The Upside of the Downside

The other night I let the dogs in for the night and much to my suprise and dismay, Harley was once again covered in blood from his nose to his toes.  I’d heard a small tussle and looked out, I was happy to see him and Bogie playing together and thought nothing of it.  Well, apparantly there was something between then and the time I let them in.

 I was trying to get him cleaned up to see where the wound(s) might be and wasn’t having much luck.  Here’s where my not so bright idea came in….I decided to take Harley into my shower so I could use the handheld sprayer on him.  Actually, it was a good idea, for that part anyway.  I was very happy to see that the only wound was Harley’s ear, which made me feel much better because he and Bogie had been getting along so great and I knew by the way they’d been playing that it was probably nothing ill intentioned on Bogie’s part.

Back to why this was a bad idea…we got out of the shower and you probably know what happened next:  Harley shook like the dog he is, and since his ear was still bleeding heavily (because they’re thin and the blood vessels are so close to the surface) me and EVERY single surface and/or thing in the bathroom got coated with blood spatter.  EW! 

Mind you, this was all sometime after 10pm and I couldn’t just leave it.  So I spent a few hours scrubbing everything with bleach.  I mean everything, from the toilet paper holder to the ceiling, the light fixtures to the candle on the back of the toilet.  And it just got better from there.  The longer I cleaned, the better my eyesight got, and it was on the walls through the house, on the tv, on the kitchen cabinet, on the clothes I’d just washed and folded, on the couch….you get the drift.

So yeah, not such a good idea.  I’ll remember that next time.  There is always an upside though, my entire house looks like it’s been freshly painted!

trying to find the good in any given situation.  Easier said than done, trust me, I know from experience.  But with all the changes in the air in our life over the last few years, I started feeling pretty discouraged and beat up by life.  And then I talked to someone who, unbeknownst to me, had been through some very similar circumstances and I was shocked to learn this.  She is one of those people with the picture perfect life, you can’t catch her on a bad day no matter how hard you try.  I commented to her on that, and she told me one day she just decided to challenge herself to find something, no matter how small, in every situation that she could count as “good”.

So, I’ve challenged myself to do the same.  Some days it’s a lot harder than others but on those days I always have my fallback:  My marriage is better than it was a year ago.  My children are happy and healthy.  We have a roof over our head and food in our bellies.  I don’t make light of some of the things that happen in life, where we’re tempted to say “Yeah great but this still sucks.”  I just know that no matter how bad my situation seems, it is still better than someone elses, and I’m determined to at least attempt to find the upside to the downside.