Courtesy of "Where'd you go Bernadette?"
My heart started racing, not the bad kind of heart racing, like, I'm going to die. But the good kind of heart racing, like, Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I'm about to kick the shit out of life.
Courtesy of Friday Night Lights...
Life is so very fragile.
When bad things come, they come suddenly, without warning.
We rarely get to see the catastrophe coming, no matter how well we try to prepare for it.
We do our very best, but sometimes it's just not good enough.
We buckle our seat belts.
We wear a helmet.
We stick to the lighted paths.
We try to be safe.
We try so hard to protect ourselves, but it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. Cause when bad things come, they come out of nowhere. The bad things come suddenly, with no warning.
But we forget that sometimes that's how the good things come too.
During my trip to Ireland last week, I was leaving a great walk at Lough Key and saw a big crowd of sheep while heading back to Carrick-on-Shannon. I'm used to seeing sheep roaming about in a wide open space, but something about this caught my eye.
I did a quick U-turn, even though two of the passengers were on a tight schedule and needed to get dropped off at the train station, as I knew it was something that I wanted to photograph. It was feeding time for these sheep which gave me a great perspective of all their colorful markings while they feasted on some hay.
And as an added bonus, this photo was chosen on 1/4/2013 on GeekSugar's Cool Capture feature.
I've made no secret for my love of Instagram. Even in light of their recent bonehead changes to the terms of service, or whatever the proper legal term is, I'm still a fan.
And a couple of months ago, two guys I was following (who live in Ireland) announced that they were hosting a new contest. They encouraged everyone to Follow @Insta_Galway and to tag five of your best photos to the #insta_galway tag on Instagram.
The rules were very simple:
I've always been surprised at how grief can hit out of nowhere. And just how sharply it can come at you with very little warning.
I was sitting around a table with five other coworkers for lunch earlier today. A coworker brought one dozen mini cupcakes and we were all politely declining the offer to take the leftovers home. My pregnant coworker mentioned her sister-in-law recently brought by a batch of Christmas cookies that she devoured. As such, she didn't trust herself to have a half dozen mini cupcakes in her house.
Instantly I was transported back to 22 Winter Street. I could vividly picture one or two days before Christmas when Dr. Eastman would walk over with a platter of Christmas cookies his wife Connie would bake every year. We weren't allowed to eat them. Instead, the expectation was that whoever answered the door brought them right into my father, who was usually set-up in the TV room. He would pick through them thoroughly until all the good ones were gone.
With crumbs and powdered sugar and who knows what else all over his face, my father would take the "bad" cookies and bring them out into the kitchen. And. When no one was looking, he'd put any leftovers that he liked in his secret hiding spot. We never tasted most of the cookies and I can hardly remember which ones my Dad liked so much (Meghan probably knows). Yet I remembered most of the details surrounding Connie Eastman's Christmas cookies like it was yesterday. And as I sat at the lunch table while the conversation continued around me, all I could think was "Do not cry at this table."
My dad was so funny- even if he was maddening (and selfish). And I'm grateful to have these kind of memories that make me smile and shake my head when I think of them. Even if the grief and sadness make it difficult to breathe and remind me just how much I miss this man's strong presence in my life.
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