It’s okay to sing in the rain.
No –
It’s good to sing in the rain!
How else will you know you’ll make it through?
How will you make it through if you don’t know you will?
That’s the secret nobody teaches you.
We can pull through – we always have.
We just have to keep moving forward.
Just have to keep singing in the rain.
With the exception of eggs, things seem to simply be going my way.
Okay, so there are always minor things (like eggs and oddly reduced store hours) that are probably tossing many of us for a loop right now. Some are less fortunate as they have to endure the actual illness or put themselves in serious danger of contracting it. (Thankfully, the United States currently seems to have enough hospital beds and ventilators to keep pace with demand, and archaic regulations were recently waived to enable manufacturers and retrofitters to keep ahead of the turbulence. To the elderly in Italy, you have our prayers.)
I have a tendency to turtle up inside when given the option. I way prefer working in the office to working from a shelter-in-place scenario, but otherwise, I’m game for a snow day. Or a snow week. Or an Ice Storm of ’98. Just keep us to under two weeks of being unable to enjoy the light of day and I’m probably good.
Anyway, I was running exceptionally low on soap this morning, so I needed to venture out into an actual store. (Yikes, right? Thankfully I’m neither paranoid nor concerned about my immunoresponse systems.) Given several different factors, I opted to try the discount chain I frequent over the standard big box stores.
I walked in and was greeted by a full shelf of various soaps, boxes of gloves, and other personal cleaning supplies. (One of the soap products was made with volcanic ash. Simultaneously cool and not something I want to spend the premium to use.) I meandered about seeking some other things I was/am running low on. And you know what?
The shelves were full. Every shelf had product on it.
I found the actual handsoap aisle and discovered they keep soap in stock that my grandmother loves. (It’s a high quality soap with a mild scent.) As it made me think of Grandma, it went into my basket. I was in a pretty good mood walking in, and finding that just perked my ears higher. I got Grandma soap. I even managed to rationalize buying a six pack of it when one will probably last me a month. (They didn’t have singles of that kind of soap, and I wanted that one.) And the cashier was simply fabulous; we had a great little conversation, and I’d hop in her line any time.
After a successful venture there, I went to a normal grocery store to get eggs.
They were closed. At 7:15 pm, the grocery store was closed.
*Eyebrows furrow.*
Oh well. I shrugged it off and drove to the nearby supercenter. Again, no eggs, and no random this or random that which appeared on my list. However, having these random things actually on my list encouraged me to ask associates (mid-restock) for directions. Every single one of the people I interacted with (and they were in clusters, so speaking with one meant interacting with at least three) was in high spirits. Maybe they were enjoying the adventure of tidal waves of customers, or maybe they just had humor for the situation. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were amiable, happy to help, and even a little chatty.
As I was returning from the adventure, my brother called me – the one most likely of us all to come down with any rampant virus because he works in a hospital – just to check in. He’s doing well, and he even mentioned that he picked up enough meats to entertain himself with his smoker should he need to quarantine-in-place. (Plus, we talked about some tentative good news sitting just on the horizon.) Because he’s the most at risk and he’s doing well, I feel confident in saying the fam is doing well.
What a way to top off a day where I got a fairly intense, multi-day project done . I got it done, and I got it done well. (And I’m exceptionally happy that I didn’t give in to my grouchiness at technical problems and send off the product without proofreading it.) Perhaps a little overly-thoroughly, truth be told, but the secondary and tertiary arguments are the ones that stuck out the most, so they made it to paper first.
And.
And.
I’m still flying a teensy bit high off of the praise I received yesterday. The client, known to be quite picky and to change little things here and there in a work product, had nothing to add, delete, or alter before my document was submitted. The managing partner said they “really liked it,” and the paralegal pointed out how impressive a recommendation that is from that particular inside counsel. Yeah, definitely feeling like singing in the rain today.
So today was a pretty awesome day. We still have some snow, but it’s melting; the store wasn’t incredibly crowded; the personnel in the stores were fabulous; and I stayed on track with what I planned to get done despite myself and some technical glitches. Overall, I feel like whistling.
With this kind of luck, tomorrow there may even be eggs in store. 😮
