Her Spirit

If you had told me that having your kitchen renovated would wreak havoc on not only your kitchen but also your psyche, I would have labeled you a dullard. Or worse, a suburbanite blissfully unaware of all the real heartache in the world. But then my husband, Precious, and I decided it was time to "re do" the kitchen. This has been long in coming. When the stove finally stopped working even on alternate Tuesdays, and the disposal stopped pretending to grind up the oatmeal, we knew it was time.

Today I was out with a friend who has one of those thingamajigs in her car that gives directions. When we reached our destination, the voice from the box on the windshield said, "You have arrived." Ha! I felt special, ordained, announced. I had arrived. The fact that we were wearing our workout clothes and pulling up for a garage sale diminished the occasion slightly, but still. I like that idea. Don't forget: When you get where you're going, "you have arrived."

In my seemingly never-ending efforts to "get healthy," I'm learning a lot about myself. One new discovery, for me at least, is the value of consistency. In my younger years, I prided myself on being "flexible," willing to try exotic foods or move to new cities without so much as a google search. Today, though, I'm finding that the closer I stick to my routine, the stronger I feel physically.

A young boy asks his grandmother, "Have I been good, Nana?" after finishing his lunch at a local cafe. I do not know what prize might have awaited him for proper behavior. A yummy dessert, perhaps, or maybe a hug, or a naptime reprieve. And I do not know if he had indeed been "good" or not. Did he eat all his fruit? Refrain from hitting his little sister under the table? Use his napkin instead of his shirt sleeve? 

You might say I'm a lucky kind of gal. Generally I seem to stumble into the right people at the right time in the right places to affect positive change in my life and sometimes the lives of others. I've come to think of this as the Divine leading me--not luck so much as my showing up and realizing I don't have control over the entire universe; hard for me to swallow, but, alas, a truth nonetheless. Some might consider it fate, or even the result of a butterfly flapping its wings in Australia.

Saw this one while visiting family in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Have you seen any good ones lately?

I'm at the beach in Fort Morgan, Alabama. This is my first visit since the oil spill, and I was wary about what I might encounter. What I've found so far are hot days, yummy shrimp salad, pelicans on parade, exquisite sunsets, and high spirits.

So there I am, eating what is supposed to pass for cheese grits (white glob with grated cheese on top) at the Happy Trails Retirement Utopia with my mother and minding my own business, also known as shouting out our day's plans because Mother refuses to wear her hearing aids, when an elderly (imagine that!) man approaches our table in the dining room. 

"Do you know anything about computers?" he asks me.

"Yes sir," I reply. "Is there something I can help you with?"