I took this picture with an iPhone 4s last year, on Valentine’s Day at nighttime. My husband was on a business trip and he surprised me with a call at lunch wondering if I could get to the airport for an early evening flight that would put me in Jacksonville for a romantic late dinner.
Of course, I said yes.
I took this on our stroll. Blue happens to be our favorite color.
What’s yours?
It’s no news that I don’t like pets, and yet, this silly dog has managed to break down that barrier and endear himself to me. There is no goofier dog than Otis. And no goofier master than me.
I love to see him run, full out, when he gets a wild hair and does laps around the yard.
Every part of his being is in this run, and it’s a joy to watch, especially when he leaps. He must think he’s a race horse jumping hurdles. Or Michael Jordan defying gravity on his way to a lay up. It’s just amazing to watch him soar through the air, fly, and then land without missing his momentum — around again, and again, until he stops and throws himself on the ground at my feet, spent.
I should embrace my own projects with the same singular commitment to run — run hard — until I’m spent. And then allow myself to rest a bit before getting up and doing it again.
I need endurance. Perseverance. Steadfastness.
This lovely lady represents so much that’s good about humanity: unconditional love, joy, compassion.
I ran into to her at the post office. Well. Let me rephrase that; she annoyed her way into my heart while I was standing impatiently in line at the post office.
She kept engaging the postal clerk in a prolonged conversation, asking after everybody in the clerk’s family, her co-workers, and some other mundane and totally-uninteresting-to-me details. In short, she was holding me up. I didn’t even have anywhere to be at the time, but I can say that my day had been fairly ruined with some bad news, and that wasn’t helping my mood.
By the time my turn came up and I was finished and on the way out, she was still moving at her elderly pace to get to the door. I gave in to the moment. I just wasn’t going to get past her so I thought I might as well be nice.
That was the opening she was looking for — perhaps a change in my demeanor had been her motive all along.
She engaged me in conversation, and the more I spoke with her, the more my mood lifted, and the more she became human to me. I had characterized her as the worst kind of stereotype of the elderly. She was anything but.
