my heart aches, my heart soars

Paying visits to all my blog friends yesterday, I was bombarded by good reading and many thoughts and ideas.

Over at Rain's I read a post by her that I cannot put into words, so you must go and read it, now. It will be good for you, I promise. It really resonated with me because I had done something just recently that made me feel incredibly bittersweet. You see, on Tuesday I met a friend of mine for lunch at this delectable cafe called Beyond Bread. There we enjoyed scrumptious food and spoke about life. (Aside: she hit me with the shocking news that she was thinking about not going to UCLA for her post doctorate after everything she did to get into there!) While we were there a gentleman at the table next to us just up-and-left, leaving his entire uneaten sandwich and unopened bag of chips. Strange. We waited and waited, and after about an hour, we concluded he was certainly gone for good. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of us, someone had left a bag with a wrapped sandwich for takeout. And they never came back to retrieve it either. (Pretty strange incidences!) And so my mind went immediately to the gentleman I see everyday when I get off exit 99 to go home. He stands there - dirty, hot and tired - holding his cardboard sign in his hand just waiting for something - anything- from anyone. I decided those sandwiches and chips would be just the perfect thing to bless him with. And so, on my ride home, as I headed down the exit ramp homeward I noticed he wasn't there. However, there was a new lady whom I'd never seen before, and I gave the overflowing brown bag of food to her. My heart ached. She was obviously moved as well. She blew me kisses (missing teeth and all, which made me hope she'd do alright eating the food) and muttered abundant thank-yous. It felt good. It felt not so good. Bittersweet.

Then over at Fineartist's I was moved yet again by her entry regarding the recent graduation of her students. I don't know if I'm more emotional than usual, but she got me all choked up, too. And I was suddenly inspired to do something. So here's to Lori's dream of wearing a t-shirt with something tasteless scrawled on the front of it:


Hope you are having the time of your life in Europe. Miss you and can't wait to hear about all your adventures.

Lastly, over at Writer Mom's, I was informed of the ever-so-exciting news that Zilla is coming to visit her. Once again, my heart ached a little. I was so thrilled and elated for them to meet, and at the same time a little sad that we never got the chance to meet up a couple months ago. (I even had a dream last night of meeting Ange and her family! It was strange... in the dream she had three boys instead of Jack and Pickles. I was confused because I didn't know which was which, and was frustrated at myself for not paying closer attention to her blog. Then abruptly early the next morning of their stay, they left. There were puppies and kittens everywhere and I was trying not to let the ones inside escape or let the ones inside come in as Ange and her family packed their things up and brought them out to load them into their car. I wondered why they were leaving so soon and so abruptly. I hugged Ange goodbye trying to keep hold of my sadness. And then the dream ended.)

Well, I've got two napping girls today (yes, two)! I'm watching my neighbor's daughter and she is an absolute delight. She is a year-and-a-half old and a ivory-skinned, blond-haired beauty. I'll snap some pictures before she leaves for sure. Have a great memorial day weekend everyone.