Feeling sorry for myself

For the last couple of days I haven't had access to the general internet and I've felt cut off from the world. As if it shouldn't be going on with me not there.

Today I'm back. I initially felt a little sorry for myself because it seemed that nobody cared or even noticed that I was gone. I hate feeling invisible.

Then I went to church, talked to some people, thought a lot, and came to some conclusions.

* It's self-destructive to feel sorry for myself. I just end up wallowing and not being good company.
* My friends really do like me. But everyone has their own life to deal with.
* People don't miss me because I'm not around all that much anyway so how would they notice an absence of like 3 days?
* It was kinda nice to take a break.

Today I talked to a lady at church. She's one of those seeming super women who has 6 very young kids who always look perfectly put together at church (the mom and the kids). She's married to one of the best-looking men I've seen in a long time. She is way nicer than she would seem (she's preppy and preppy never seems nice at first glance, does it?). She was wearing a knee-length skirt and some really cute shoes (red pumps with a chunky heal). What I noticed most of all is that she has the best calves I have ever seen on a woman. Hands-down winner. Seriously. I was doing some coveting at church today so I decided I should at least compliment her. So I told her she had beautiful legs. Amazingly, she struggles with her legs most as far as self-esteem goes. I was flabbergasted. If I had those calves I would never wear flat shoes and I would never wear anything past my knees. I'm not even joking.

This week I got together with some old friends of mine. We hadn't all been together in at least 8 years and it was awesome to sit and talk for a while. One of the girls said she loved my family because one night when she called at like 2 in the morning my mom was cheerful and so was I. I don't have any memory of that incident.

Anyway, it all comes down to this. I'm sick of complaining all the time. I'm tired of finding fault with everything because it just makes me feel bad. I love the little tiny kindnesses that we are able to share when we're in just a normal good mood (not that we would ever remember them - we shouldn't even, just that it makes me feel better that I am generically good when I don't think about it too hard), and I appreciate the millions of tiny kindnesses that come my way every single day.

Yeah, people are nice to me all the time. And I remember it. I don't think any of the people would really think they were big things, but they all meant something to me. I'm done. I'm done being a downer. I'm ready to just start being me.

Oh yeah, this last week Felix started to crawl. Our friend Kaydee almost accurately predicted he would do it this week, but she picked Tuesday. It was more like Thursday. But he is doing it. Awkwardly, but there's starting to be a purpose to his swagger. The bath in the picture was my niece Rachel's idea. We got the tub at Ikea for a few bucks because Felix really likes to splash around but we don't have a bathtub in our apartment. He got everything wet and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

The end.