ROAK Day!

Before we begin, I need to get something off my chest.

I feel like crap.

Not so much physcially. More mentally.

I'm sort of living inside a Sweet Valley High book. Or a Lindsey Lohan movie. At least, that's how some days feel at work. It's draining, exhausting and demoralizing. I haven't felt so unpopular since a kid rammed my head into the lockers in sixth grade.

I wish I was the type of person who was effortlessly happy, but that's never been me. I need to work at it.

My life is really fanstastic, and I'm nice. Really. And smart. Really. So I need to stop letting people who don't know me convince me otherwise.

OK, I feel a little better now. But that is where my heart is at right now, and that's where it was yesterday, too. Low.

I thought about my random act of kindness on and off throughout the day. I keep circling around two things -- what makes an act random and whether doing nice things for people I know should count. I know I previously said they shouldn't. But I thought for the first try, it might be OK to ease in. "Random" I suppose means with no other agenda than to lift someone's spirits in an out-of-the-blue manner. Works for me.

So I decided to buy my mother-in-law flowers.

She watches Luke on Monday afternoons. She came early yesterday so my husband could go to the doctor, and she stayed late so I could go the dentist. She does stuff like that all the time with no complaint. She's fabulous with Luke, and in generally. I supposed I'm building a case for why she desreved the flowers, and in this instance, that's besdies the point. But anyway, she did.

After the dentist, I stopped at a flower shop. With the shop-owner's help, I picked out a few green and white blooms. She tied them up with an orange bow. As she arranged them, I sat for 10 minutes in near silence for the first time all day. I thought about giving the flowers to my mother-in-law. It made me feel a little bit giddy. I really wanted the woman to ask what the flowers were for, but she didn't.

She handed them to me, and I stuck my nose in, inhaling deeply the floral scents.

So pretty.

It literally took stopping to smell some "roses" to make some of the stress slip away.

When I arrived home, Luke pointed right to the flower. I showed him the bundle and I set my stuff down, and then said to my MIL, kind of awkwardly I'm sure, that they were for her.

She said, "But it's not my birthday or anything!" I said they were for "just because" and gave them to her.  She declared them beautiful and then set them down and went on to talking about what had gone on that day. The whole thing felt rather... odd. When she left (after staying even later to help me feed Luke and rush out the door to a meeting) she hugged me and thanked me again.

She sent an email thanking me again today. "Just wanted to thank you again for the beautiful flowers - I love the green/ white look - very fresh and contemporary .... it was so thoughtful of you ..."

That was nice on an otherwise not-nice day.

It bothers me how quickly I let positive moments in my life fade away, to be replaced with negative emotions. Maybe as these days keep going, I'll get better at that.