February 3

Recently, my neighbors' landlord deceived and effectively stole from me. I found out about it today, and tried to rectify the situation, but he doggedly kept to his story and refused to refund me a very ill-gotten sum of money that everyone else involved says should be mine. So yeah, it wasn't a good day at all. I'm still angry and frustrated and disheartened; I try hard --so, so hard-- to treat people fairly and I would never deliberately do something to screw over someone else, so it hurts to be a victim of someone else's greed. But I'm trying to move beyond it, and Isaac unknowingly helped me along in the process over dinner.

We were (of course) dining at Costco when Abby said something unflattering to Isaac. I confess that I wasn't fully paying attention to what was going on --I was stewing in the juices of my previously-noted frustration-- but I know she said something that wasn't nice that began with "I think you...". I watched Isaac's face as he first listened to her words and then absorbed their meaning. And then he surprised me. Just when I thought he'd say something mean in response, he gritted his teeth, smiled, and simply replied, "Thank you, Abby, for thinking of me." And then he took another bite of his pizza. And that was it.

It's incredibly hard to turn the other cheek when someone wrongs you, especially when said person knows darn well that he did the wrong thing and refuses to own up to it. But it's what we have to do. So tonight, I'm trying to follow my kiddo's lead and let it go.