Letting Off Steam

Yesterday, I posted about “Anxiety”. I felt today required a follow up. Let us talk about what is important first; Mom’s health. She had her surgery yesterday and 80% of the dead scar tissue was removed from the bladder. The pathology reports were not discussed, but a follow up appointment would be established in two or three months. We read that as a pretty good sign that things are progressing well. That is a huge relief. Mom has had such a rough year.

Our new furnace was installed yesterday and that means the A/C is working again. Should help considerably with allergies and sleep. With everything that I was writing about yesterday, my tipping point was trying to book a multi-city trip using my Aeroplan points. Basically, you can’t. Some weird policies govern how reward travel points can or cannot be used for booking travel. To make matters even more difficult, these policies are not published or widely understood, even by Aeroplan staff members. You try to book a flight and it online and you get a message, invalid itinerary. Then you have to call their call centre to try to have them book the flight and that is when, after much waiting, you find out that it violates their multi-city policy guidelines and cannot be booked. Only through the process of a phone agent can this be learned. Even it it was possible to book through them, it is not possible to book online. Then they inform you that if you use and agent instead of booking online, you will incur a $30 charge per flight per person booking fee. Kinda silly.

With everything that was going on yesterday, that is what made me grumpy. That is what I reflected on this morning. I need to step back from this and laugh about it, not get upset. The fact that we have the miracle of human flight should be a wonder and subject of gratitude in and of itself. Having to wade through a bit of bureaucracy and jump through a couple of hoops is minor compared to the benefit. I am using this opportunity to reset my perspective and be thankful for the opportunity to travel and not belabor the booking process. Besides, I do not like the grumpy me that much. Time to tell him to go away.

T’is better to appreciate today today than to lament yesterday tomorrow. ~ Charles Henry