Negativity Reigns

Usually on Monday morning, I'll remark to one of my coworkers, "Is it Friday, yet?"  I suspect I'm not alone in wanting to rush through the work week to get to the fun part.

Unfortunately, it didn't take too long into this year for me to say "Is it 2015, yet?"

Within the two months of 2014:

• Our nice old cat, Higgy, who is almost 16, was diagnosed with kitty lymphoma -- the vet drained over a pound of fluid out of him.  He's comfortable and happy, as much as we can tell, for now, but there's nothing that can be done for the poor little guy other than give him meds to slow the buildup of fluid around his lungs and spoil him rotten for as long as we can.
• I had the flu, and as soon as I got better, Chris got sick.  So we were collectively ill for about two and a half weeks.
• We had to spend more money on my old car, which I do love, than is probably worth sinking into a 2004 Neon with 140,000ish miles on it, but due to another consideration, it made sense to avoid another car payment.
•  I got some bad news about my job, which was demoralizing in context of the massive amount of work I did last year and seems to be continuing this year.  
• Lost our power in the big ice storm that hit the Mid-Atlantic on Wednesday.  Power was restored about 40 hours later, meaning that were actually relatively lucky, but during that time we just felt, well...powerless.

(Higgy the Cat, shown in front of his favorite heating vent, doesn't know anything's wrong, but

 he is SUPER pissed that he had to be shaved on the coldest day of the year.)

  I know there's an easy counter to each of those:  "It's good that you got have your cat for that long and that he had a great life"; "You weren't that sick"; "At least you have a car"; "Too much work is better than not enough"; "At least you have a (usually) warm house to live in."

I know. I know.  All of those are completely true, and I recognize that overall, I've got it pretty good and that almost everything I'm complaining about is a "first world problem".  Still, it's been enough bad luck in such a short time that I'm just feeling like it's one bad thing after another this year, and having trouble getting out of that negative mindset.

Since I can't make 2015 get here any faster, I need to find a way to reset my way of thinking, and since running had -- until this week -- actually been starting to go pretty well again, I think it's time to cut this blog entry short and head out on the road.

I'm sure that it'll also help when we win the Powerball tonight.