The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~ Eden Philpotts

Before being hired for the position I've had the past six months, I spent two and a half years working as a cook. Although I love to cook and bake, the job was not my dream job, and although I knew I was still working toward my goals and doing the best I could, there were days it was all just maddeningly frustrating. Since it takes awhile to realize a pattern is, in fact, a pattern, I don't remember when I first started noticing this, but at some point, I began seeing hearts at work: Heart-shaped soap splashes by the kitchen sink's, one heart-shaped potato chip on the edge of the deep fryer while the rest of the chips had made it into the fry-baskets, a heart-shaped spill of maraschino cherry juice. My supervisor would call out from the walk-in freezer that a container of gravy had been knocked off of the shelf and would I please clean it up, and I would be greeted by a heart-shaped gravy spill before me. I would bend down to pull a red onion from their box and find instead a heart-shaped piece of Romaine lettuce on the floor in front of me. The other cook would bump his hand into my cup and my iced tea would slosh onto the table in a heart-shaped puddle. The daily sweeping and mopping of the restaurant would almost always find me reaching for my cell phone to take a quick picture of the heart-crumb or stain that was suddenly stubbornly stuck to the floor. If one of the hundreds of red potatoes was heart-shaped, it would be I and not the other cook on my shift who would blindly grab it from the bin. 

These moments sound like stretches of the imagination, but they happened so frequently, and only at work, and even then, only when I wasn't expecting them. If I looked down at the counter in deliberate search for anything heart-shaped before beginning to make a waffle for someone, I wouldn't see a thing, but two minutes later when the waffle iron would beep, I'd start to scrape the baked-on batter from around the iron's edges only to find that some had already baked into a perfect heart. I'm sure I was Cliff Claven-ish enough to show my coworkers the heart-shaped potato and chip, but I didn't tell anyone at work just how often this happened to me.



 
I began to believe at some point that all these hearts were not "just" hearts. Granted, they were not visions of saints in toast, but as crazy as it may sound to others--and as it did to Mike when I'd mention over supper that day's latest heart-discoveries--the hearts began to feel like signs to me. All those days working in a restaurant kitchen when I ached to be somewhere else doing something else, just when I thought I'd flip out and scream, I'd be "tagged" again and a heart-shaped bacon-piece would be left over on a guest's plate like a calling card from the universe and bring me some small comfort. It is silly and a bit sad, really, the things that help get us through the hard times, but whatever works, I say. Maybe the hearts were signs and maybe they weren't, but eventually I decided that every time I found one from then on, I'd take a deep breath, thank God that I had a job at all, and recommit to the goals of hanging in there and being patient while working toward something else.
 
What ended up being two and a half years passed, as time always does, and last May, the phone call requesting an interview for my current position finally came. Call me crazy, and point out that I reaaaaaaaally could have used some time off, but I take my magic where I can find it and am grateful for it when I do. I haven't noticed any hearts--edible, spilled, or otherwise--in ages. I found them when I needed them, and I am thankful.

A Post for Nikki, My Fellow Vintage Clothing Fan :)

I recently "met" the lovely and sweet Nikki of The Scarlett Rose Garden. She has lost more than 80 pounds--which is about the same amount of weight I had to lose when I started my own weight loss/better health journey last year--and thus has been quite an inspiration to me. Her photos and writings just exude warmth and love of life, and I'm so glad to have found her online.

Nikki designed her own wedding gown and asked today to see the one I've had in mind since I was 18, so here for my fellow vintage clothing-loving new friend is my dream gown. Mr. Mike and I can skip a "real" wedding and just head to the courthouse and I'll be happy, as "wedding hoopla" has never interested me much, but even if we got married in a trash dumpster with only the flies as our witnesses, I'd still want to be wearing this dress.  It was designed by Yumi Katsura and was featured in the June 1995 issue of Victoria magazine. I was looking through my grandmother's magazines while staying with her during the summer of 1995, and when I saw this photo, I just knew this was the only wedding gown I ever wanted to wear and even now, 13 years later, it's the one I want. The design itself looks pretty simple, so if I can't find an inexpensive dress that looks enough like this, I'll likely just create my own: An off-white gauzey long-sleeved blouse with a long skirt, a strapless cream corset or swimsuit underneath, a collar and French cuffs and faux bow-covered buttons up the back and along the cuffs...I'm sure we'll find a way to get the look I want. :) It's just such a sweet dress, and since the photo shows the model with her back turned, it's always been that much easier to imagine myself in it. With my hair pulled up and the last 30 or so pounds gone, that back-turned picture's probably how I'll actually look on my wedding day anyway. And I think 18-year-old Val somehow knew that all along, which is why the photo spoke to her the way it did. ♥

The trick is to stop and think occasionally during normal times how good things are. ~ Andy Rooney

Thursday was one of those beautiful days that I wish I could bottle, label "What June of My 31st Year Was Like," and keep on a shelf forever. ♥  

It was my day off from work and I awoke from a sweet dream about being with my grandparents at their home again. In it, just they and I were eating lunch together and talking about the rock wall they had behind their house and about how I liked tadpoles and wanted more frogs to visit my garden. 

I got out of bed and soon discovered a two-pound weight loss. 

I got "real" mail. 

Despite the 90+ degree heat, I got my walk in and spent some time sitting outside reading with a banana, bottle of ice water, and vending machine bag of gummy fruit on the bench beside me while waiting for Mike to get off work. He joined me before I finished the last 20 or so pages, so we claimed our spot under a tree and read our books there before heading home. 

The tomatoes and cucumbers have already grown enough to make their containers look green and full, the Petunias are sprawling out of their pots, the Morning Glories are showing their first heart-shaped leaves, and the strawberry seedlings are now about an inch tall. 

And then, best of all, while the chicken and pasta for supper were cooking, I checked my email and found a message with the subject line "interview at [your dream job.]" I had a happy little crying jag over that, with Mr. Mike all the while hugging me and repeating, "Just do your best" and his stock phrase "You'll be fine," and then I called my parents to tell them the news.  I went to bed late Thursday night after sending a bunch of ecstatic emails to friends and family, visions of Life with Dream Job dancing through my head.

I imagine that someday when Mr. Mike and I are old, these days of our first "official" year together--we were friends for nine years before becoming a couple--will be remembered as some of our sweetest: We are grateful for all we have, but we dream of so much more and seem to alternate daily between being The One Giving the Pep Talk and The One in Need of a Shoulder. There is a bit of dialog from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner that I've always loved, and it's come to mind again since Thursday:  

"You know, for us it's all been great, but do you know what was the best time of all? It was in the beginning when everything was a struggle and you were working too hard and sometimes frightened. And there were times when I felt that I really knew that I was a help to you. That was the very best time of all for me." 

 Life will go on and still be wonderful, no matter the outcome of next week's interview, and this in-between time with its wait and wonder is itself worth bottling. 

Bee Boxes

My grandfather, my beloved Papa, kept honey bees in a few bee boxes in his and Grandma's yard. I wasn't as interested in all of that while my grandparents were alive as I am now, and I wish I had been: I want to keep bees someday too, and while I will learn the how-to when I need to, I wish I had the memories of having learned all about beekeeping firsthand from Papa. I would watch the bees from a safe distance as some exited the boxes and others flew toward them, and I was fascinated by the design of the honeycombs Papa would bring into the kitchen--the honeycombs are edible, although my parents still wince when they tell the tale of the time Papa bit into a honeycomb and ended up swallowing a live bee--but I didn't pay attention to the actual honey-gathering. While helping my parents clear out my grandparents' house in 2001, we came across an old instructional booklet on beekeeping, and I was shocked to realize that Papa hadn't always known how to do this either--that he too had been interested and had had to learn from others. There is comfort in that knowledge for me.

My very last visit to my grandparents' house about a month after they had died, I waffled for an hour over whether to disassemble the bee boxes and pack them into the car to take with me, but I ultimately decided to leave them behind. I didn't want the bee boxes unless I could also have the sloped part of the yard they had always sat on, near where my childhood Beagle was gently buried by Papa, across from the raspberry bushes and tomato plants and flower gardens, feet away from Papa's thinking tree. . . . I didn't want to keep the bee boxes unless I could also keep Papa and Grandma's yard and house and Papa and Grandma always inside. I sometimes think I should have taken the bee boxes after all, though, and just lived with the heartache of their missed surroundings. I don't know.

Papa and Grandma and their bee boxes and their jars of fresh honey are all on my mind tonight as I keep adding store-bought honey to hot tea as I battle a cold, and also because I had a sad dream about my grandparents last night. I have dreamed of them only a handful of times since they died in the spring of 2001, and most of those dreams have been nightmares like last night's. I miss Papa and Grandma so much, and part of me will never believe that if I knocked on their door right now, they wouldn't open it and welcome me inside. Ah, Life. I am so blessed just to have had a "Papa and Grandma" at all, and I will someday have another happy dream of them, and I believe there will eventually be a reunion. Papa and Grandma missed people they had loved, as well, there are still bees out there traveling back and forth from boxes to flower gardens, and life goes on. 

My Year

Last week at this time I was putting together a beef stew supper and a bag of treats for Mr. Mike for Halloween and thinking about Halloween of last year and about just how much my life has changed--or how much I have changed my life--in the past twelve months. Halloween 2006 saw me working noon-nine pm at a job I hated, missing both a family dinner that day and the chance to see my little nephew in his scarecrow costume that evening. The misery I felt all day last Halloween was the same that colored so many of my days last year. But last Wednesday, in a new apartment in a new city on a day off from a new job and baking peanut butter cookies for Mr. Mike, I was overwhelmed by how happy I was and by just how dramatically I've changed my life in one year's time. Mom called while I was scrambling to get the Halloween show on the road here, and in the cozy glow of apple cinnamon and pumpkin pie-scented candles, I sat down to tell her I was happy. She has been telling me every year for what seems like forever that "this will be [my] year," and finally, last week, with only sixty-two days left of what has been an awesome year, I could tell her that she was right. I am so happy, and for the first time in a long time, I've had months in a row of looking not backward but forward.

Buster, Rowlf, and Buckingham

I have dreamed of having an Old English Sheepdog since I was a kid. I have cycled through stages of hoping to have children someday and then of not caring if I’m ever anyone’s mom, but I have had three dog names picked out for ages: Buster, Rowlf, and Buckingham--“Buck” for Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac fame. Just thinking about the dog makes me happy. And when I say that I dream of him, I mean it literally: My dog appears in my dreams every few months. Sometimes the dream (or what I remember of it) is simply that he was sitting beside me on the couch or that we were out walking together, and sometimes the dream is about something else entirely but my shaggy gray and white bear of a dog was there during it, plodding alongside me.

In last night’s dream, a bunch of friends, family, coworkers, and I were sleeping over at my grandparents’—camped out on the couch, in the upstairs bedrooms, and on the floor all through the house. I was curled up with a blanket on the living room floor in front of the TV, but I soon decided to get up and find my dog—I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep without him. So, I stood up and tip-toed my way through the room, trying not to step on anyone as I made my way over to the staircase. I was giddy in the dream, somehow thinking “Ooh! I hope there’s a sheepdog in this dream!” and already happy because I knew I was about to see him again. I finally found him—Buster, Rowlf, or Buckingham, I never know which one I'm seeing in the dreams—upstairs in my grandparents’ bedroom. My dog! There was just enough light in the room to make him out on the floor beside their bed. I called out to him in an excited whisper and snuggled up with him there on the floor, his fluffy side as my pillow. That was all there was to the latest dream, my most recent visit with my sheepdog.

I always wake up from these dreams missing my dog but happy—even if it was “just” a dream—to have spent time with him again. And say what you will, but it’s a nice way to start the day. Buster/Rowlf/Buckingham is out there, and someday he will still be there when I awake.