Strange Impressions ~

My neighbor must have thought I’d lost my mind this morning. As she came out of her backdoor, there I was, on my patio puttering around wearing a navy blue skirt with a pink striped long-sleeved button down shirt and my bright pink flip-flops.

What she didn’t know was that earlier that morning I had gotten dressed for work and was waiting for a GE repairman. That repairman was now in my house fixing my dishwasher, and as long as I was on the patio, my dog (who was in the backyard) would be quiet. So there I was ~ skirt and all, re-arranging potted plants, sweeping up spilled dirt and trying to cut off those extremely annoying white hang tags that were sewn into the seams of my new, bright red patio furniture cushions. And, there’s no-way to rip or cut those things off without leaving a remnant of white Tyvek. Argh ~ ah, but I digress…

I’ve written before about first impressions and how they can be misleading. But even long after a first impression wears off and you come to know a person, you can still surprise each other with out of the ordinary behavior. How could my neighbor have known what my reasoning was; to be tending to these chores dressed the way I was.

Everyone acts strange now and then. Enlightenment comes from understanding the reason.

More About Luck…

My dad tells a story about one of his friends who came to visit after decades of not seeing each other. When he saw my parents nice home and surrounding acres of farmland and barns he turned to my dad and asked, “how did you get so lucky?” I had another friend who basically told the same story about a colleague of his, who after entering his home asked the same question. How did you get so lucky? Both my dad and my friend were quite stumped at the comment and tongue-tied in their responses. What they wanted to say, thank you very much…was that there was very little luck involved in their success, and much hard work. To award the awesomeness of their achievements to luck was a bit of a slap in the face.

Luck occurs by accident or chance, and it has nothing to do with the hard work and perseverance it takes to be successful. Don’t get me wrong, success can be defined in many ways and not always by materialistic measure. But, even to say the work required to get a degree or to learn a language or a new skill didn’t take initiative and diligence to achieve and have attributed to luck wouldn’t be acceptable.

It’s amazing how much your “luck” increases when you get up everyday and do the things you need to do. It’s amazing how much your “luck” increases when you don’t spend more than you earn.
It’s amazing how much your “luck” increases when you stay at a task and learn from your mistakes.
It’s amazing how much your “luck” increases when you have an optimistic can-do attitude.

Lucky ~

Almost ten years ago our family went on a cruise that sailed the Caribbean. Every evening the attentive staff would arrive to turn down our bed, twist up those crazy animal towels and leave a printed itinerary of the next days events. On the days we were sea bored…really, seaboard, but I couldn’t resist, Ty would plan our day. He wanted to play bingo the next morning so I agreed to go with him. We walked in and paid to play in the four games they were playing at that sitting. The game started and after a while I was pleasantly surprised when my card filled and I had a bingo! Yay me. I had to stand up and do the little bingo dance and tell everyone my name. They gave me my winning receipt to exchange in the casino for my loot. THAT was fun. So, we started the second game, and my card filled up…again, and I yelled bingo. Lucky you the emcee said as I did the bingo dance and got my winning receipt. Three times a charm right? Lucky me…my card filled up yet again and that time I tentatively yelled out bingo. By then I was on the receiving end of some pretty unhappy stares. People, hello…bingo is all luck, there isn’t an ounce of skill required. Game four was on. The emcee called out letters and numbers and deep into the game Ty leaned over and said to me, “mom, if they call out that last spot on your card, whatever you do, DO NOT yell bingo.” Thank goodness somebody else yelled bingo that game, but I was only one space away from winning game four. What kind of luck does it take to win three out of four bingo games in a row?

Since that lucky day, I’ve sometimes wondered how that could happen. How would you calculate the odds for that? I’m not a gambler and only occasionally play the Texas Lottery. I sure didn’t feel lucky that day, I just was. More on luck later…