Strange Days

I've been thinking too much and not listening enough.  I know I have all the answers but the monkey mind will not stop long enough for me to take stock.  However, take stock, I must especially since the past few days have been some of the most stressful so far. 

First, I fracture my foot - the left metatarsal of the small phalange on the eve of my first ever yoga teaching experience, which took place on Saturday.  Experience was the right word.   I'm sure the class never realized there were THAT many seated postures in Yoga.  :)

The following Monday, I hobble over to pay my father-in-law's place of work a solicited visit to find that time was of the essence.   Not exactly how I'd pictured the last visit to his office with the nipper.  Then, to add to the grimness of the already unsavoury situation, I find I've been ticketed for parking too close to an intersection. Despite the swelling and the pain in my foot, I pace the distance and find it takes more than 20 steps to reach said intersection.  I don't know what kind of rules you have here in Canada but if that is too close to an intersection, Hamilton's Parking Division must be MINTED, cos Canadians in the suburbs don't walk 20 steps anywhere, if they can help it.

I then find out how much it is going to cost me to get out of the mortgage early.  I balk at the thought and continue to do so. I think about defaulting on some contracts just to change it up a little: be the screwer not the screwee, but that is not my style.  I decide to suck it all up.  And at the same time I have had the best week ever in terms of social engagements - which ironically due to the timing of it all makes me sad. 


Add to these miniature (by comparison) irritations, I find out that my bank in Spain has decided to reinvest a lump sum of money I had with them and now need (desperately need) into a financial product I have not been consulted about - which would lock that money away for god knows how long.  This  has been the cause of more than a week's worth of nocturnal torment over how on earth to deal with such Goliath affront from 5000 miles away and 6 hours time difference. 
 
After a string of calls and e-mails (all unanswered) and many wide awake nights wracking my brain as to how best I could possibly fight this injustice, the jim jam king comes home with a list of all the bank's directors' names, none of which would like to hear of a scandal of this sort; I mean taking a customer's money without asking and doing what you feel like with is has got to be illegal, right? 
 
Having worked for many years in PR, I know TV stations (especially Spanish ones) love a good David and Goliath scandal. Likewise, being a PR veteran, I also know it will be a long shot. Nonetheless, I start to formulate a plan that involves directly asking the fat cats to help me understand a policy where a branch of an internationally respected bank can take an investor's money and choose willy nilly what to do with it without even attempting to contact the investor for permission. 
 
It was all beginning to tax me to the extent that I found myself falling into a terrible routine of taking long restless naps during the day and as a result achieving next to nothing. 
 
Then last night, in mid self torment - I felt my brain short circuit and fade to black. It feels like the moment meditation takes a seat and makes itself comfortable in the mind.  I surrendered.  I was exhausted.  Slowly new thoughts emerged and they were of Dax Shepard's firm abs.  In this calm dreamy state , the words - 'use the names' came to me. This morning, I was like a woman possessed.  I checked my e-mail with the same churning dread of the past week and a half.  No e-mail from the bank.  So in a short and polite e-mail, I informed said elusive bank executive that I would be passing on both his response and more importantly lack thereof to the bank's fat cats, a threat I had made before - but this time, I mentioned the names. In less than a minute came a reply.
 
"Your money has been reinbursed and we await further instruction."  No apology.  No complaints from me, yet.  March 5th will be a day this bank executive would do well to take off as I will be the first person he deals with for the last time.
 
I'd like to thank my husband and Dax Shepard's abs.
 
Anyhow, suddenly like the sun burning through a heavy morning mist - the outlook feels remarkably brighter.  Coming as it does at the end of a catalogue of disasters, it feels great to be alive again.