Today, I’m in the mood to complain. 

Boy howdy, am I in the mood to complain today.

I want to whine about how I woke up this morning with my nose stuffed up, my chest congested and my eyeballs aching… yet again.

I want to piss and moan about how my pits are perennially gnarly, my upper lip is permanently sweat-stached, and how it seems entirely possible that my feet will be constantly covered in filth and muck forever and ever until the end of eternity, amen.

I want to wail and gnash my teeth about how I miss my husband and family and curling iron.  I want to curse the gods for having to formulate complicated arrangements involving no less than three different modes of  transportation a week in advance just to get to a grocery store to buy bread.  I want to lie down and roll around on the ground while kicking and screaming about the unfairness of being sick nearly every single day of the three weeks we’ve been in Costa Rica.

And, normally, I would.  Because that’s the kind of miserable, ungrateful person I am.

Seriously, have you met me?

But, today, I can’t seem to do it.  Because, for the moment, I’m stopped dead in my tracks by all the unsympathetic beauty of the world around me.

And it’s making me remember that I’m lucky that I have a nose to get stuffy and pits to get gnarly and feet to get muddy and a husband, family and curling iron to miss.

And, for that, some small, rational part of me sends up thanks to the Great Whoever that I’m alive to experience all the loneliness and unfairness and crappiness of life.

And so, today, I think I will just shut up and smile.