Additional Particulars

SuperK and I are trying to take a vacation to India.  This morning the operative word is "trying."  We will go as long as the Indians permit us access to their country which is dubious at the moment.  We sent in our laughably long application a couple of weeks ago - faithfully, to the best of our honest ability, completing everything required: the application itself along with many, many forms, copies of forms, a lengthy check list, and two copies of the fucking checklist.  I thought the checklist was for the sender, not the receiver - are they telling me they don't know what forms they're supposed to get?  They also required our passports and copies of our passports - which they were getting - and FedEx pre-paid return envelopes and copies of the pre-paid return envelopes.  There was something called an Additional Particulars form.   I didn't see a Particulars form anywhere so I don't know what the "additional" referred to - why didn't they just put everything on the Particulars form and be done with it?

I'm guessing these people don't have a copy machine.  I'm surprised we didn't have to send in an entire copy machine with the application.

My In Box contained a message from the Visa people - I opened this email which detailed our shortcomings right after I got up.  As you might imagine, this information wrecked my Quiet Time.  It was 6 in the morning, long before the office opened, and a Monday as well, usually the worst time to try to call some totally screwed up contracted company servicing a foreign country in a city far, far from mine.

Our 11th Step suggests that a logically interlinked program of prayer, meditation, and self-examination is going to produce more powerful results than any of the three taken alone.  Being Too Cool For Prayer I had neglected this leg of the stool for most of my sobriety.  Then, because I try to stay teachable, I started to hear some people in Vacation City talk about prayer changing the person doing the praying, not the thing or person or whatever being prayed to.  I liked this approach so I started some very tentative praying, trying to be careful not to tell my Higher Power what to do or to pray for specific results or to ask that other people be cured of any maladies or defects they might have that are annoying me.

The Step includes this phrase: "Just saying (a favorite prayer) over and over will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us to return to the surest help of all - our search for god's will, not our own, in the moment of stress."

I used my own little mantra to great effect on my current Problem of Prosperity.  Every time a negative, bothersome, worrying thought entered my head I spoke the series of words I use to try to calm myself.  Remember when you were 3 years old or maybe a cable news commentator and you'd try to win an argument by simply shouting louder than your opponent?  That's kind of the idea here - talk over the negative thoughts with some positive ones.  It's not especially deep or creative but it works, and some times the simplest ideas are the best.