Gifts & Wishes

Today has been one of those days when it would have been all too easy to give in to the blahs and ignore my blog and my goals for the day.  I am thoroughly exhausted and thinking in a straight line is almost an impossible feat!  But since my end goal is for positive change, I realized that a day like today was when it was probably most important for me to pay attention and take the time.  

Today was my Day 2 for The Receviing Project, all about setting intentions and recognizing the gifts out there that life has to offer.  Some days they are small; sometimes they are big.  Today's intention was that things would go well with the landlord of my complex.  We are getting ready to move and the apartment we live in has seen better days.  First, it is hardly the most well-built or well-appointed place in the world.  It was built about 30 years ago, originally as subsidized housing for low-income families.  Not long after it was built, Fort Drum reactivated and the Army leased it for 20 years as 801 additional housing.  The lease ran out and it has been civilian owned and operated for the last 5 years or so.  And the majority of that have been a living hell for me.  The former Slum m Lord was, in a word (or two!), a despicable asshat.  He was lecherous, inappropriate, lazy, sexist, sexually harassing, and a terrible landlord.  If you had ovaries, work orders were ignored.  Being as that I am alone more than with husband, due to multiple deployments, this has been a bit of an issue.  In th 7+ years that we have lived here, we have been flooded 8 times.  Five have been sewage floods from the apartment upstairs, 1 from a burst pipe in our living room, once from a burst pipe in the living room of the apartment across the hall, and one from the hot water heater when it went bad.  The walls are soft and warped, the ceilings bowed.  There is all kinds of mold in the place, mold that I am desperately and dangerously allergic to.  The carpets have been soaked and covered with the sewage from the flood and not replaced when they should have bed.  In a nutshell, the apartment is substandard through no fault of our own.  The former Slum Lord was recently fired and new property managers took over.  I took Corey's orders and leave form down on Tuesday in order to give our notice for our impending PCS to Arizona.  During that process, I was informed that we were required to have our carpets professionally clean, with a receipt to be turned in.  They were very specific even about what type of professional cleaning was allowed.  No renting a shampooer and DIYing it.  Fine, but with the seriousness of the issues of our apartment, this seemed like an unecessary expense, to the tune of $159+ for our little crap hole.  Now I am a strong chick and fully capable of handling things without my husband.  However, clearing this place has fallen under the heading of "letting it go" and "relinquishing control" and "asking for help".  I admit, I felt justified on throwing it on my husband since, in the last 7 years that we have lived here, he has been in the country and dealing with stuff less than ⅓ of the time, thanks to deployment.  So he called the office yesterday and shared a condensed version of our tale of woe with them.  That resulted in the property manager and her boss coming by this morning to look, listen, and take pics of the multitude of issues.  I do believe that this resulted in the gift for which I set my intention.  They were receptive and kind, understanding and accepting.  I have been in fear that we were going to be outrageously charged for damage that is the result of shoddy maintenance, but I don't think that is going to be.  Particularly since the previous Slum Lord was fired for that very thing, and many others have had similar complaints.  Ours are just more severe because of both the amount of damage we have sustained, as well as the fact that we have lived here longer than anyone else in the compex.  So that is my gift, and I am grateful to receive it.

It's amazing how things come together from different sources at any given time.  I have also been following Roots of She and today's post was about a different kind of "to do" list than the usual task list.  The traditional "to do" list can drag you down and overwhelm you with how much you need to get done.  I know that mine can, so much that I frequently forget to eat or take care of myself at all in any way, something that can definitely be bad for my current health issues.  Jenn's list has a different focus, or at least one that runs along with a more traditional task list.  It, too, is about focusing intentions, and then shaping the traditional list around that.  Her list has two questions.  How do I want to feel today? and What do I need to do to feel that way?  No, maybe you don't get as much crossed off your list, but it leaves you happier and with more energy and far more efficient and a lot less overwhelmed.  And I really think that has its own, and important, value.

I discovered a new meme today, Wishcasting Wednesday.  Each week there is a different "wishing" theme prompt, and the idea is to share your wishes, to put them out there, and then visit other bloggers and support their wishes.  Today's post is about what you wish you can share.  I have spent most of the day thinking about that, without a clue as to what I have to offer, to share.  Then it hit me.  What I have right now is hope.  And hope is a great thing to have and to share.  So that is what I wish to share with everyone who needs some:  hope!