Thursday, May 30, 2013

mushroom thoughts


Mushrooms are so beautiful. They are like days: each is unique and exciting in its own way. If today is not fantastic, you only need hold on till tomorrow. Who knows what that could bring? Perhaps jodhpurs will come back in style. Perhaps The Monkeys, as a musical group,  will make a comeback. Perhaps chocolate will become the new broccoli. Perhaps the full figured (aka slightly chunky) body type will gain popularity again, as in the days of Renoir. One can only hope. Point being: tomorrow is always full of delightful promise. If nothing else, there is always that morning cup of coffee to look forward to. Lord knows, I milk that happiness to the fullest every single night as I lay my head on the pillow. 

Today was craft day with my buddy Morgan. It was awesome. We made tambourines out of plastic plates, yarn and popcorn kernels. I asked her what prompted her question the other day as to which was more important: a friend or a book. Her answer was not philosophical, as I expected it to be. 

She said that she had invited her friend to go to the pool with her and her mom that day, but at the last minute the friend did not have the six dollars needed to get in. Morgan had exactly six dollars, which she intended to spend at the school book fair the following Monday, and she had to quickly decide whether to give the money to her friend for the pool, or save it to buy a book and have no friend at the pool. She was truly stumped, so she'd phoned a friend (me). 

I am happy to report that after she gave her friend the money (based on my answer: yikes), it turned out that the friend's dad was able to pay Morgan back in time for the book fair. A win/win occurred. Morgan was kind to her friend and she got to buy her book at the book fair. Don't you wish happy endings happened that easily every time? Sometimes, happy endings seem to be on God's installment plan and we get to practice our patience, as my sister-in-law Elaine likes to say. She cracks me up. To her, crappy situations are "opportunities to practice our patience." Oh, joy.

Once, she and her husband were buying a house, and they had to get some work done on it before they could move in. This was in California, where building permits and red tape turned a two-week job into a six month ordeal. "I can't believe it's not done yet," I said, five months into it. Her husband just rolled his eyes in a manner intimating that murder was not yet out of the question if it could speed things along (okay, I may have been over-interpreting that scowl a wee bit), to which my sister-in-law, stroking his hand while fixing him a glance under raised eyebrows, cheerily piped, "Yes, this has been a wonderful opportunity to practice our patience!" Which just goes to show, it's not what happens to you in life that matters so much as how you look at it.

May tomorrow bring you zero opportunities to practice your patience and a plethora of happy endings!




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