Rising up to meet the challenge

1-14-10 achy muscle brain

I’ve been surprise at my attitude lately, especially this winter when weather challenges have confronted me. In the past, I would have been whining, PO’ed, feeling sorry for myself, depressed or complaining loudly.

Instead, I have been looking at life like a game and when a challenge comes up, I push ahead and try to rising up to meet the challenge, solve the problem or roll with the punches. I have been thinking of the challenges as a test and see them as a way to strength myself.

I bring this up because I was tested again yesterday. I got stuck in the drive-way as I was backing out to run an errand. I could have blamed the guy who I paid to plow my drive-way this year, but I couldn’t, it was all my fault…. I just can’t seem to back out in a straight path, and thus I got stuck in part of a snow drift.

I worked to dig around the tire for half hour, with several attempts to go forward and backward. Then I walked a few houses down to see if neighbor Steve was home. He was not, but neighbor Kathy was driving by and she stopped and tried to push me with no success.

In the middle of all this I had the thought that I should take a picture for my blog…. But quickly told myself …. “FOCUS!”…. “Don‘t give up!”….

I probably should have given up and called for help, but I stuck with it. Digging, and even putting the back door floor mat under tire for traction…. Still no good. Then I used my Master’s Degree smarts and got buckets of hot water and poured around the tires to help melt the ice. Luckily the temperature was in the mid 30’s today. Once I got things melted down I was able to put the floor mat under the tired and had success driving back.

This was about 80 minutes later, and I was sweating and worn out, so I just gave up on the errand and even left the car out in the drive-way for the night. I don’t want to go through that again over the next few days. I headed inside and soaked in a hot Epsom salt bath and could not move for the rest of the night.

I’m so glad I didn’t have a pity party over being stuck in the snow…. I would have had to slap myself… after seeing the struggles of the people in Haiti digging in the rubble for loved ones…….. digging a little in the snow was a picnic.