Ugh! I had the WORST weekend!! First of all, I got only three hours of sleep Friday night. Then, on Saturday, I went to help some people move and they weren’t even packed; so, I wasted a ton of time and I got stung by a wasp! On the drive home, the clutch burned up on my truck and left me stranded on the side of the road. The fastest wrecker service couldn’t be there for two hours, which would have made me miss my flight – which I barely made, but stunk the whole time. On Sunday, I was running late to go on the river with friends, didn’t have any sunscreen and realized when I stopped at the drug store that I had left my wallet at home. So, not only did I get sunburned, but I also couldn’t do my errands after the trip. To top it all off, I had some sort of intestinal issue that sent me running for the bathroom every 30 to 45 minutes from 5:00 Sunday afternoon until 6:30 Sunday morning.

You’ve probably already seen most of Julian Beever‘s sidewalk art – the pieces that are on the internet, anyway. The man is incredibly talented and creates wonderful illusions; however, the illusions only work if you look at them from the right perspective.  From the wrong perspective the image is all out of proportion.

The same thing is true of many of our experiences, don’t you think? As you know, I don’t believe that happiness is always a choice (think mental illness, war, extreme abuse); however, more often than not, we have the choice on how we approach things – either positively or negatively. The account you just read is my weekend from a negative perspective. Everything in the account is true; however, the focus is only on those things that went wrong. Now here’s how I really feel about the weekend.

On Saturday, I helped some friends move. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to help and they weren’t quite ready; but, we got lots checked off the list and I had a great visit with Kristina, anyway. As I was leaving, I felt a wasp hit the back of my shoulder; but, thankfully, it just barely got me. Whew! On the way to go get cleaned up for a once-in-a-lifetime flight on an historic airplane, I found out that the smell that had been coming from the truck was the stuck clutch burning up! Ack! None of the wreckers I called could be there in time for me to make the flight. Distraught, I sat weighing my options when I noticed that I had broken down RIGHT IN FRONT OF A GARAGE THAT SPECIALIZES IN TRANSMISSIONS! Hurray! I didn’t even need a wrecker! The three Hispanic men were so kind and pushed the truck into the garage (I say that I helped, but I’m sure they didn’t really need me). The shop owner agreed to hang onto it and give me an estimate for repairs on Monday. I was close enough to the airport at that time that I could have made the flight (departing in an hour) if I walked at a brisk pace. So, that’s what I did. I set off on foot and called a taxi service, which found  me in time to take me home, let me wash some of the sweat off and make it back in time to take the coolest flight of my life! Then on Sunday, I got to go kayaking with friends! I was a little late leaving home and running through the list of things I’d brought when I realized that I’d forgotten sunscreen. Rats. To make it worse, when I stopped to get some, I realized that I’d forgotten my wallet at home! Ah, well. Mark had some that I could use; so, it was fine. I missed my left foot in the first round of application and I missed a few spots on my shoulders on the second round. Even so, nothing burned to a painful degree. It was a great day! Thankfully, the intestinal distress that I experienced all night didn’t start until after we were off the river! And, for the first time, I was really glad that I work at night. The attacks stopped at 6:30; so, I was able to get some sleep during the rest of the day.

If I look at the weekend starting from a negative perspective, it ends up being a giant trial where I would have done better just to stay at home. From a positive one, the days become one grand adventure with a few little bumps.  The positive approach put the magic into the experience just as it does when it changes the stretched out green thing to the giant grasshopper perched on a pole that the artist meant it to be.