Perspective...

At some point during our camping vacation extravaganza, my little girl got bit by a mosquito. Directly on her right eyelid. Which, as all the parents out there know and are now nodding their heads accordingly, means that it swelled up to about the size of a large grapefruit, leaving my sweet little three year old looking like a cross between Quasimodo and Mike Tyson's latest celebrity girlfriend.

I know it's temporary. I know the swelling will be gone by tomorrow. But I look at my little princess and my heart just breaks.

And then... I think of the parents whose children won't be better tomorrow; whose illnesses require more than a cold compress and some Children's Benadryl. And my heart breaks again. I don't know how they do it. I go completely to pieces when my kids are sick or hurt. I want, with every fiber of my being, to take the pain, the virus, the infection, for them. 10-fold, even.

One of the kids in my daughter's pre-school class has leukemia. He goes for treatments that leave him bald and sickly. His brother was in my son's pre-school class two years ago, and in those two years their mother looks like she's aged 15 years. I don't know how they handle it. I mean, on a very real and visceral level, I know how they handle it - there's really no choice, you do what you need to do to get things done.

It puts the morning grind in an entirely new light, that's for sure. As the expression goes, don't sweat the petty stuff. (And don't pet the sweaty stuff either. Yeee-uck.) ;)

Be excellent to one another, folks...

That is all.