Windows and Doors and Hope Rekindled

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Everything happens for a reason. Or so they say.

From the time we're old enough to know true disappointment, it's repeated to us like a mantra, a lulling pacifier designed to sugarcoat failure and despair.

It's a sentiment that wears many hats.

There's the standard: Well, everything happens for a reason.

The educational: Must be a lesson in there somewhere. 

The hopeful: When one door closes, another opens. Or the variation: When a door closes, a window opens.

The romantic: There's plenty of fish in the sea.

The religious: God works in mysterious ways.

Whether it's uttered to soothe the wounds of unrequited love, the smarting ache of a hard-learned lesson, or the tormenting letdown of a wish unfulfilled, we've all heard the phrase and its many cousins. We've all experienced disappointment, unanswered prayers, and the like. That's life, as they say. Whoever they are.

In the midst of sorrow and defeat, it's a hard thing to hear. I suppose it's difficult to see how something positive could come from something negative. At least in that moment it is.

I've lived through one of those moments recently. The worst of the disappointment has passed, though I still have times where I want to scream "why!?!?" at the top of my lungs. I think, for the most part, I'm now at a point where I'm looking towards the future, wondering what windows and doors are hanging open, waiting for me to step through.

I've never been a terribly patient person. I want things to happen NOW. Waiting until Christmas to buy that new bauble that caught my eye? Not gonna happen. Waiting to adopt a new cat until "cat fever" has left, and I'm thinking straight again? Nope, not me. Waiting to get to know a little better the man I met online only months ago before I marry him? Nah, it'll all work out.

I'm just not a wait-and-see kind of girl. So waiting to see what kinds of new opportunities might be just beyond the horizon is not really my cup of tea. But you know what? There's a lesson to be learned here. Don't they also say that good things come to those who wait? 

Patience, Katie. Patience.

So, I sit and wait and hope, hope, hope. Because everything happens for a reason, and for everything there is a season. And y'all, my season has always been fall.

Here's to windows and doors and hope rekindled.

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Funk

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And I don't mean music.

I'm in one. Bad.

A writing funk of epic proportions. And a life funk. It's been about two months now. It sucks.

It happens. We all know it. Life throws you a curve ball, and inspiration flies out the window. I'm not going to go on and on about it. It's all been said before. By me. By others. We're human. Life isn't perfect. Writing isn't perfect.

The second anniversary of Chicken Noodle Gravy is fast approaching. A little over a month away. So crazy to think that it's been nearly two years since I started blogging about my love of a strange family dish most people have never even heard of.

Looking back on the last two years, I'm happy. Happy to see the new friends I've made. Happy to see the changes in myself.

I'm more confident. I write more. I'm now being paid to write. My relationship with my husband is stronger and happier than ever. I'm more positive. My outlook is always improving. I still worry, but I don't wallow in my worry quite as bad. I stand up for myself. I don't let everyone walk all over me anymore. Mostly.

Despite some minor irksome details over the last couple of months, things are pretty amazing, and I'm one happy girl.

Take that, Funk.

War on the Front Lawn

The seven stinging aggressors 

should beware the burning 
of gasoline retaliation.

For Lightning and the Lightning Bug's Eleven prompt. Our challenge was to tell a tale in eleven words. I decided to use my yellow jacket encounter as inspiration.

Waffle House Love

Our first date was at a Waffle House. After he drove 2,829 miles to reach me, I figured that buying him some waffles and hash browns--scattered, smothered, and covered--was the least I could do.

As far as first dates go, ours was pretty unique. We’d known each other for less than four months and only through phone conversations and emails. This was the first time we’d met face to face, and despite what should have been an awkward situation, everything about that moment felt just right.

The smell of bacon and stale coffee punctuated our conversation, and the only thing that interrupted our focus on each other was the occasional visit from our waitress. I think we were both in shock that we were together, in shock that we’d gone through with what any rational person would have called crazy.

We met online. We hadn’t been looking for each other, but you always seem to find the things you need even when you’re not looking. He lived in California; me in Georgia. But little things like distance weren’t going to keep us apart.

Our unique courtship was fast, too fast by some standards, but for us, it was perfect.  For four months, we spent nearly every waking moment talking to each other, learning each other’s quirks, falling in love even before we had the chance to lay eyes on one another.

Concerned friends desperately tried to talk me out of love, citing any number of very good and rational reasons why our relationship wouldn’t work. They worried that he was playing a game with me, that he was using me, that he was some random murderer bent on killing me. I listened patiently to their concerns; if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would have been the one voicing those concerns…but this was different. This was real, and I knew that in my heart.

I’m probably the least impulsive person you’ll ever meet. I always overanalyze and overthink every situation in my life. I always look before I leap. Every time, except this time. This time I let my heart do the thinking. I trusted that we were meant to be. Because we were. What other explanation could possibly be found for a typically cautious, withdrawn woman to throw away rational thought and do something so out-of-character and insane?

There is none, except that it was meant to be….much like that first date at the Waffle House was meant to be.

It wasn’t fancy, but it was us. I remember just how the sunlight filtered in on our table, how the engagement ring that he’d slipped on my finger the moment we met glinted in that brilliant light. I remember tilting my hand this way and that just to watch it sparkle. I remember thinking that this was the man I would spend the rest of my life with. I remember the happiness consuming me.

Happiness still consumes me nearly six years later. Jeremy and I are married now. We celebrate our fifth anniversary in October. We’re not perfect, by any means. We fight. We get on each other’s nerves. But we’re deliriously happy, and we love our life together with all of its quirks, the four cats that surround us, and those lovely dates at Waffle House. 

Me and My Shadow

Daddy and Me

His boots would be sitting by the door; a day's work of sawdust and clay settled on them like the dusting of a first snow. They always fascinated me, those boots. I would silently watch him put them on sometimes, deft, weathered hands moving in a muscle memory dance that would always conquer that complex system of laces and hooks.

But he wouldn't have them on tonight. They would be sitting by the door, a reminder of obligation and worry that held no place in this nightly ritual.

He would have on a pair of boat shoes, shoes that I'd slipped my own small feet into a thousand times, and if his boots represented work and obligation, those boat shoes represented freedom and happiness.

After scooping up some kibble and tossing it into a bucket, we'd make our nightly trek through the backyard, up to the hill where Barney the basset hound would be waiting patiently for his meal. Our journey there would not be ordinary, and it would always be ours.

I'd follow beside him, my smaller steps matching his larger ones in a perfect rhythm, a Daddy-and-Daughter dance always with the same soundtrack.

He'd sing, "Me and my shadow, strolling down the avenue, do de do, do de do."

Every night. Just the same. The sun would be setting, and our shadows would stretch before us, tall and silly, as silly as he and I, singing and strolling and sharing that time together when boat shoes and a basset hound could chase our worries away.

I'm still my Daddy's shadow, always following in his much larger footsteps and remembering that no matter how old I get that will always be true.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!