I’m sorting out the kitchen and getting lunch ready and suddenly upstairs chime in with “Just for today, do not grumble.”

This is obviously a new slant on Usui’s five precepts:

Just for today (Kyo dake wa):

Don’t get angry (Okoru na*)

Don’t worry (Shinpai su na)

Be grateful (Kansha shite)

Work diligently (Gyo wo hage me)

Be kind to others (Hito ni shinsetsu ni)

What do they mean, do not grumble? I’m not grumbling! I thought, rather put out that they’d even suggested that I might be. But, as I cast my mind back to how I had been behaving all morning I had to admit, that yes, I was definitely grumbling!

Grumbling about the fact that Omar (my husband) had thrown his jeans onto the table before going to sleep last night and had inadvertently spilt my half-finished cup of tea all over it, ruining some hand-made grass table mats, and thank God, missing my laptop. I didn’t discover it until I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the loo! That was grumble number one! (Note to self, put away tea mug before going to bed!)

Then I discovered that we had an invasion of fire ants in the dustbin under the sink! Grumble number two. So I spent half an hour while cooking and cleaning, spraying them with poison that could kill a horse (not good when you’re cooking), and then sweeping up their little dead bodies. There were a lot of them!

Fire ants are very small ants with a sting worse than a horsefly’s so the last thing you want in your kitchen is hundreds of them! We had the same problem in Luxor when we went back to the flat just before we painted it. As soon as we blocked one of their ‘doorways’ through our tiles, they would find another one! Thankfully, this time, we had the right insecticide.

And I don’t care what ‘upstairs’ say about all of us creatures co-habiting. I’m not sharing my living space with fire ants, mosquitos or blood-sucking flies, so my killer spray is always at hand. As Seth says ‘we create our own reality’, well my reality doesn’t include insects that leave a nasty bite!

THEN, I was filling a container with pasta and the bag tore, sending the pasta all over the floor. The same floor I had sprayed with ant killer only half and hour earlier. Grumble number three!

So, between trying to kill the ant invasion and getting food ready, I was obviously grumbling…a lot. Well, I did have to completely gut the kitchen to get rid of them…grumble number four!

Hmm, maybe they’re right.  I’ll have to listen up and take my guides suggestion on board and watch my ‘grumbling’ habit. The last thing I want is to create a worse insect-ridden life; it takes me away from my writing.  So perhaps if I stop grumbling about them they won’t invade my space and I might actually get my editing done!

So, Just For Today, I Am Not going to Grumble…anymore! Have a nice day!

Here is a video on these little suckers! If you’re interested…