Christmas Pickle Disaster

Working from home certainly has its challenges and yesterday I was met with a few of them.

First, my husband, who is working through his last year of clinical’s to finish his respiratory therapy degree is done with clinical’s for the semester. He is almost done with school for Christmas break. His schedule constantly evolves which sends me into a panic. As a writer I desperately need a space to call my own free from distractions. It’s hard with a husband who is in and out day-after-day.

This husband happens to be particularly fond of his Christmas Pickle. I’m not. I don’t know much about the story. Never heard it growing up. I’m Irish and my stories were Irish. No one I knew had German pickles. But he did.

And yesterday something happened.

Oh, the distractions, they never end, do they?

My other challenges are the family pets. There’s Casey, the 8 year-old boxer (who I like to say is my child from a previous marriage.) I have had Casey since she was 6 months-old. She had a bother, Cain, who was 2 years older, but he passed away to brain cancer last year. We have a Chug (Pug & Chihuahua) who is just over a year named Tink. We also have a 2 year-old cat named Ziggy. We started a website for Cain when he was first diagnosed in an honest effort to raise money for an MRI and treatments. Sadly, that never happened. Anyway, that website is still there and up until recently, it was updated. There is a pet section here now so newer pet goodies will be freely shared. But, if you are interested in cute furry photos feel free to check out Cains Tales.

Cain before he started to get sick.

How many of you actually know the story of the Christmas Pickle? 

I’ve read different stories over the years. I live right down the road from the worlds largest Christmas store, Bronners. The town that hosts it just so happens to be a German town.  No joke folks. Year-round at night if I look just right I can see Christmas every day of the year. Sounds fascinating, right? Here is what they have to say about the great pickle tradition:

 

Good luck huh? So what happens when your traditional pickle ends up smashed all over the floor?

Kiddo has her own little tree. I have started the tradition of letting her pick an ornament from Bronners every year because the husband and I pick one for our Irish/Scottish tree. This year I had to put it at the end of the hallway. So, here we are, day before Friday the 13th, Tink & Ziggy decide to run amuck and play slip-n-slide on the hardwood floors.

I’m trying to work when all I can hear is the clicking and scratching of nails all over the place. Amusing.

Then, I hear it.

Whomp. Crash. Smash. Scatter. 

And then the pitter patter of 2 four-legged little creatures scurrying as quickly as possible. 

At first all I could think about was kiddos precious memories being smashed into a million pieces. Sure, they are just things. But I am trying to teach her to appreciate the things people buy her. Try to teach her trust and to slow down and appreciate life. Trust me, a simple $10-$20 ornament works. Especially when its something she spent hours picking out at the worlds largest Christmas store and contributes some allowance to.

But when I picked up the tree I knew she wasn’t the only one who was going to be heart-broken.

The pickle. One lonely pickle.

Smashed into a million and a half teeny-tiny little pieces so small that no amount of tweezing and super-glueing could repair.  Even with my mad momma-fixing skills.

And so began my two-hour distraction from work. On my hands and knees looking for ornament pieces in the hopes of repairing kiddos. Crying because I know I can’t fix husbands. All the while knowing I have work to do.

So, what happens when you break a pickle. If it’s good luck to have, is it bad luck to break?

At the end of the day, these are just things. The memories attached to them will live on.  Life will always throw us challenges. It’s how we handle them that matter. I could have let that event ruin my entire day. But I didn’t. I found my pieces. Put them aside and went on. (I couldn’t leave a mess like that on the floor for the pets to drag all over the house, or for me to step on the rest of the day since it was right in front of the office door.)

As someone who works from home what challenges do you face and how have you battled them?