Celebrating a moment of doing well

On the way home from the dog park, Syr stops at McDonalds to get us some Iced Coffees (cuz dollar drink days, yo!). Yummy.

When we get the bag, I noticed she's purchased not one but two greasy, salty beef patties for our little doggies.

"You got them one patty each? That's a lot of grease!" I said disapprovingly. (passive-aggressive much?)

Exasperated sigh from Syr, "Then don't give them to them."

Me: Shutting up. Thinking. Considering what just happened and figuring a few things out...

1. I was being critical (read: nagging!) and passive aggressive with my comment. A more productive and direct comment might be - "I'm not sure I want to give this to them all at once. Is it okay if I split one between them now and give the other one to them later - or tomorrow?"

2. I could take Syr's exasperated comment at face value. In other words, if I objected to giving the patties to the dogs, I could just ... not.

So I took the time to think through all of this. Recognized that Syr had a right to feel exasperated in that moment based on the way I went about expressing my disapproval, and realized that since the dogs had just been running around - and since one of our spoiled pups runs normal to thin and the other heavy - that I felt okay giving it to them, but I just divided the patties much more unfairly. So that's what I did.

But I knew I COULD have given them less, or saved one for later, etc so I realized I felt fine about that.

Know what I didn't do? I didn't keep running my mouth, try to explain to Syr why I felt the grease was a problem, didn't go on and on.... didn't get annoyed with or question Syr for being exasperated.... I just ... took things at face value and then everything proceeded quite healthily from there.

I recognize that, to some, this is super uneventful and simple stuff. But for me, I'm still learning and working at basics like this so it felt like a big win. :) 

And I do have to say that I think the devotional writing exercise is helping. I did reduce the number of repetitions from 10 to 5 on the action statements. It still feels like it takes a good amount of time (if the cramp in my writing hand is any indication) and I feel the words sinking in. I do think the repetition is important for me to have the time to reflect but 5 seems sufficient whereas 10 felt excessive.

I do think it helps to remind myself not only of what the things are that I'm working on but WHY I'm working on them... and so writing down WHY I respect my Owner is as important as (or even more than) the fact that I DO respect my Owner.