June 13 _03 “But God really did bless me, you know? He really said, All right. Come on. I’m still waiting for you. Get over here. Get over here.” Liza Minnelli 

It’s been an interesting few weeks filled with travel, work, life, an anniversary and my annual round of medical tests and doctor visits.  Much of it has been pretty ordinary with a few surprises along the way.  More about those surprises in a bit.

My husband and I celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary this year.  It’s hard to believe it’s really been that long.  He was offshore this year and I took some time to put together a nice post for Facebook that day.  As I scrolled through all the photos I have in digital format, I was struck by how few pictures exist of the two of us.  Especially in the early days of our marriage and there’s nothing from when we dated.  Considering the wealth of images available of my daughter and her husband, we seemed like real slackers.  But as I pondered this, I remembered something very important.  We came from the era of FILM.  You had to buy it, usually fairly inexpensive, but then you had to bring it somewhere (or mail it in) to be developed. Developing was always an expensive proposition and we were pretty poor in those early years.  Nor were our families big picture takers either – once again the expense was problematic.  What little money we did have to spare for those things focused on capturing our children.  The other thing that struck me was just much I change my hairstyle.  I tell people all the time that I am a poor candidate for tattoos because I can’t even settle on a hairstyle for longer than a few months.  I now have visible proof of that fact – at least a twenty year span of photos with no hairstyle the same.  A good many of the comments about the photos were about my ever-changing hairstyles.   I believe it’s mostly because I get bored, but maybe I’m really very vain.  After all, I am a Southern woman.  My husband pretty much looks the same.  After all, he’s a Southern man.

Surprises have been good and not so good.  After eight years with the same company, an incredible opportunity for a new job came knocking on my husband’s door.  Within a week, the deal was done and he’s very excited to start on this new adventure next week.  I am so happy to see him this excited about his work.  After 38 years of work in his field, that really is a rare thing. 

On the not so good side of the coin, there was a bit of unexpected news from all those routine medical tests.  Something was found on my mammogram.  Additional tests this week revealed a “cluster” and a referral to a breast surgeon next week.  Nurse daughter doesn’t like what she’s hearing and baby daughter is outraged that there is “no sense of urgency” from anyone. My granddaughter says it’s time to get busy with Zentangle. I’m taking the view that whatever is there won’t change in the next week and if it is bad, it’s very early stage.  I am choosing to embrace my quote for this week and know that God has blessed me, really he has. 

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