Thursday, February 18, 2010

Life...a bit like a jigsaw puzzle

THIS MORNING I WAS INVITED TO A BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST FOR TWO OF MY DEAR FRIENDS. It is always a treasure to be with this group of ladies. They teach me many things about life. I bet they probably don't even realize how much they teach me. They all have children that are a little older than mine and all have been married a little longer than I, and they all love the Lord, to me they are great role models to be following.

So at breakfast of course we were doing what ladies love to do when we get together....TALK. And its always amazing to me how conversation flows from one topic to the next. Never a quiet or dull moment. We talk about our families, mostly our kids, our jobs, our love of knitting, or not, and we got to talking about puzzles. Most of us realized that we like putting puzzles together. We were discussing how we put puzzles together, I never realized there were so many different ways to put puzzles together, some sort them on cookie trays and pass the trays around the table, some take a piece and hold it to the box to find where its place is...I just assumed that everyone put a puzzle together the same way I do...start with the outsides and then just kinda go which ever way the pieces take you. Guess I was wrong.

This evening I was thinking back to our conversation on puzzles and it got me thinking... Our lives are like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece fits together and each day represents a piece of that puzzle and at the end of our lives our puzzle will be complete! WOW, then I got to wondering what my completed puzzle will look like. Will it be filled or half empty? Will it be full of brightness or darkness or maybe a mixture! Will it be filled with relationships and connections? Am I even doing everything I can so that my puzzle is full?

I hope that my finished puzzle will be similar to a Thomas Kinkade. There are dimming spots where the sun is not shining through the trees(my sadness, sorrow, and pain) and then there are bright spots where the sun is shining so bright you will need your sunglasses(my joyous times). The colors are so majestic. There are tall trees that could tell a story if they could talk. The skies are so bright you could get lost in them. They take some time to put together, but in the end they are beautiful!

Our puzzles are uniquely made by us, for us and there is not another one like it.

WHAT DO you think your puzzle will look like?

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Your Neighborhood Nail Tech...

Woke up to the annoying alarm on my iPhone. Hit snooze twice. Finally dragged myself out of bed, woke up the boys, packed lunches for three, this one got a shower, this one needs a bath, this one needs his hair fixed...and yadda,yadda, yadda. You know the routine if you are a parent. So then it is two off on the bus, time to make myself look presentable to the outside world, and off to drop one off at preschool. (If your wondering about # 4, he is already at school by this time, and dad gets the honors of getting him off on the bus). Then it is time to hit the coffee shack, as I call it for my normal..vanilla latte.



This is when my morning becomes slightly different from the norm. Instead of enjoying me time, or time cleaning the house or an exspensive trip to Target, I drove to an elderly womans house, who just broke her hip recently and can't get around to well these days. She loved the couple of times she came to the shop to see me and I also went out to her house one other time before, which she loved...I went there to do her fingers and toes. (phelanges as I like to call them, for some reason when you use the proper anatomy terms people seem to laugh..try it sometime, it's kinda fun) Hence the title "Your Neighborhood Nail Tech".



When I walked into her house on this cold February morning, she was so happy. She was tickled pink that I was coming to do her hands and feet. She was ecstatic!! I honestly do not think that anyone has ever appreciated something that I have done for them, the way she did. You would have thought that I just presented her with the Publishers Clearing House check for 1 million dollars!

Her stories are so enjoyable to listen to. She often talks of her 8 children, she is SO proud of them. This day she was telling me about this bump on her leg. I am sitting on the floor, her feet are in the whirlpool tub and she shows me this bump. "now this here bump, well I had this since my daughter was just a baby, I bumped my leg and it has never gone away." Next is what got me.."When I went to have one of my surgeries the doctor said maybe I should have it removed. I said no just leave it there it doesn't bother anything." Why this got me, I am not sure, but I think it is due to the fact that she didn't want to have that memory removed. In today's world we are so quick to remove those scars and bumps. How many memories, good and bad, do we actually take the time to remember? Seriously!



I have learned through doing pedicures and manicures that God never gives me a client that I don't learn something from. It is amazing what people will tell you when you have their foot or hand in your hand. Their conversation comes right from the heart. Sometimes we just need to take "our time" and make it "someone elses time", it is truly amazing what we can learn. I feel truly blessed to have gone to her house that cold morning and shared my time with her. Can't wait to do it again..

Do you have any scars that you're trying to remove? Just remember those scars are a part of what made us who we are today!!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Just this once...I will take your two cents...

I have decided it was time to venture into the wonderful or not so wonderful(haven't decided yet) world of blogging. I have found myself to be quite the blog "stalker" in a good way not a creepy stalkerish way. So what the heck we'll give it a whirl. As with most things in life..it is harder than it appears. I am not even sure how to add a picture, or even make it look half decent for that matter. So I am up for any and all suggestions, if you have any to give. This may be the one and only time I will ever ask for your two cents..so..you better give it while you can. But for now..I have a date in the living room with my youngest son Zacchaeus, we will be playing a hard core game of Super Mario Wii. Blessings to All!!!!