Life....and a Bowl of Cherries

  The saying "Life is like a bowl of cherries" is sort of misleading.  Life is not like a bowl of cherries in the least.  Cherries are good...always. Unless they are rotten...then they are bad...always.  But Life is not that clear cut.  We are setting ourselves up for a major disappointment if we have it in our heads that everything is always hunky-dory.   (Hunky-dory being a phrase that Mom used to say when things were nigh on perfect or use in jest when things were just the opposite.  As a kid, I could never differentiate between the two uses of the same term.)  In real life, there are days when those cherries are good and bad at the same time and it is up to us to choose which fruit to eat.  Pick out the fresh fruit and all is fine...pick the rotten and we wallow in despair.  

  Today, things were more than just a bowl of cherries even though they were involved.  Late afternoon found me exhausted and things going a bit down the wrong path.  It was just one of those days where it seemed that Murphy's Law was the rule for the day.  I could not find things, four of my jars of jelly did not seal and chairs would not fit through the doorway...just to mention a few of the frustrating things occurring during the day.  About three in the afternoon, I just quit.  I was tired after a sleepless night and did not need this aggravation.  I plopped down in my rocking chair to sit and contemplate just why I was having such a day when I heard a familiar call.  Ahh, my sweet sister-in-law was in the yard.  I yelled through the open windows for her to come on inside.  (Just a Southern thing there...."Come on in and sit a spell!  The door is open!)  Down in the Deep South, yoo-hooing is a common greeting and "sittin' a spell" is done with either a cup of coffee or glass of sweet tea depending on the weather.  

  Cynthia made her way inside and handed me a grocery bag.  Inside were the most beautiful cherries!  "These are for you!  You always share everything with anybody that visits, so I brought you something this time."  Aww, my heart forgot all of the fine things that Old Murphy was conjuring all day.  Those cherries brought a smile to my lips and a bit of joy in my heart and even though it was a stifling 90 degrees outside, we had coffee.

  Sometimes life does hand us days that are not to our liking.  It is times like that when we have to make the best of things and not sweat the small stuff.  We pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and carry on.  Then things can change in a heartbeat such as when someone kind offers a bit of pleasant company.  Throw in a bag of fresh cherries and nothing that Old Murphy can throw at you is worth the worry.  Eat the fresh, delicious fruit and do not wallow in rotten thoughts.  Life is good.

Oh Nuts! Murphy, GO AWAY!

  It has been a month of wrongs.  No matter how I try, it seems that old "If anything can go wrong" Murphy's Law has been in full force here lately.  First, the dining room chandelier went bad.  Mark took me down to get another but that one wound up in a corner of our living room so the dining room is still "lightless".  Then, after a bit of daring me, the washing machine stood up to its threats and stopped doing the spin cycle.  Oh, great!  Hand wringing clothes is not bad but when it comes to blankets and such, I draw the line! Next on old Murphy's list was my stove.  Yep, the burners started going out one by one.  Being the frugal sort, I kept insisting that I did not need four burners anyway.  Then it was "no one needs three burners" and now with another slowly dying, I will soon be down to one burner.  The guys might have a long wait for their supper.  Add to that a refrigerator that has now made its debut as a heater and you can see my predicament. It seems as if I need to go appliance shopping.  Poor Mark!  Then to top it all off, my laptop has a bug.  Nope, it does not have a virus but sure sounds like it has a swarm of bees buzzing around inside it. Son, being our computer tech dude, checked it and said that the fan has gone bad.  Well, that is just not fun at all!  So, as a whole, the month of May was just about filled with catastrophes!

  My brain was reeling with all of the weird happenings as I was out weeding the okra.  Geez!  Something just has to give!  Somewhere, somehow, something has to happen that is good.  I figure that the month of June has got to be better....or at least I hope.  Anyway, as I was down on my knees and up to my elbows in Horse Nettles, I figured I would look for a sign that things were going to improve.  Not thinking I would find some neon-flashing marquee sign hanging in the garden, I looked for anything that could be a positive.  I found weeds.  I found ants.  I found stinkbugs.  None of those seemed to be a promising sign so I searched a bit harder.  Nothing.  

  A bit later, I pondered the past month again.  This time, I was sitting on the yard bench in the cooling breeze.  A bit of sewing needed to be done and it was just too hot in the house.  As I sat in the breeze whipping that needle back and forth, it hit me.  If I have to search for a sign, then it really does not count!  To be an absolute omen, it has to find me, not me find it!  Ok!  Now that we had that settled, I felt more at ease and kept sewing.  Once I completed my project, I stood to head back inside.  There, right at my feet, was a happy!  I found my sign that all was good.  A hickory nut had been split in half by my step and the insides formed the perfect heart!  Yep, this was a good omen!

 In short, I suppose we all look for signs or omens of things to come. Whether we believe in them or whether we shrug them off as just a coincidence, matters not.  What does matter is the fact that we cannot completely leave our lives to happenstance.  If we want things to be better, then we have to get up, get to work and make things go the way we want.  It just takes a bit of hard work...not a broken hickory nut.

Old Murphy better leave me alone!!!

When I awoke this morning, I had an inkling that this was going to be one of those days.  It has been.  Murphy's Law was in full effect!  "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."  Whoever this Murphy was and why he ever came up with such a law is beyond me.  But, as I said, I knew from the start that I should have just stayed in bed!  The morning started at 5AM with a puking puppy.  Since she had torn up the bed, I placed an old towel on the floor for Sunny to sleep on during the night.  She ate it.  Seriously!  By the time the sun started to rise in the East, a hole the size of a dinner plate had been chewed in the towel.  Sunny had ingested most of the purple terry fabric and this made her ill.  Perhaps if it had been a different colored towel?  Maybe purple just tastes good..who knows???  I rushed the pup out the door so that at least some spot would stay puke-free.  Once outside, the morning air invigorated the pup and she reverted entirely back to her old ways.  She bolted!  Down the hill and around near the marsh edge.  There she came to an abrupt halt and started sniffing the ground.  She would sniff and eat...walk a few steps, sniff and eat..and so on.  What was she doing?  By the time I ventured barefoot down the hill, she had already made about six "sniff and eat" stops.  That is when I discovered the disgusting thing she was eating...rabbit poop!  I cannot believe that this pup was eating poop!  Rabbit poop at that!  Oh, my!  This brought back memories of the two little girls, Heidi and Brandi, and their discussion as to whether the rabbit poop was indeed either squirrel eggs or Cocoa Puff Cereal.  At least those two nieces did not eat the stuff!  Sunny, the pup, was devouring every tidbit she could find!  UGH!!!

As bad as that may seem, that was just the beginning.  The day got worse.  After catching the runaway dog, I managed to break a canning jar (which should not have been that bad except that I am running short this summer), spill an a pint container of seed beads in its entirety and find a bed of fire ants (the hard way).  Yep, I should have stayed in bed!  Then, of all things, I somehow broke the keyboard of my laptop!  How in the world do you break a keyboard?  Son, bless his heart, tried his best to fix my keyboard but finally had to give up on it and announce it was a goner.  This would never do!  I need my laptop!!!  I suddenly felt so vulnerable..so empty..so alone!  How was I going to communicate with the world?  Then I remembered my old dinosaur!  The old laptop was about shot but then Michael managed to get it working enough for me to use in emergencies..well, this is one of those emergencies.  I am back on the dinosaur tonight and thankful for having a son that knows how to fix things!

As for the picture???  I decided that I needed something to cheer me today since so many things seemed negative.  These little Oxalis flowers were blooming happily next to an old log and, well, they made me smile! Murphy can't be all bad...right?