good luck/bad luck

I'm enjoying a time of great personal good luck. It happens some times. It's not that my luck is ever really bad. Stuff happens, but I've found, at least for me, bad luck is more a matter of how I look at stuff. For example, I've learned, when "bad luck" happens to ask a couple of questions, like "Did I bring this on myself?" Usually, if the answer to that one is yes, it's because I've procrastinated about something and let it turn into a crisis. Like the time I missed paying the electric bill and then wasn't really in the mood to open the mail when the 1st cutoff notice came, so I didn't start making calls and arrangements until the day before they were supposed to cut the power. Boy, that was a close one. But, no one to blame but me. Another question I ask is "Is this something that happens to everyone?" I mean, it's not bad luck when someone dies (although the deceased may disagree). It actually happens to everyone and everything. So, no need to feel unlucky because I need to attend a funeral.

So, by the time I've discounted my "bad luck" as either something I caused or something that just happens during the natural course of a life well lived, there's not much left to go into the bad luck category.

Good luck, on the other hand, is abundant in my life. Like yesterday afternoon when the man called to tell me that there was nothing wrong with my car, except that someone (a mechanic that has lost a customer and shall go nameless (this was just the latest in his list of mistakes)) had overfilled the transmission and it had "burped" out the extra fluid in the driveway. And, luckier still, they didn't charge me anything for checking it out. All I had to do was get back there to get the car (and I still need to clean up the fluid spill. this may be a good time to have a 12 year old). And, my company was having access problems and I couldn't interface to work from home, so I had a "free" day to kill any way I wanted to. Double good luck. And, while I was on my 3 mile walk home from the transmission shop, I walked past a house that was giving away flower pots. I filled my arms. Triple good luck.

But, then I got tired and had to start dropping off pots in out of the way places to come get them later. By the time I got home, the five I had started with had dwindled to two I got home with. Glazed pottery flower pots are heavier than I thought they'd be. Or maybe my eyes were just bigger than my arms.

Imagine Sydney's mortification when we drove through the neighborhood this morning, picking up pots that had been hidden behind fence posts.

Maybe that's what put me in the especially good mood on the way to work.

May your good and bad luck be nothing more significant than your perception. Here's wishing you a great day. See you on the www. Lane