Heather - waiting for some insurance bureaucrat to decide if his health insurance will pay for him to be transported to another hospital for the cardiac cath and the stent.

The crappy part of it all is he works for a hospital but it doesn't have a cath lab. The hospital has a weird health insurance plan that seems to state that everyone must be treated at that hospital - unless they don't have the ability (as in maternity - they just closed their maternity unit). So Heather's father waits with intermittent chest pain while bureaucrats decided where they will send him.

With all of that, my ex-husband needed a friend. Why wouldn't I do the right thing?
He'd do it for me.

Gettysburg - The First Day

Picture: Gettysburg Times - July 5, 2008

"The Devil's to pay..." General John Buford's words to General John Reynolds as Reynolds looks up to the Lutheran Seminary's cupola where Buford is watching advancing Confederate troops west of Gettysburg. Reynolds is the Wing Commander of the Army of the Potomac and had ridden ahead of his troops after receiving word that Buford's calvary had engaged the enemy.

Reynolds: "Can you hold them, John?"
Buford: "I reckon we can."

Reynolds then rode back to bring up his First Corps Infantry and the Battle of Gettysburg had begun on July 1, 1863 - the largest battle every fought on the Northern Hemisphere. A battle that ended on July 3 with the disastrous Longstreet Advance ("Pickett's Charge") from the Confederate position west of the Emmitsburg Road, across one mile of open fields and up to the waiting Union troops atop Cemetery Ridge.

The 145th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg brought out thousands of reenactors for the First Day's Battle. I've been going to Gettysburg reenactments for ten years and this was the largest one. There seemed to be more reenactors on the field than in the movie "Gettysburg".

I admire the dedication and professionalism of the men and women who keep history alive.

But on the other hand....

Nature has been kind to me on this trip. I've seen gold finches, song birds of all kinds and orioles (not the baseball team, either - the original orioles).

I've spent mornings and evenings sitting on the cottage's little porch, listening to the birds calling and watching the sun rise or set. In the evening I've watched little bats swirl and dip in their search for mosquitoes and I've cheered them on.

I've watched the morning mist spread across the meadow in front of the cottage and wondered if that was what the gunfire, the cannon fire, looked like as it moved like the breath of hundreds of dragons roaming the Battlefield. The cottage sits on land where Confederate troops marched to Gettysburg. Sometimes I hope to see a gray uniform walking through the high grass - would the specter disturb the birds - would the mourning doves call out to the passing visitor from another age? Would the groundhog skitter before him? Would the insects swirl around him? Or would he march silently across a land that has changed over the last 145 years, thinking he was still doing his duty and fighting for the cause?

A post about birds - orioles, a species that seems to be missing in my area - has turned into a post about missing soldiers from another time. Somehow the two seemed to join together in my mind - especially when I remember the mists hanging on the meadow in front of the cottage near Gettysburg.

Inconsiderate People

Sitting in the cyber cafe and listing some of my least favorite things of the moment:

1. Slamming doors
2. Not moving when people have their hands full of hot food they're taking to an upstairs room.
3. Young people, usually girls, who feel they can get whatever they want because they're cute and they can whine...whine...whine..

Can you tell I'm coming to the end of my vacation and I'm not happy!

Impressions during Vacation

Gettysburg:
1.Each year I learn more about the Battle, about the town, about the aftermath
2. Just read a book about Catharine Mary Hewitt (Google her if you have no clue and most don't)
3. I like the changes on the Battlefield - bringing it back to how it looked in 1863

Mitzi:
1.For the week I could give up make-up but not the internet - at The Ragged Edge, a cyber cafe on Chambersburg Road in Gettysburg. I must enjoying keeping touch or else, I'm just plain nosy.
2. I spend more on books than I do on food.
3. I have not once checked work email! What a big change! I am so proud.
4. Jeff Shaara was here in The Ragged Edge and I didn't ask for an autograph (already have one on a book - may get his latest) - but if it had been Stephen King...

People:
1. Watched a mother with three children juggle ordering and grabbing breakfast for everyone, including her husband who was sitting comfortably out on the cafe's porch. WTF?
2. We are a nation of overweight people - I am so glad that I eat less on one of these trips than I usually do.
3. Along with the above - lots of chubby ladies with gentleman. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me and would love to have someone to enjoy the adventure (whichever one) with me. And then I think of Mark who professed a love of history but would never come to Gettysburg with me. Do I want to be beholding to another's foibles? It may be too late in life and I may be too set in my ways.
4.Right now watching an older lady walking down Chambersburg Street - she's wearing a purple hat and purple leggings with purple shoes. Bless her.

Gettysburg, reprise:
1. I'm comfortable here - maybe too comfortable.
2. Spend way too much time driving around the Battlefield - and too much time at the Reynolds Monument. John Fulton Reynolds will be the Ghost to Elizabeth Peacock's Mrs. Muir.