When things just work out...

With a new diagnosis of a supposedly severe illness, I've spent quite a bit of time rescheduling things.

I say supposedly because I haven't felt all that bad...don't have high fevers at all, and am not needing to sleep much. I admit that I get tired around 8 pm, and am soon lost to the world for 11 hours. I'm still up before it's light outside.

Anyway the things that came together on Tues were about a dental appointment. I waited till 8:01 am to call the dental clinic which I go to in Asheville. I was aware that driving down the valley might be pushing my current condition, but at the last minute decided that anyone on antibiotics (me) needed to not be breathing on other people, no matter how good I felt.

As I was finally connected to the right people and I asked to reschedule, and was put on hold, my phone rang. It was the dental assistant calling me. So I put the first call on hold...a double hold if you will. And the second caller was calling me to reschedule because the dentist wouldn't be in today. 

Whoopee. We talked briefly about my broken part of a bridge that needed attention and she explained that the porcelain part that apparently broke off can't have anything added to it. But I still wanted to see the dentist - at least the bridge wasn't loose. She said she'd call right back. I said goodbye and hung up on her call, then hung up on the "on hold" call, who had been sitting right next to her call!

I'm so proud of finally being adept with my iPhone. Isn't it strange that we still call it "hanging up?"

Anyway, she called back soon and did have another time slot, in a week. So I'll be all better by then  (hopefully!) And maybe I'll just have to get used to this new configuration on my bridge. I am trying very hard not to chew on that side! It's amazingly hard to pay attention to my chewing.

A good friend came over last time I was sick with shingles, and helped by washing and drying all my dishes. (Yes, new topic.)  She then put things away. Later in that week, I gave all the pottery which I'd donated to an auction to another friend, who was willing to distribute it to those who had bought it. It took several more weeks, and then she called to say one bowl didn't seem to be there, did I still have it?

"Nope," I answered, and looked high and low for it. So I thought about donating something else so the person who bought it would at least have something I'd made. I didn't have any more of that hand painted design.

And then last night I found the bowl, where it had been tucked inside other bowls on the top shelf...all this time. It must have needed to be washed, and my friend didn't know it was different than all the other bowls. My technique of stacking bowls is to put all big bowls in one stack, and then medium ones in their own stack, and little bowls, etc.

But my dear volunteer just stacked big bowls on the bottom, then medium bowls then small bowls into this one stack, so I hadn't even looked at it for weeks, until I took the stack down and found the missing bowl in it.

I called my friend who had been distributing the pottery for me. Now she and her husband have the flu. So I'm giving the bowl to the man who ran the auction, and he'll get it somehow to whoever bought it. 

Just some silly variations of it all coming together. 

And here's a beautiful little quote by a man I've admired for years.

We are the children of this beautiful planet that we have lately seen photographed from the moon.  

We are not delivered into it by some god, but have come forth from it.

We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking. 

And the earth, together with its sun, this light around which it flies like a moth, came forth, we are told, from a nebula; and that nebula, in turn, from space.

So that we are the mind, ultimately, of space …


—Joseph Campbell
Myths to Live By