Some Days are Just That Way

I've unfortunately been a little grouchy for, oh, maybe a week and a half now. I'm also at a not-so-good place with the coffee schedule, and my eating and sleeping choices have not been the best. Coincidence? Unlikely.

It's a little too bad, because I'd been doing pretty well and feeling surprisingly evenly content, even happy, and patient with everybody. Well, almost everybody.

Anyway, on Saturday, I woke up late. That is, I slept in until nearly 7:15. (wrist slap.) As a consequence of this, or something else, I missed my morning prayers which, in combination with everything else, I think, made me what I like to call "extra-grouchy". For me. Some people claim they can't tell when I'm grouchy, but I can tell, and it's not that nice.

On Saturday I was grouchy at least partly because I didn't have anything useful to do. I figured I had to get myself coffee and entertain my children, and these seemed like particularly self-serving and material goals. This irritated me.

I went to the mall, had some coffee and a snack with the little ones, went to story hour at the book store, got some books and a puzzle with a gift card we had.

I went after the coffee in case it would help, though I suspected it wouldn't. I was right: it didn't help much. I even considered getting flowers, but I didn't think they would help either. What I really needed was to do something useful, more than just cleaning the apartment (which I work on a lot every weekend), though that is pretty critical at times.

After all of this and some thinking, I decided to go ahead and start the Baha'i children's class I'd planning on starting "soon" for my son and some neighbors. I went home and found those prayers I'd missed in the morning, made invites, cleaned the porch up, talked to some neighbors. Even just deciding to do that made me feel better. Working for the spiritual education for my children and the children in my community felt much more "right" than idly passing my time doing arbitrary things to keep myself and my children from getting too bored. Ivan was the only child one who could make it in the end, but there's a good chance there will be more in attendance next week, or the week after that.

Now I just need to start eating better again, get my sleep schedule back on track, and keep trying to do useful stuff and cut back on coffee yet another time, and maybe I'll stop being a grouch again soon, too. Hopefully.