When Opportunity Knocks

“How are you doing?”

I answered the doc with an edge in my voice, “I have been better” and considered not shaking his hand when he extended it.

“See you in three weeks.”

If flames and lasers could shoot from my fingertips that hospital in Grapevine would be dust. I was not happy and I am certain more than a few people knew it.

Two hours late I managed to catch my middle finger in my car door. Still not entirely sure how I did that, I am not a klutz.

Finger is a bit sore today but functional and better than other parts but I still got my 30 minutes in on the elliptical so things could be worse.

Hell, I walked around reminding myself that I can do the really hard things and made a mental list of things yet to be done.

Stared at the reflection in the rear view mirror and told it that when opportunity knocks we’ll have the conversation and get answers.

“Can’t wait for perfect timing for such things almost ever exist.”

https://youtu.be/7wO5G9b3fGw

Embrace The Changes

Got some more pictures from my daughter of her apartment and some of the things she and her friends are doing at college and smiled.

She looks like she is living her best life and I am glad to see it, not sure she’ll look quite as relaxed after classes start in the coming week but that is ok.

I told her a short while back to embrace the changes but I think I was speaking to myself more than her. There is a ton of stuff going on now and it is a bit disconcerting.

Feels like I am one of those lumberjacks trying to keep my balance on a spinning log. Part of me isn’t worried in the slightest because I always figure it out, but there is that voice that whispers.

The one that asks what happens if things don’t go as expected, planned or hoped for. It is the one that says it was easier a few years back when I was younger because there were fewer issues.

I have to remind myself that it is not entirely true. There are some physical differences between who I was and who I am but it is a mix of stuff.

Some things are different, but not necessarily in a good or bad way. They just require some adjustments and other things are better.

That smile I see on my daughter’s face is invaluable. Can’t say that sometimes I miss the little girl who would crawl into my lap and talk to me.

Sometimes two little hands would hold my head so that she was certain we were making eye contact and then she would tell me a story or offer instructions.

There were more than a few times when she used me as a giant pillow and went to sleep

When I was in LA going through Dad’s tools I thought about how the smell of our parents is among our earliest memories.

Thought about how that scent wasn’t just familiar but comforting. Haven’t asked my children if they recognize my scent, but did think about how my own father’s scent is just a memory now.

And You Would Be Queen

That is a great cover of Bowie’s song huh. Very different feel, but I really like it. It is the orchestral part that reaches out to me I think.

Been thinking about Lahaina and the destruction of the city. Such a beautiful place and now it all has to be rebuilt.

I work with a guy from there and sometimes I ask him how he could have given up the beauty and people for Texas. He always smiles and tells me about his family.

I intentionally waited a few days before I emailed him to ask him about his Ohana. He told me they were ok and had been on the far side of the island, but it was still traumatic.

Had to be so very hard to be so far away and to see/read/hear about it.

Reminded me of when my middle sister asked me about the Northridge quake. She wasn’t living in LA when it hit so she just heard about it.

Thought about how when I was living outside of Toronto in the summer of ’90 people told I needed to call home because Los Angeles was burning.

In those pre-Internet days life was very different. Took a minute to get some details and figure out the fire was in Santa Barbara, a place I knew well but wasn’t close enough to home for me to be worried.

But I understood how they had shrunk the world a bit and screwed things up.

There have been some fires and quakes back home during the time that I have lived in Texas and that was disconcerting.

I know a few people who lost homes.

Having been through a forest fire I can’t say I really want to go through one again, but it is never easy to just hear about such things.

I know specifically what sort of opportunity I want to knock upon my door and that is not one of them. But it does remind me again that life doesn’t ask us what we want, sometimes it just gives us situations to handle.

Sometimes we have to make our own opportunities to go after that which is important to us.