Small Pleasures

Joe has the boys for the weekend so I woke up to a quiet house and this morning it was nice.  I’m still jet-lagged from Hawaii time and sorting out yesterday morning’s mayhem. 

Yesterday morning as I hustled my 12 year old out the door to drive him to school in my pjs, I discovered the garage door was broken and I wouldn’t be able to get my car out, hence no transportation for him.  Panicked he dashed through the house and out the front door to try to find a ride to school.  I went into the house to call a garage door repair man then remembered that Abi was still in the car.  I retreated to the garage to haul our bulldog out, but she wouldn’t budge.  She wanted her morning car ride (its her routine, she’s quite serious about it, as though its her morning cup of coffee) so I left her there and headed back to the house only to find I was locked out.

Crawling beneath the broken garage door I discovered every door was locked and window locked and cell phone and house phone and keys inside.  Along with shoes, clothes, coat.  In my pajamas I flagged down a neighbor I’ve never really spoken with and asked to use their cell phone. I made one call–to my ex-husband and left him a voice message asking him to call our babysitter as she had a key to the house and I didn’t know her number by heart.

I waited an hour outside.  No one appeared.  I went to other neighbor’s houses and finally found one home.  They let me call for a locksmith.  Locksmith arrived an hour later.  Couldn’t get me in the house without drilling through the doorknob.  Fortunately replaced doorknob.  Finally was in house.  And you know, I was happy.  Now all I needed was the garage repairman. 

Today is easier.  I’ve already been to Tully’s with my bulldog for a morning coffee and I’m back at my desk to write.  This morning the air is soft, making one think of early Spring and pink-tinted mornings.  I love the way Summer burns into Fall and how each day gets cooler and crisper, but the warming of Spring is even better.  It’s so surprising after all the cold and rain and snow.  It’s hopeful and encouraging, a reward for the months of dark mornings and short days.

Despite my last two tattered and bruised blogs, I am grateful for many many things, and at the very top of my list is Friends.   I am lucky.  Blessed.  I am surrounded by good friends and great people.  A couple of years ago I might have said that I don’t deserve such good friends, but that’s silly.  Of course I deserve them, and my friends deserve great friends, too.  We should all be surrounded by great people.  Money doesn’t make life interesting and rich.  People do. 

I am grateful for the stack of books always next to my bed, and the piles of magazines that are always waiting to be read.  I am painfully in love with my boys–all three of them, big and small, even when they are good and bad and threaten to break my heart.

I am grateful readers like my stories.  I am grateful my author friends who have had a chance to read Mrs. Perfect love the new book.  I am grateful I have an agent and an editor willing to go to bat for me to make sure we are publishing the best possible book in the best possible format for my readers.

I am grateful I can write, even on the days when the writing doesn’t flow and the words stumble onto the page all herky jerky like pimply 7th grade boys at a middle school dance.  There’s always hope for herky jerky words, just as there’s hope for those not-quite-men-boys.

I am grateful to have won and lost, succeeded and failed, because otherwise, how would I ever know where to aim my arrow?

I am grateful for all the small pleasures and big pleasures, but mostly the small pleasures because those can be found anywhere, anytime, even on the short dark days when all it seems to do is rain.