The Tracks of My Tears

"People say I'm the life of the party cause I tell a joke or two. Although I might be laughin' loud and hearty, deep inside I'm blue... take a good look at my face, you'll see my smile looks out of place. If you look closer it's easy to trace the tracks of my tears."

This morning began on a very high note. Bodypump has a new release out so it was fun to start the day off with new moves and good (overall) music. And then - the fit muscular guy behind me in class came up to me when I was putting away my weights and exclaimed, "You are really strong! I am new to this class and have been following your lead as to how much weight to put on my bar. You can lift a lot of weight!" I laughed and thanked him for the compliment. Then he said, "women don't tend to get that strong in their upper bodies but I had a hard time keeping up with you! I'm impressed" - and I couldn't have been prouder.

Then I came home and Chris' looming visit with Dr. Snippet (sorry, tmi) suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks and I crumpled into a crying mess on the couch.

{sigh} Sometimes it's just so hard to know what the right thing to do is.

I Kellyed myself up and packed some lunches to bring to the library with us. A good time was had by all at toddler time (with plenty of dancing and clapping by Nils), and Carolena ran into a friend from school who hung with us for the rest of the morning. The girls had fun playing and choosing books and then we all headed out to feed the ducks and enjoy a little lunch. Some of the ducks had "a little 50 shades of gray thing going on" as the other mom put it and the girls had to be redirected to picking flowers lest they be trampled by overzealous fowl.

So, here we are midday on a day with high highs and a low low. Nils is sound asleep and Carolena is plowing through the new books we brought home. I'm trying to think about what I might be willing to force myself to eat for lunch. It's hard to eat when you spent the morning sobbing.

This afternoon: sonic drinks, the park, the ymca, a haircut?? The possibilities are seemingly endless. Whatever we do, we'll do something fun. That's the plan and I'm sticking to it.

Something for me to keep in mind in the future: that other mom has no idea what a blessing she was to me today. We never even remember one another's names. She has no idea that I spent the morning in tears facing the hardest decision of my life. She has no clue that I easily could have spent our entire trip to the library wallowing and fighting back tears and feeling distracted while my children ran amok. Instead, seeing her there helped turned my day around - good conversation with someone who loves to read nonfiction, has heard of Ernest Shackleton, bought her husband Undaunted Courage recently. Yep, I need to remember to be kind to people. You never know what's happening underneath the surface in their lives. And perhaps I need to find a way to force that girl to be my friend.