Life Happens...

This has been the kind of week that brings to mind the quote, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” The quote has been attributed to John Lennon, but my guess is that most folks have come up with this discovery more than once in life.

On Monday, I planned to get my CrowDayOne post written early, since we had a busy weekend planned. (You know where this is going, don’t you?) I actually did get my piece written. I even had a piece of quilting to illustrate it.  But overnight, the Muse appeared in my dreams and said, aghast, “You really aren’t going to post that sermon, are you?”  I re-read it and realized that, like some sermons, there were some nuggets of good stuff but you’d have to sift through a lot of mud to get there. As Miss Manners would say, “You deserve better, dear readers.”

The next morning I began again. I was done at noon and feeling mighty good. “I’ll edit it later in the week – it won’t take long,” I told myself. Uh-huh. That afternoon, I’d been invited to visit a woman who has made banners for our church. She thought I could use some of her leftover silks in my art. I thought I had enough fabric to last a hundred years. I only planned to have a nice visit and a cup of tea with her, but you probably know what happened to my plans. Yes, now I have enough fabric for 150 years.

Raw material for future crows...

Think it might be the Muse talking?

On Wednesday, a friend and I took off for an overnight “Two Chicks Road Trip” – something we’d done several years ago and enjoyed so much, we had promised ourselves we’d do it again soon. But you know, life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans, and so we kept postponing it. Now was the time; my post was written, and my cousin wasn’t coming for the weekend till Friday afternoon. What better time to get out of Dodge?

We had a lovely time in Victoria – hitting the fabric shops, the art supply store, even a T-shirt shop, eating out, and talking, talking, talking all the way. But something was nagging at me. “Oh, please, dear Muse, go away,” I begged.  But she wouldn’t. “This time, your post sounds like something you should be spouting about to your shrink,” she told me. “Really? But it’s such an important discovery I made about myself,” I whined. “Exactly,” she said. “You think it’s all about you?” Yikes, that hurt.

By the time I got home on Thursday evening, I was too tired to deal with the situation. “Tomorrow is another day. I’ll have time to write a post and clean the house before my cousin comes later in the afternoon,” I decided.  That should work.  (Did I ever tell you that I’m a slow learner?)

Friday morning by 9 a.m. I was sitting down at the computer, ready to begin yet another piece, but first I checked Facebook. Cousin Rika had posted, “I’m in Nanaimo now ...”  Nanaimo? Nanaimo??? Already? Wow, she could be here in an hour! I couldn’t do both, so it was time to choose: clean the house, or write the blog. Then the doorbell rang. It was a quilting friend I hadn’t chatted with for ages. “Come on in and have a coffee,” I suggested.

It would be neither the house, nor the blog, nor any other carefully laid plans that interfered with life. It would be living in the here and now, enjoying the moments in this crazy, messy life with its random happenings and unplanned joys. And I would hope and trust that there would still be time for everything else that was necessary.

And as you can tell, there was! Life happened -- not according to plan ... and it was good.

The house got cleaned, the post got written, and Rika got to feed the birds at Lazo Marsh. That's life in a nutshell!