Could be worse....

Could be worse.

Those three words have been a sort of mantra for me for many years now. Funny thing is that it started as a joke on my first date with Ex1, because we thought we were going to see a country band and it turned out that we were wrong and it was some weird 50's band - but we decided that it "could be worse" and went with it.

Funny.....in so many ways. But I won't go there.

Today though. Today was a day.

It started out with my "low tire pressure" light coming on in the van. I didn't think much of it because I knew that I had a slow leak in one of my back tires. I went to the gas station, put some air in it, thought that it was odd that it wasn't really low enough for the indicator to come on, and continued on my merry way - about 30 miles.

I met up with a friend to go running, and when we were done, she looked at my van and said "um, you have a leak". I looked, and sure enough, my other back tire was almost flat. She followed me to a gas station where I aired it up, and then I stopped at another friend's house to pick up a sander, and then I went to the closest WalHell to get both back tires repaired.

As it turned out, neither tire could be repaired. The one that had the slow leak had a nail jammed in it too close to the sidewall, and the one that was almost flat this morning?

Ha. Yeah. Not sure what it is, but it's metal and it destroyed my tire.

I kept it as a souvenir, because I realized quickly that I was lucky to have driven as far as I did with that thing in my tire. I'm lucky that the tire didn't blow. I'm lucky that I didn't get a flat while out in the middle of nowhere with the kids.

Could be worse.

While I was waiting for them to replace both tires, the lady behind the counter and I chatted a bit. She made a comment about me being lucky, and I agreed as I was checking my credit card balances and doing mental math to figure out the best way to pay for the new ones. Then she said something that - I swear - it was like she was in my head.

"You're lucky that you can afford to replace both of them on the spur of the moment."

I looked at her and said "you know, a couple of years ago, you would have been scraping me off of the floor if you had told me that I had to replace two tires, because I couldn't have done it. I wasn't prepared to spend the money today, but I'm so grateful that I can even it it means things are going to be tight for a few weeks."

Seriously. I sat there, holding that piece of metal in my hand, flipping it over and over again, and instead of being angry or upset about it, I was grateful.

Could be worse.

Tonight..... we had Scouts. We left the house early (with our two shiny new tires) and got stuck by trains and/or malfunctioning railroad crossings 5 times. FIVE TIMES. It was insane. We ended up being about 10 minutes late for the meeting, but we got there. The boys all went outside to play while the adults took care of some business, and long story short - a window on the church got broken.

There were several boys - including mine - who were involved. There was chaos and panic and disorder and finger pointing and drama, but in the end, other than a slight bump on one head there were no injuries. It turned out to only be a storm window, and not one of the 100+ year old stained glass windows. There will be consequences and punishments for all of the boys involved, but in the end, they were all ok. Damage was minimal. A major learning experience was had.

Could be worse.

I seriously think that I'm going to take this piece of metal, drill a hole through it, and turn it into a key chain that I can keep with me all the time, just to remind me.

Could be worse.