Seems funny to use this title, considering the fact that I began the day discussing my (probably) misdirected and overblown anger at CERTAIN PEOPLE with my DH.
And it is not bright here, but rainy and chilly.
However: wearing a jingle bell on a ribbon around my neck helps me to smile! 
At lunchtime I went to the County Tax Office to register a new vehicle, and then to the Post Office to mail Christmas packages. Both are snakepits of WAITING IN LINE behind people who seem to take far too long! I used to always end up wanting to cry when I'd go to the Tax Office because SOMETHING would be wrong or missing and I would have to leave and come back. Drove. Me. CRAZY!
So, I start praying as soon as I hit the line there.
There was this clueless girl there, who was already at a window when I arrived (and got in the line of 15 people). She didn't know WHAT she needed but that she needed SOMETHING for her car. Registration sticker? Inspection sticker? License plates? The clerk worked with her for over 30 minutes (as I was in line) and finally told her to go outside to peel the old registration sticker off her windshield so she could trade it in for a new one that matched her new license plates. She went off and came back in with her inspection sticker....ummm....which was all torn up, and of course was then void, and she will now have to have the car re-inspected. Talk about wanting to cry!
I was grateful that I'd started out determined not to get frustrated, because there seemed to be several such cases in the room (clueless people and frustrated ones too!)
At the post office, the line was comparable but moved faster. I was mailing two angel gifts and a soldier package to "Any Service Person" at an APO address I got at church. Of course you can't send those packages without a name, so the package was actually addressed to a soldier who is coordinating this particular effort.
The postal clerk asked, if the package couldn't be delivered to him for some reason, did I want it returned to me, abandoned, or redirected? I said, "Well, redirected to another soldier, but how would I know whose name to put?" She said that one way was to indicate that the package could be delivered to "Nearest Clergy." I said that was fine...
and then it hit me what that meant. If PFC David Mertz is no longer at Camp Blue Diamond when my package arrives....whether because he's gotten to go home, or because he's been killed or injured...the package will go to a clergyperson to share with someone else. What I want, and SO not what I want.
I returned to work, greatly sobered.
Dona nobis pacem.
