Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

ONE: I figured out part of what went wrong on Tuesday, when things were falling apart and I was falling apart along with them.

I hadn’t prayed first.

I’ve gotten into a bad habit of peeking at email before settling down to morning prayers.

Don’t try this at home.

On Tuesday, I let that email time get away from me, and then I had to shepherd TheKid through 2 insulin-pump-site changes and make his lunch and cook the bacon and and and…

“No worries,” I thought. “I’ll just bring my iPad to church, and leave a little early, and I can pray the Liturgy of the Hours there.”

Well, I did that, but the day had already gotten off to a bad start, and my response to everything that happened tells me, looking back at it, that I hadn’t started my day in the right place.

TWO: Tuesday’s fun continued that evening when I went to take TheKid to rehearsal–and found I had a flat tire. Hubs wasn’t home yet, but my friend who lives right behind us was, and she graciously drove to the theatre. Yes, I had to ask for help, which I hate to do.

Yesterday morning Hubs went to change my flat tire and spent half an hour getting the spare tire from its mount underneath the back end of the car. We’ve had that van 10 years and never knew the spare was on the outside. Then he was all set to change the tire and the jack that came with the van just collapsed. We are grateful for the free Roadside Assistance that our auto insurance provides. That guy brought a jack and had the tire changed in 3 minutes or less.

(It would have been nice if Roadside Assistance Guy had put the damaged tire into the back of the van. I didn’t notice that he’d just left it sitting in the driveway until he had gone. For the record, van tires are HEAVY.)

I steeled myself for a runaround at the tire shop, because they are notorious for that sort of thing, and then settled in with my laptop to do some editing work with “The Price is Right” blaring on the big TV in front of me.

Fortunately they were able to repair the tire; we’re planning on replacing that van soon and we didn’t want to have to invest a lot of money in fixing anything. $22 and I was on my way.

THREE: I stuck to my guns and got a refund from an Amazon third-party seller who sent me a knockoff product that was unbelievably bad. If I’d read the reviews, I’d have known not to buy this item. The seller wanted to refund only $1, but Amazon has an A-to-Z guarantee and as the item description clearly mentioned the name brand (and even said “check that the product is not fake”) I figured I had two legs to stand on, and it’s easier for me to be assertive via email and online forms than in person. Within an hour I was credited with the full purchase price.

FOUR: I gave this site a new look!

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