Good karma does come in handy

I'm sure I have complained here and elsewhere about all the times that I do the right thing and feel like I get punished for it. It is always so frustrating. We talk about "being smacked by the karma train" on my BB, how it will come around and give the bad folks exactly what they deserve. As it turns out, the karma train works both ways. If you keep on doing those good things, good things will come to you.

Wednesday was a great example. I had two excellent things happen within a few hours of each other. Now, this first one won't seem excellent at first, but stay with me. The morning started out quite routine. Got the child up, fed, dressed, and to school. On the way back, I was a very bad girl, and I called DH on my cell phone. I don't have a headset for it, so yes, I was holding the phone and driving. Bad me! So when I was stopped at a stoplight less than a mile from my house, and the cop one lane over and one car behind me flipped on his lights, you can imagine what went through my head. I hung up on my husband in mid-sentence and hoped he wasn't after me. Ha. As we pulled through the light, he moved in directly behind me. I took the first left to get off the main drag, and he followed. Great. Yes, I was doing something wrong, and yes, I deserved to get a ticket for it. I just wasn't looking forward to the lecture that I was quite sure would come with it.

I rummaged around in the glove compartment looking for the insurance card, and I pulled out my license. I had my window rolled down about half way. From over my left shoulder, I heard him speak as he approached the window. "Sir, may I see your license and insurance, please." Now, I was wearing a baseball hat, so approaching me from behind, I knew there was no way for him to tell. I was in no way offended by the mistake. He, on the other hand, was mortified when I turned around. "Oh, ma'am, I am so sorry!" No, officer, no problem. I'm wearing a hat, and it is tough to tell from the back. I handed him my license, and steeled myself for what was to come.

"Well, ma'am, I see your tag registration has expired." I was momentarily speechless, since that was not at all what I expected him to say. Upon finding my voice, I explained that I had paid the fee and that the sticker was at home sitting on the desk, just a few blocks away from where we were parked. We simply had not put the new sticker on the tag yet. "Yes ma'am, the computer says your tag is current. I'm going to take your license and check something, and I'll be right back." I'm sure he was checking to make sure I didn't have any outstanding tickets or warrants or something. He came back quite quickly, handed me my license, and let me go with only a "Now you do me a favor, Ms. Gaston, and put that sticker on your tag as soon as you get home, okay?" Yes, sir! And can I just say thank you to the city for having laptops in the police cars? If not for that, he would have had to give me a ticket, but because the computer said I was current, he let me go. And not a word about the phone, so he likely had not noticed (I was holding it to the ear opposite from the lane he was in). Whew! Certainly dodged a bullet there.

Then later that morning, my boss called. Two members of our team handle an additional function that the rest of us do not (those two have been on the team longer than anyone else). This particular function is expecting a large increase in activity in the coming months. She needs a third person to help out and asked if I would be willing to take it on. She was asking, not ordering, because it does involve some after-hours work (with time and a half overtime!), and knowing that I had a child, she didn't want to commit me to something I really didn't want to do, so it was truly my choice. Then again, in this economy and environment, if your boss comes to you and asks you to pick up more work, wouldn't you be crazy to say no? Exactly. So naturally, I agreed. "Great! I really appreciate you volunteering to pick up that function. I also want you to know that I am putting you in for a raise." I beg your pardon? I must have misunderstood. Did you say a raise? I had not asked for more money at any time. I had not even brought up the possibility, because I knew that our workload was slowing down, and I definitely did not want to end up at the top of the "to be cut" list. (Hey, that one wants more money, let's get rid of her first! LOL) This was completely my boss's idea that she brought to me. And, keep in mind that the raise was not mentioned before I agreed to take on the extra function. Simply by doing the right thing (taking on more work when asked, and helping to lighten the load on other team members), I was unexpectedly rewarded, with a 15% raise! There was a small glitch trying to get it to go through. The process for managers to obtain raises for their contractors outsourced employees had changed in the last month or so, but it came through just fine this morning. Quite the satisfactory couple of days, I must say.

Now I just have to hope that I didn't burn through all of my good karma on those incidents. We're going to need it for selling this house and buying a new one in the coming months. Time for a few more good deeds, don't you think?

Currently feeling: pleasantly zen