now I know how Humpty Dumpty feels...

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone..." - Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

"Appreciate what you have"..."Seize the day"..."Live every day as if it were your last"...such cliches while everything is going well; such wise advise once things take a turn for the worst.

Last week I fell and broke my right shoulder. I would like to say it happened during a dramatic mountain bike accident or while performing some heroic act like saving a child from an oncoming car. Not so. I just slipped and fell down my long, narrow, hardwood staircase and landed squarely on my shoulder at the bottom. 

Now my arm is in an uncomfortable, itchy, ill-fitting sling and nine days into it, I'm still waiting for a coherent treatment plan to emerge. It seems that orthopedists are all very busy these days and my injury is considered a minor one...Thank heavens for medical insurance. If I didn't have Blue Cross and Blue Shield backing me up, I'm sure no one would care and I'd be in this nasty ole' sling for months.

Some people are comfortable in the roll of patient; others, I say, based on years of experience as an emergency room social worker, relish it. They recite their list of ailments, surgeries, accidents and medications as if it were the only litany their lives will ever generate. I, on the other hand, hate doctors, their offices and hospitals with an unreasonable fervor. I don't know why this is. I don't remember any childhood trauma that could've made me this way. It's just the way I've always been.

As a child, I was well-blessed and lucky to never have been seriously hurt. As a young woman, I opted to have my kids at home (under the watchful eye of two experienced midwives and with my MD a phone call away) rather than go to the hospital. As a mother and now aging adult, I have always paid great care to keeping me and mine healthy. And, now that my kids are grown, I am proud to say they are not only health-oriented, but a bit doctor-phobic, as well. It's not that medical care doesn't have its place. It's just that self help, healthy living and the willingness to ride out a fever can serve one pretty well, too.

I am not naive enough to think that good luck and the watchful eye of the Good Lord haven't had a hand in my family's many doctor-free years. I don't know why some families are blessed with good health, while others are challenged time and time again with illness, cancer, accidents and disease. There's no making sense of it. We can only remain thankful for the good times and trust He is with us in the bad...

Back to this shoulder - there is no question it has ruined my Fall plans. Now that the weather is nice again, I had long lists of yard projects, garden work, hikes, bike rides and little trips here and there, all spinning around in my head. So much to do! Where to begin? Now my list is the same every day: "Try to do what needs doing using one arm and one hand." Since Mr. Clark works out of town all week, this is a special challenge. Thanks to good friends with generous hearts and willing hands, I am making do, but by the end of the day, it's easy for the pity party to begin...

In spite of myself, this shoulder is also teaching me some valuable lessons. Humility and patience have never been my strong suits. I value independence above many things, which means I don't accept help readily or gracefully. I like control and feeling like I'm in the driver's seat. It's not easy for me to roll with the punches, take things as they come or ask for help. Thanks to this shoulder, I am learning to be a more humble, more patient and more accepting of what fate throws my way. I am also learning to accept help readily and with sincere thanks.      

Based on my Google research (in lieu of responsive orthopedic care...) I've got a long row ahead of me. If this bugger needs surgery, well, there's that...if not, life in a sling long term is no picnic, either. It sounds like either way, I'll be lucky to hang any ornaments on my Christmas tree this year. But, no matter. By the time the holidays roll around, I like to think the lessons "Shoulder" has taught me will be worth the price I paid to learn them.   

Lorin Sinn-Clark is a writer for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at lorin@barrowjournal.com

it's good to be a princess...or an archer...or both.

"I am Merida, and I’ll be shooting for my own hand!" - Princess Merida in the Disney movie "Brave"

I named my daughter Amelia after Amelia Earhart because I believe there is power in a name and I wanted her to have a brave, adventurous spirit that would follow its own dreams and not listen to a world that said "No!" if she wanted to do something unique, unusual or not yet done by a woman. That was 1981, and while women had made great strides, there were (and still are) plenty of barriers to be broken and much to be accomplished before men and women are considered true equals.  

Like many little girls, my daughter loved Disney movies - in particular, she loved Disney princesses. There is just something about all that pale blue, pink and purple, those overly large doe-eyes, all that fabulous unruly hair and those wonderful dresses that draws a little girl in and holds her hostage for a few years.

The Disney princesses back in my daughter's day were clever, brave, kind, mischievous and a bit rebellious - all things I hoped my daughter would be. Their stories, however, were inextricably tied to the men in their lives. Their acts of bravery and rebellion, the lessons they learned and all of the trials they went through before gaining their "Happily Ever After" had to do with earning their father's respect, or rebelling against their father, or missing their father; and, there was also the matter of finding Prince Charming and winning his heart.  

These were not the most self-directed princesses. There were no plans for education or lofty goals for the future. Once peace was restored to the kingdom and they were happily wed, those princess' work was done and their stories faded away.   

I did not want my daughter's life script to include the idea that the cornerstone of her motivation was to gain the emotions she wanted from the men in her life. While I'm all for romance and true love, I hoped she would follow a bunch of stars before settling down and finding her "Happily Ever After." And, I wanted her to choose that "Happily Ever After" herself; I didn't want fate, a kiss or the breaking of some magic spell to choose it for her.

As it turned out, her story has a happy ending. My Amelia grew up with many of the traits I admired in those princesses, yet she set a course of her own, accomplished her dreams and didn't let the need for male approval guide her actions. She then married her own Prince Charming, who ended up being her high school sweetheart and, I believe, her one true love. No fade out there...they are still writing their stories together with dreams yet to dream and challenges yet to face.           

Flash forward to this summer, when our nieces, ages 10 and 12, came to spend a month with us. Since I hadn't had kids this age in the house for awhile, what was the first thing I turned to in my search for common ground and a way to relate? A Disney princess, of course.

One of the first things we did together was see "Brave," Disney's latest movie with a princess heroine. She is Merida, a skilled archer with a head of particularly spectacular red hair and a mind of her own. She is determined to carve out her own path, no matter the cost. Since it's Disney, the plot includes her hand being offered in marriage, only this movie offers a twist. When the princes in the kingdom come to compete for Merida's hand, she defies tradition, declares archery the contest, shoots for her own hand and wins.  

This creates a big stir which involves a witch, a magic potion and some very impulsive and poor decision making on Merida's part. But, the ending is happy and includes a new decree which allows young people in the kingdom to marry whom they wish. The nieces liked that ending and so did I.  

Another brave heroine functioning off her own script this summer is Katniss Everdeen, from Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" books.  Like Merida, she is a skilled archer, independent thinker and uninterested in boys or male approval. Also like Merida, she is not much of a people pleaser, which, at times, has difficult consequences.

Katniss' story involves being one of 24 young people picked by the clearly evil, ruling regime to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games. And, without revealing the ending, I can say, she sets a pretty awesome and inspiring example for girls and young women - so much so, that when I told the nieces we would set up an archery range and start shooting together, their faces lit up like the flames Katniss, "the girl who was on fire," was famous for.

We shot almost every night and the girls seemed to really enjoy "channeling their inner Katniss," as they called it. Life can be hard, scary and confusing for a girl trying to grow into an empowered woman. Self-esteem is critical, as is self-direction. I'm glad the princesses and heroines these days set that example, for as Katniss said, "As long as you can find yourself, you'll never starve."    

Harvest, 2012 in the Sinn Family wheat fields

"There is no substitute for hard work.” – Thomas Edison

I come from a long line of hard working people who sweat a lot and what better time to celebrate that than the week of the Summer Solstice? The longest, hottest (at least this year) day of the year – come on, everybody! Let’s go work outside!

My kin on both sides have been farmers and ranchers out West for generations. That means lots of outdoor time, lots of time in the sun and lots of sweat. We are not like you Southerners who become “dewy” as the temperatures rise. Oh, no – we sweat so profusely we need to carry bandannas to mop our faces and (at least before wicking material was invented) our clothes and hats were soaked and salt-stained by mid-morning.

Imagine how unlady-like someone of that constitution feels here in the South, from mid-June until early October…”Bloom where you’re planted” takes on a whole new meaning for me this time of year. If I had a dollar for every time some well-meaning, concerned Southerner asked me if I was okay over the years (my face gets so red when I’m hot I look like I'm about to have a heat stroke), well, I could’ve sent myself on a vacation or two somewhere chilly by now.  

But. it’s not all on the down side with sweat; sweat has a very noble meaning. It means you’re working hard. It means you’re getting things done. It means you’ll soon have something to show for your efforts. And, that’s why I don’t mind sweating a lot when I’m doing hard work. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I also really love when the work is done and it's time to go into the cold A/C. I often wonder what life here in the South was like before air conditioning. Frankly, I can't imagine it. People had to be tougher; they definitely moved slower and I bet they didn't get as much done on a hot day as we do...But wait a minute, that's not true. People back then did get a lot done all summer long. I bet most of them could out work most of us on a blistering hot, thickly humid July day. As much as I hate to admit it, I believe air conditioning softens us. It makes us too comfortable. It takes some of our drive and a lot of our interest in going outside away.

My dad worked a wheat farm in the summers when I was growing up. His early tractors didn't have cabs, let alone A/C, so there he was, day after day, all summer long, in the dust and the wind and the heat, sweating like a cold glass of ice tea on a very hot day. I remember thinking he looked miserable and I remember thinking what a strong and

determined man he must be, to go do that every day. I admired him for that.

One of my fondest memories of him is the sight of his dust-crusted face, sweat streams still running down his cheeks, stepping off that tractor when the sun finally set. He looked tired, but he also looked content and almost triumphant – like he'd beat the elements and really accomplished something that day.

Maybe because of those memories (or maybe out of temporary insanity) I worked as a house painter for awhile and that included exterior work in the Southern summer. One of the guys in the trade told me the secret to surviving the heat was to never get cool – at least not ‘til the day was done. He was right. Once you get in the rhythm of working hard, sweating hard and drinking water as you go, you can last all day. But, go into a restaurant where the A/C is cranked down to 70 for lunch? You’re a goner – hesitant to go back out into the heat and resentful of the oven it is for the rest of the day.

I am still proud of the work I did as a house painter. For a long time, I could drive by my work (houses I had literally poured a little blood, a lot of sweat and a few tears into) and re-experience the pride of that accomplishment. Working at a desk, in an air conditioned office never seems to feel that way...   

These days I garden and work in the yard when it's time to sweat. And, doing so puts me back in touch with my roots and what really matters, which sometimes is simply putting in a good long, red-faced day of sweaty hard work.    

Church Fire

"It's a living thing. It breathes, it eats and it hates. The only way to beat it is to think like it. To know that this flame will spread this way…not because of the physics of flammable liquids, but because it wants to…The only way to kill it is to love it a little." - "Shadow" Rimgale in the movie "Backdraft" 

I have passed by the old First Methodist Church, then Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, on the corner of Center and Candler Streets nearly every day for the past 22 years. The lovely old majestic structure is a few blocks from my house and is on my path to almost anywhere and back home again. Now it is gone - destroyed by a ravenous fire that is believed to have been started by the brief and vicious lightning storm that happened around 10:30 p.m. last Thursday night.    

We were watching a movie, but paused it to go outside and marvel at the lightning. A few minutes later we heard sirens, so went outside again. The street was filled with thick gray smoke; something big was on fire. Clad in pajamas and slippers, I grabbed my camera and headed for the fire. My plan was to stay in the shadows, catch a few shots of whatever was going on then return home to the movie. As I neared the old church I could see thick, dark brown smoke pouring from the crack between the walls of the side towers and the sanctuary. It didn't look bad and there were a lot of firefighters and equipment on the scene, so I figured they'd have it handled in no time.   

By the time I rounded the corner of Center and Candler Streets I could see the fire licking at the stained glass windows in the front of the church. A few moments later, tendrils of flame began peering up over the roof line. There were two pumper trucks, one on either side of the church, pouring a torrent of water onto the fire. Firefighters from Winder and Barrow County had multiple hoses aimed at the structure, but it became clear very quickly that this fire's intent was to burn out of control.

As I moved around the scene, staying in the shadows and out of the firefighters' way, I marveled at how quickly and quietly they moved, in unison, with minimal talk and no drama. It was as if they were all reading from the same script, a script they had rehearsed so many times that when it came time to perform, their stage being this horrific fire, they knew exactly what to do and they did it without pause or hitch. There were men on hoses and men on the ground. A couple of men manned the well-lit equipment panel on each pumper truck; a few more, dressed in full firefighting regalia, hovered at the bottom of the ladders on the pumper trucks, waiting to do whatever it is firefighters do from high above the fire.   

The fire spread so quickly. Within minutes it blasted the stained glass windows out of the church and was chewing on the thick, once ornately-carved front doors. What once had been the sanctuary was now a bright yellow inferno. The flames grew taller and taller, engulfing the roof and reaching high, high into the sky. It became obvious the fire was going to destroy the building - it already had. In what seemed like only a few more minutes, the attention shifted to containing the flames and protecting the structures nearby.

The firefighters continued to work quietly and efficiently, without pause. An eerie yellow-orange light from the flames illuminated everything within a block or two. It looked like a movie set and reminded me of "Backdraft," a 1991 movie about fire and firefighters that has always been a favorite of mine. Only this was no movie set; the heat bellowing out of the building reminded us of that, as it blasted our faces and shot out into the night.

Bystanders gathered, but seemed so startled and mesmerized by the fire's voracious dance they remained quiet, humbled, respectful. No one even tried to sneak past the Winder Police officers who guarded the scene. I was as mesmerized as everyone else, standing across the street from the front of the church, watching it burn, burn, burn. The two towers fell, as the flames continued to engulf the sanctuary and reach to the sky. It was as if that fire couldn't get its fill; it just kept eating and growing and eating and growing.

The smoke was also quite eerie. It hovered and swirled, slithered and danced like a “Smoke Monster” on TV; it was as if it had a life of its own. It was so vicious and vital, at times, I swear, it looked like it had evil yellow eyes.

I went home before the fire finished its nasty work. I couldn't bear to watch the destruction anymore. As I walked, tears welled up in my eyes, which surprised me. It wasn't my church; I'd never even set foot inside. It was, however, such a beautiful old structure, only recently, so painstakingly and lovingly restored by the congregation of the Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit…Imagine all the tears, prayers, hopes and fears that have hovered between those walls since it was built in 1904…Weddings, funerals, christenings and celebrations…God’s energy, love, light and blessings, comforting and touching so many…and now it’s gone.

There’s no explaining why lighting strikes a historic and holy place like that; but it did. May the memories of all that happened in that church comfort those who will miss it so sadly. I will try to focus on that as I drive by it’s sad shell. Loving memories…sometimes that has to be enough.    

It's Mater Sammich Time!

"It's a smile, it's a kiss, it's a sip of wine...it's summertime!" - Kenny Chesney   

I just ate the first hand-picked tomato/cucumber sandwich of the season and hung a new hammock in the backyard. Summer has officially begun. The bright taste and rich deliciousness biting into a piece of fresh garden produce brings makes memories of summer pleasures past come flooding back and for me, most of those memories are tied to scents.

The childhood summers smelled of chlorine and sun and bright blue swimming pools. Those were the days before sun screen, so we slathered ourselves with suntan oil that smelled of coconut and spent hours in the sun, going from pool to beach towel and back again. I remember the feel of the warm concrete under my wet beach towel and the hot sun on my face. When I was a child, I was blonde, so by the end of summer my hair had turned green from the swimming pool chlorine, but I didn't care. Back then, all of us blonde kids had green hair in the summertime.

The summer I was seven I learned how to flop off the high dive. I never mastered diving, but I had a pretty good flop and a decent cannon ball. I still remember the fear and exhilaration of looking down at the water, so far below, wondering if I had the courage to jump, taking that final deep breath, then slamming into the water, tapping the bottom of the deep end with the tips of my toes, water in my nose, bubbles surrounding me, then float, float, float to the top and do it all again.

There was a faint cherry, berry, intensely sweet smell of popsicles in the swimming pool air. My favorite were those red, white and blue bullets. They still sell them and I bought one a while back. It didn't taste anything like I remembered, but then summers were larger than life back then.  

One of my grandmothers planted petunias all around her house, every summer - red petunias, purple petunias, pink petunias, white petunias, all kinds of petunias. By mid-day, when the sun was really hot and high overhead, the perfume from those petunias filled her yard. To this day, a hint of hot petunia on the wind sends me back to my Gramma's porch swing, where I lie happily smelling the breeze with my head on her lap. I've planted petunias many times, but mine never smell as good as hers did.

When I was a young mother, my favorite summer smell was the scent of my children's sweaty heads, hair all curly and wet, a bit of dirt, somehow, always mixed in. I loved sitting with my kids, holding them close, pressing my cheeks against those precious little heads...Such a sweet, earthy, poignant aroma, like hope and potential and innocence, all wrapped into one whiff.     

The parenting year summers were full of campfires and roasted marshmallows. There was the scent of the summer rain and the sea and the shore. The gentle hum of the ceiling fans, the whir of the hard-working air conditioner, cicadas buzzing, tree frogs chirping and the low happy sound of voices, talking and laughing outside provided the soundtrack for those days.  

These days summer smells like the warm spicy odor my tomato plants give off, as I walk between their tightly sown rows. Honeysuckle, jasmine and gardenia, a hint of rose, the clean coolness that mist from the garden hose brings as it blows across the breeze. I have a lovely, deep-toned wind chime; from here on out, hearing it will bring these summers back to me. And, there are birds, so many birds of all kinds, flocking to the feeders and bird baths I provide. Sometimes their cheerful chirping, chattering and song is so loud, I have to just stop and marvel at it. So much life, so much joy...it's the sound of summertime.

There have been wonderful summers and ones not so great. There have been fantastic vacation trips and summers where it felt like all I did was yard work. If money were no object, I'd put a swimming pool in, just to experience the smell of chlorine and turn a few of my hairs green again. If time could be turned back, I would sit on my grandmother's lap and smell her petunias again. If memories could be relived, I would spend an afternoon holding my sweaty-headed kids, breathing the scent of their youth again.  

Whatever summer is for you, I wish you the best of it. Enjoy these next few hot, lazy months - the tastes, the scents, the sounds and the memories they evoke. I hope you get a chance to create some new memories with adventures you take and things that you do. We have a fine, full summer planned and our garden is huge and verdant, so there will be no shortage of memories made or tomato/cucumber sandwiches eaten this year.

Which Muppet are you?

 

 

 

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending." - Kermit the Frog

The Muppets are back and this time it's not in a television show or a movie. It's in a personality theory. Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate magazine and contributing editor for Newsweek, has come up with something she calls Unified Muppet Theory and for those of us who love the Muppets (and/or who love personality theories) it's pretty interesting stuff.

She poses that each of us can be classified as either an Order Muppet or a Chaos Muppet, and once we figure out which we are, "it all sorts itself out from there."

Order Muppets are highly regimented, hyper-organized, adverse to surprises and tend to be a bit neurotic. Examples would be Bert, Kermit the Frog and Beaker. At times Order Muppets resent the weight of the world on their shoulders, (think Kermit's "It ain't easy being green...") but they also know they keep the show going and in that they take not so secret pride.    

Chaos Muppets are brilliant, emotional, volatile and often out of control. They are the life of the party, examples being Cookie Monster, Ernie, Grover, Gonzo and Professor Honeydew.

As with all things, in Muppet Theory, balance is the key. Harmony, whether it be in a relationship, a marriage, a family or the workplace comes when there is a blend of Chaos and Order Muppets. Too much order? Things get rigid and stuffy; creativity is lacking, humor, too...Chaos rules? Good luck getting anything done because that's just one hot (even if hilarious) mess.     

For the most part, I'd identify myself as an Order Muppet, all into control, routine, habit, with more than my fair share of neuroses, and no surprises, please! If good marriages are made when opposites attract, that would make Mr. Clark a Chaos Muppet. And, while he is not emotional or volatile, he is often unorganized. He is more brilliant than me. He is always open to an unforeseen adventure or a surprise change in pace. He has also been known to be the life of more than one party.   

Since marriage goes on forever (or so it seems...) there is plenty of time for surprises and twists and turns in the road. After years of keeping order and routine in our home (at least, that's what I thought I did...) I have become the Chaos Muppet who seems to have the attention span of a gnat and can't seem to get anything done, while Mr. Clark has become the Order Muppet who keeps us both on track.

He's taken to determining what we do on weekends, in terms of balancing chores with pleasure. He keeps our ongoing "get the house in order" campaign on track and does the same with the garden and yard. Things I find to be insurmountable (like cleaning never before cleaned closets) he tackles cheerfully and actually gets the job done. All I have to do is take out the bags of trash, deliver a few things to Goodwill and sweep up after him. In classic Chaos Muppet style, I melt down emotionally a few times and yell a bit, while Mr. Clark just keeps whistling, clearing and cleaning. It's a blend of Chaos and Order that would make even the Muppets proud.

I can only hope on down the road we'll swap roles and mix things up again, just to keep things interesting. In the meantime, I'll keep channeling Cookie Monster (with a touch of Miss Piggy thrown in), while Mr. Clark acts like a combination of The Swedish Chef and The Count...Wait a minute! We didn't figure out which type of Muppet Miss Piggy, The Swedish Chef or The Count is.

Maybe Muppets, like people, defy stereotypes or maybe Muppet Theory is more complex than it initially seemed. Is it possible to be Faux Chaos - all crazy, creative on the outside, but hard, rigid and inflexible inside? What about Almost Order, which would be organized and together on the outside, yet also a little nuts? Obviously, there's a lot more work to do on this Unified Muppet Theory...In the meantime, so far, what kind of Muppet are you?

 

learning to ride the rain...

"Worry is a misuse of imagination." - Dan Zadra

Gaining wisdom from a mosquito on a rainy day? That sounds like a stretch, yet it happened to me today. I like listening to NPR and on this rainy morning I heard a piece about how mosquitoes deal with raindrops, which to them are like three ton comets pummeling them from the sky. Needless to say, there's no mosquito umbrella big enough or strong enough to protect them from that, so how do they survive a storm?   

Well, according to a team of mechanical engineers at Georgia Tech, mosquitoes don't dodge raindrops, they ride them. The researchers found this out by firing jets of water at mosquitoes while filming them with super-high-speed video cameras. What happens is the mosquito rides the raindrop until the wind catches its wings, which act like tiny kites and pull the mosquito off the raindrop and back into the wind; then away he or she flies. Apparently, they do this over and over again until the storm ends, with each raindrop ride lasting about 1,000th of a second.

One of the researchers, a man named David Hu, described it as "rather than resisting the raindrop, they basically join together." How Zen is that, especially for a mosquito? I don't know that much about being Zen, but I do know resistance is never part of it.  

This riding the rain business is not without risk, however. If the raindrop is close to the ground when the mosquito hops on and the wind doesn't catch its wings before the raindrop hits the ground, kersplat! Dead mosquito. Of course, the mosquito doesn't know about this risk, so rainstorms must present a series of thrilling rides for those nasty little pests. After all, unlike people, bugs don't worry, right?

This notion of riding the rain rather than resisting it appeals to me and got me thinking about my approach to life's rainstorms, both literal and figurative. I am a worrier whose glass is always half empty. If I were a mosquito, I'd be the only one in the whole swarm buzzing loudly and frantically about how the sky is falling and we're all going to end up smashed on the ground. And, in the process, I'd miss out on all of that lovely rain riding...not much of a life approach for a mosquito or a person, really, when you think about it.  

Since I've always lived life on the gloomy side, I don't give changing my approach much thought. Sure, I admire happy-go-lucky types and people who dance in the rain, but I can't imagine being one. Not until recently, when I started thinking it may be time to change my view.

Maybe it's age - it takes a lot of energy to worry all the time; or maybe it's the beginning of wisdom (another symptom of age.)  Anyway, lately I've grown tired of always looking on the dark side and have been consciously trying to focus, instead, on the light. It turns out, this is easier to do than I imagined it would be.

This notion of positive focus is not new. From Phillipians 4:8 ("Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely or of good report; if there be any virtue, any praise, think on these things") to Oprah and Dr. Phil, the power of positive thinking is a known phenomenon. For some reason, it's just taken me my whole life to try it.

I find that if I empty my mind of the chatter and brain brick-a-brack, breathe, focus, listen and feel, the good stuff just starts flooding in. And, I experience things I never thought I'd spend much time feeling, like calm, contentment, peace, happiness and optimism. (Doing something mindless and repetitive like weeding, vacuuming, jogging or mowing helps, as it seems to keep my brain from going back to tensed-up mode...) This all is a welcome change and so far, I'm impressed with my progress.

Like all changes, this positive attitude thing involves one or two steps forward, then a step or two back, but in general, it's getting easier to focus on the bright side and worry less; and, it turns out, I don't miss worrying at all.

The Story People are some of my favorite philosophers and their take on this is, "I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do." Like those mosquitoes, I may learn to ride raindrops and/or dance in rain yet...

This column appeared in the 6/6/12 edition of the Barrow Journal.