Unfair

The announcer right now is doing a top five list of the greatest Olympic moments thus far - he listed the Opening Ceremonies, the opening basketball game, the butterfly (fingernail) finale, the womens' gymnastics all-around, and the final relay resulting in Phelp's 8th gold. I watched all of those moments, sans the basketball - it's really been awesome.

However, if you have followed the gymnastics closely, particularly the womens' - there's been some obvious injustices. One just has to wonder when China has been the "victor" from these injustices, if somehow, the scores aren't being influenced. You want to just scream, "that's not fair!"

I had my own "life's not fair" day that I can pretty much just sum up as PMS - aka - major irritability. My definition of irritability can often be described as this - "Whatever goes wrong, it is always someone else's fault and whether I express it verbally or not, I'm feeling the anger...." From the Blockbuster employee who put the wrong PS2 game in the case (and we didn't discover it until we were nearly home) to the Safeway employee who felt like only giving me one paper bag (and the rest plastic) when I asked for them to be bagged in paper (I re-use them for various purposes.....). Do I get mean and nasty and ruin their day too, or do I just bite my tongue and recognize "in the big scheme of things" this is not worth making an issue over? (I tried to learn from my own advice today when I told Brayden that Mikayla did not have the power to "ruin his whole day" - it was his own choice to make)....

Then, later this afternoon, thanks to Hollie, I was linked to two sites of families that lost their children - one that lived for only two hours - and the other that died 10 weeks after birth from SIDS - and the clencher - those two children are cousins. Once again, I was brought back to that place of reading people's grief - raw and transparent and recognizing just how UNFAIR this world really is - far above having to backtrack for errands, being hurt by your sister, or even the scores in the Olympic games. I've never been exposed to so many stories of grief as I have this month, and while it may seem depressing, it's actually been a very learning experience for me. While I hope that it will be a long time before I end up grieving to that capacity, it will happen. And, when it does, I hope that I will have the same amount of strength, hope, and faith that Thomas, Steven, Mary Beth, Greg, Nicol, Todd, and Angie have demonstrated......

It sure makes those plastic bags from Safeway seem extremely insignificant.