Friday, May 17, 2019

Life Is...

I just went on a nine-day vacation with my mom and sisters—our Girls Trip 2019. We had a relaxing time in both the mountains and on the beach. Nine days without thinking about obligations brings to mind that…

Life Is Good: In Savannah, GA, we took a trolley tour of old Savannah. Our one stop was at the Riverwalk. We ate lunch at the Shrimp Factory and visited a couple of shops. One of them, Fannie’s Your Aunt, offered Life Is Good t-shirts. I found two that caught my eye and both had to do with music. Since I’ve joined the Capps Family Band, I practice my songs while I walk the dog. Did you know that singing lowers stress and helps with mental health? Singing also boosts memory.

Life Is Exasperating: Back home, life settled into the normal routine. Get up, take the dog out, fix breakfast, clean up, etc., etc. Most of all, I spent hours and hours trying to catch up on all the work I skipped out on while enjoying my vacation. Isn’t that the downside of vacation? I’ve never had those little elves come in and do my work while I’m out of town.

Life Is Predictable: I can’t help but notice that life is predictable. I can always count on the predictability of a normal day. The sun comes up every morning in the east and sets in the west. It rains from time-to-time, usually when we need to do outside work, and the grass grows faster than we can cut it. This was going to be the year we kept ahead of it—until it rained and rained and rained. We can’t mow our lawn when the yard has the squishiness of a rice paddy.

Life Is Scary: It’s hard to go through a very long period without a heart-stopping close call on the highway. There’s nothing quite as fun as topping a hill and seeing cars headed your way in both lanes. Even in the safety of my home, I’ve had a few scares—one as recently as this morning. I was cooking breakfast and sipping my coffee while I watched the sausage brown. Normal early morning…until…I realized the kitchen was filling up with smoke. I turned around and smoke billowed from beneath the cabinets and along the countertop. I opened cabinet doors although I couldn’t figure out how a fire could start in the cabinets.

“Harold, Harold!” I yelled. “There’s smoke everywhere and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from!” He came into the kitchen, looked around, calmly, which by-the-way was totally irritating when I was in a panic. He reached over and unplugged the toaster where our normally pale toast that has to be pushed down twice was completely charred.

Life Is Mysterious: I could regale you with stories of mysterious events in my life, but that would be a book of its own. Just this week, I was washing dishes and began to sing “Que Sera Sera,” which to be honest, I hadn’t even thought of in years. The next day, Doris Day passed away. Just a little odd, I thought. Last night, Harold was watching an old Law and Order rerun on the TV in the bedroom, and I decided to catch up on the pile of newspapers I hadn’t read. I sat down on the couch in our kitchen and picked up a random newspaper. An article about the measles caught my eye. As I began to read, I could hear the medical examiner on the TV program “testifying” about how a child had died from the measles. As I read the next two lines, I was reading the words she was using to testify. That was mysterious and a little bit creepy.

Life Is Not Fair: I always try to be fair, but there isn’t too much fair about life. Good people have terrible things happen to them and bad people have prosperity and lead charmed lives. That’s just the way it goes. Jim was a good person and certainly did not deserve to have a horrible disease that robbed him of his most precious memories.

Life Is Attitude: How you look at life determines how life looks at you. If you see the negative, the negative consumes you. If you see the positive and spiritual uplifting side of life, it returns the favor. Life is good if you allow it to be.

Copyright © May 2019 by L.S. Fisher
#ENDALZ

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