Unexpected

Today started out with an unexpected plethora of flowers delivered with great fanfare while I was in the shower.  Now that I have your attention, let me explain.  =)

This morning it was raining (yet again -- it's been raining pretty much all week/weekend) so I decided to take a nice hot shower in order to start my day since I'm not a fan of the rain.  While I was in the shower this morning my dogs started going nuts barking and whining.  I couldn't figure what had set them off so I stayed in the shower.  When I got out, they were still going nuts so I wrapped up in a towel to come and yell at them.  As I went back into the bathroom/bedroom to get dressed, I saw my cell phone indicating I had just missed a phone call.  The call was from the lady upstairs and I tried calling her back and there was no answer.  I then saw that I had a voicemail from her and as I was trying to listen to it, the dogs started going nuts again!  I tried to listen to the voicemail and shush the dogs at the same time.  When I was finally able to listen to the voicemail, I learned that the reason that my dogs were going nuts is the bougainvillea that has been leaning against the house upstairs got caught by a gust of wind and it fell over.  Not only did the bougainvillea fall over, it fell right on top of my car.  The dogs had heard it fall is my guess while I was in the shower since I didn't hear it fall.  They continued to go nuts because the gentleman from upstairs was attempting to attack the bougainvillea with a giant pair of pruning shears to get it off of my car.

After my initial shock wore off when I went outside at saw the bougainvillea surrounding the passenger side of my car (he had already removed the branches from the top of the car) I checked the roof for damage.  My car is a convertible so of course I was concerned about damage to the canvas and it still pouring outside.  Thankfully there was no damage to the canvas or to any other part of the car surprisingly.  He did a fabulous job clearing the branches from around my car and I felt really bad because even though he was wearing a poncho, the hood had fallen off with the assistance of the wind and he was completely soaked.  He joked that he had eaten too much good food for dinner last night and he needed to work it off anyway but I still felt bad that he was working so hard in the rain.  I told him that luckily it didn't happen on a morning that I had to get up and moving for work and his response was he would have handed me the pruning shears at that point so I could remove the branches in the dark.  =)  Needless to say, it was an interesting start to my day...

On the plus side, this week I was able to pack up and ship all of my Christmas gifts and was able to take the box to the post office at a time when it wasn't raining.  It was a much bigger box than I had originally wanted to send however everything fit in the box so that's what was most important to me.  The guy at the post office was trying to give me all of the different options to send the box and he seemed surprised that I picked the slowest option.  I told him that it was still a few weeks until Christmas so I had time for the box to get to it's destination -- plus the other two options were more than double what I was already going to spend to send it the slow way (part of the small fortune I had to spend was the size of the box but the weight of the box was also almost 26 pounds so I'm sure that was a factor as well).  But it's on its way to the final destination and should be here this coming week even though I sent it the slow way so I'm okay with that.  Of course, now that I've packed/sent the box I have thought of other things that I could have done for people but I guess it's too late now!

I went out to lunch with someone from church today and we decided to support one another in trying to do better at putting ourselves first.  We are in different places in our lives (she's older than I am and has two teenage daughters) but through talking we found that we both tend to put the needs of others before our own needs.  Because we both tend to put ourselves last, we are going to try and support one another in our effort to make our needs important as well.  I'm just hoping in our efforts to help one another we don't put ourselves last again...  Oh, well.  We're both making an effort and I do want to acknowledge that fact.

With having the issue with the fallen bougainvillea this weekend, I am hoping that this week doesn't have any major issues associated with it.  We are going back to the dance studio this week after a week and a half off so I'm hoping that everything goes well since we really need to rehearse for a big upcoming show on New Year's Eve (and it's the last show we will be rehearsing for in our own studio).  Along with those dance rehearsals, I am hoping to find the time/energy to use my workout DVD in the living room this week as well.  We'll just have to wait and see if all of that happens or not!  =)