Four-year-olds get it.

If you ask Meredith how our dog, Lincoln, died, she will tell you that he ate a bee.
(He died from a tumor in his spleen.)

If you ask her how her grampa died, she will tell you that aliens came down in a space ship and scared him to death.
(He had a heart attack.)

I would like to be able to believe how she believes.

Big News

I finally got a new job. It's with the school district, so the benefits are great and the pay is bad, and I'm super excited because I get to be all organizey and creative and I will probably even get to write some.

Pie

So. That pie in the face from the universe? Yeah.

When I got to work that day and checked in on all my stalking social media sites, there was a Facebook post from an old high school friend about a job at his company. I jumped on it. At first it seemed like it was going to be the solution to all my problems, but now it seems to have fizzled out. F-word.

But something life-changing did happen to me that day. Have you heard about Levi's and how they have this new "Curve ID" system with their jeans for people like me, who have smallish waists and biggish bums whose jeans always gap at the waist, or just plain slide off?  I was curious, if a bit skeptical, so I went to the Levi's store at the Mall of America that night to try some on. And you guys, these jeans are my butt's holy grail. The "bold curve" fits my waist and my hips. And they come in different inseams too. So they fit my waist and my hips and my short legs! I swear to Garp, this has never happened before.

So yeah. My life changed on that day.  I now own two pairs of jeans that fit me. Not quite the change I was hoping for, but better than a sharp stick in the eye.

All those other things? I still don't know.

The Message

I haven't been around here much lately. Well, I've been here, but my mind has been elsewhere. (I love that word: elsewhere. It's right up there with nevertheless. ) Worrying about Stella and Kelly, getting the kids ready for school, job hunting and feeling sorry for myself seem to be occupying all my brain space these days. I've been in a funk. Anxious about finding a job before my health benefits run out, wondering where to put the money I'm going to get soon, sure I'm going to make the wrong decision. My brain's tied up in knots.

So this morning, I dropped the kids off at their dad's for the weekend and as I was driving away this song was playing on the radio.


This is one of those songs that, when you hear it by chance, you're supposed to stop and look around you and see what kind of message the universe is sending you. And pay attention. And then act.

So I'm sitting at the light on a ridge looking out over the valley - at Valleyfair, it always seems like Brigadoon on foggy mornings like this, an amusement park, shrouded in mist, appears before you from another world - and the kind of car that I've been thinking about buying with some of the money turns in toward me from the left. Is this what the universe is trying to tell me? I should go ahead and buy this car? It's got all wheel drive and would be safer in the winter, and the automatic transmission would make my torturous daily commute a little less painful. (What kind of an idiot buys a stick shift car when they spend two hours a day in stop and go traffic on a four lane highway? This kind, right here.)

Or maybe I'm being given a sign that one of the jobs I applied for this week is going to work out. Maybe I'll get the call today. So I'm sticking with that thought as the light turns green and I pull out onto Flying Cloud Drive, which would be such a nice name for a road if I didn't have to drive on it so early every morning, when a garbage truck roars past and cuts me off. I pull into the other lane, still meditating on what message I'm being sent.

Suddenly, a piece of garbage flies off the top of the truck and whirls toward me. I flinch, it's round and metallic - am I about to be beheaded by a hurling hub cap? No time to react, I hold my breath, watching as it whips in the wind and shoots straight for my windshield - SPLAT. It is a pie tin. Pie residue spatters across my car and I realize as I exhale and turn on the wipers that the universe just got my attention and then threw a pie in my face.