The mutable day

The day promised to be not very fun, and probably annoying to boot. I was scheduled to go to a “service class” at work. Everyone had to go before the year was up. I had heard from one and all that it was awful and a waste of time, and rather insulting as well. This class was to teach us to say, “Please,” and, “Thank you,” smile at people, and say, “I’m sorry,” when we goof up – in short, just what your mother taught you before you started kindergarten. And we got to role play! Triple ugh! I hate this sort of thing. Actually, I think role playing can be very helpful in preparing for tough situations, but I had serious doubts that this particular role playing would be helpful. I had put it off until it could be put off no longer. So I had to get up about three hours after I got to sleep and stagger to the class which didn’t even offer free tea or coffee. However, I was immediately cheered to see that Virginia, one of my favorite fellow nurses and a fellow recalcitrant, was sitting there looking as groggy as I felt. Amazingly, I have to confess that the class was not that bad! In fact, I hate to say this, but I rather enjoyed it.
After the class, I ambled down to the Market, where I planned to have a lunch of pot stickers at one of my favorite spots. But to my horror, it was gone and a Vietnamese restaurant with not very appetizing looking, not very vegetarian dishes had replaced it. I am so unadventurous, restaurant-wise, but I was starving and so I was going to have to branch out. I was brave and got a mushroom, onion, and celery piroshky and it was out of this world! I had been admiring them for years, but had timidly stuck with the tried and true, and never gotten one. Super yummers! Then an ice cream cone – ginger! - to top it off. Then back to my job get my CPR card renewed. Somehow, whenever have I do this, I revert back into a nursing student quivering under the basilisk stare of the nursing instructor (a universally terrifying group.) I was rather glum about this ordeal, but it went very well too, and the folks running the show were totally non-intimidating, and utterly pleasant. Another expected ordeal turned out to be a bit of fun. Here is a picture of the bus arriving to pick me up – always a happy sight after a tiring day. The moral of this story is that if you are a total pessimist, things are bound to be better than you expect, and you are delightfully surprised. Much better than expecting to have a great time, and being let down!