(…like our late President FDR’s Fireside Chats, as I’m likely drinking as much coffee as he was sitting in front of an actual fireplace on air.)

WORK: I turned in my doctor’s note about the driving and public transportation restriction yesterday. The “powers that be” here at work kept me in the building, telling me to cover for a late-arriving clerk in Family Law in the morning. I went in there and was a fish out of water, but I was going to fudge my way through it. Luckily, a floater clerk heard about my being in there and came up of his own volition to relieve me, since he was trained in Family Law and I wasn’t. I totally owe my awesome coworkers. I ended up getting caught up on desk work in my own courtroom. We’ll see what management decides to do with me today.

PREGNANCY: I’d always wondered why pregnant women rub their hands and fingertips repeatedly on their swollen bellies. I’ve never gone up to a pregnant belly-rubbing woman and asked, but I’d filed the question away in my mental filing cabinet in a section called, “You’ll find out when you get older.” My mom started that file for me when I was very young. “You don’t need to ask me about grown-up stuff. You’ll find out/understand when you get older.” I’d put tons of stuff in there in the past, like the lyrics to “Star-Spangled Banner,” or why it was inappropriate to share a bed with one’s stepdad (thank you, soap operas that play when 6-year-olds are home from school). Now that I’m 6 months pregnant and definitely “popped,” I pulled out that belly-rubbing question again. I still don’t get it.

PHILOSOPHICAL PONDERINGS: I’m having an e-mail conversation with Dardy, and we’re discussing expectations leading to disappointment. This applies to anything, from my let-down trying a Magnum ice cream bar for the first time after seeing the most incredible advertising for them, to his meeting people face-to-face for the first time. His perspective is that generally, he’s learned to stop having expectations because those can skew how one perceives an otherwise perfectly fine situation. He brought up as an example, “that damn 99% rottentomatoes rating made me think that _toy story 3_ would blow my mind, but it didn’t, so i walked out disappointed despite it being a perfectly decent movie.” So it made me think a little.
I think anticipation is natural and kinda fun, but I do agree that expectations ruin a lot of things. We as humans can’t be so cocky as to think we know exactly what would and what should happen in our paths. When we get cocky, the Universe decides to show us a thing or two. 😉 I think rolling with the punches is an excellent skill, as with being able to see beyond the mismatch of expectation-to-reality, so that instead of griping and being upset that things weren’t as we’d wanted, we can see the beauty of things being MORE than we’d anticipated. There are learning experiences everywhere, and not everything is a black mark just because it wasn’t what we’d expected. That’s one of those things I seem completely incapable of teaching some people, as those people are continually aggravated by things not being exactly as they’d expected/wanted them to turn out. I can’t seem to make them see that the way things do turn out is still okay, and in some ways better, and in some ways needed in order to improve oneself. I think one has to be open-minded and introspective to see that.