Well started off the morning getting stuck in one of Chief’s sweatshirts. Was going to wear it over my shirt like a coat to walk Penelope. Still can’t figure how I almost suffocated myself. The front and back kinda got reversed. Tried to put my head through the neck and both the front and back of the sweatshirt came through the neck, too . Wasn’t as bad as getting stuck in the meerkat pose with the sports bra, though. Anyway…that kinda set the tone for the day.

I decided I would not lose to my cell phone today. I meant I was not going to ask Stew to help me find it again. Gonna carry the phone around in my bluejeans pocket! Several hours later I hear the phone ringing in the lady den. I had been walking around with the tv remote in my pocket! Honestly…

The day drags on in its cloudy dreariness. I decided I’d put my two big ferns out on the sidewalk so they could enjoy the rain. It was pouring down rain but soon as I put the second one down on the sidewalk the rain stopped! All that trouble to get them outside, the sweeping in the house, the leaf blowing on the porch to get rid of dead leaves. Jeez!

Back in the lady den I decided to watch some Bonanza episodes I had recorded. Well, Bonanza made me cry! Seriously! When Hoss goes to San Fransisco to find his Margie, who had jilted him for a con man, he finds her on the death bed with a baby daughter. When she dies and Hoss’s eyes fill with tears I start crying. Now I am having a Chief moment.

My cousin calls, she been a member of the widow’s club since August, and I can hear the held back tears as we talk. She asks, “Do you still cry?” “Yes, I say,” with held back tears in my voice, too. She loved her husband as I did Chief. She’s still stumbling down the different path of her life without him. I’m still stumbling too, but I think of the quote, “Grief is the last act of love we have to give those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was great love.”

After the phone call, I’m sitting in the lady den pondering my life and the doorbell rings. I open the door and in walks a ray of sunshine carrying a box of Gigi cupcakes! My dearest friend had come to get her purse. She didn’t know what a shot of medicine her visit and those cupcakes did for my day!

Jonathan Safran Foer wrote, “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

Life has so many twists and turns and doesn’t stop for anybody but there is always a tomorrow! The day may be cloudy but the sun will eventually shine. As I’ve written before, you can be sad but don’t live sadly.