When Life Happens

Lemons, baseball, and other analogies. I learned to make lemonade a very long time ago, and it's really a good thing I did, because life has handed me a lot of lemons over the years. I've always been a glass-half-full kinda gal, anyway. Indomitable spirit and all that (thank You, LORD).

There have been times, however, when life has piled a rotten bunch of lemons on me so mountainous that it's been a little harder to claw my way back to the top. Hence my absence from the blogiverse these past 13 months.

I was about as close to the bottom of the ninth, three men on, two men out and full count as a person could get. No, I didn't hit a grand slam. By the grace of God, that last pitch came in "juuuust a bit outside" and I've been walking toward home ever since.

I know, the analogies are corny. It's kinda my thing.

Coming home. The BFF stopped through on her way home from vacation this past weekend, and I was giving her a tour of the house as it looks now--different by far from when she was last here--and standing in the middle of my newly rearranged study she asked, "Are you writing at all?"

"Some," I said. "Some." She simply nodded and we continued the tour. That was pretty much the last push to step on home plate that I needed.

She is like home to me; we've been friends since we were nine years old (I'm not going to say how long that's been; trust me, it's a long time), brought together by one fortuitous relocation. We became friends because we were the only girls our age on our end of the block, the fact that we moved in next door to her family notwithstanding. We stayed friends because we clicked in a way only lifelong best friends can. To me, she will always represent a sense of "home". Yes, the WGH and our fabulous offspring (plus one, now--more on him later) are HOME to me. No question. But it's a different kind of home. The BFF and I share more history, more memories, more laughter, more tears, more life than I have with anyone else, and she will always, always be that to me.

Now, I said all that mushy stuff to say this. I realized as I waved good-bye to her and her hubby as they headed out of our driveway yesterday morning that her question should've been answered with a resounding YES. So I asked myself why it wasn't. And of course the answer, as it usually does, came crashing down on my head like one of the bricks God likes to throw my way on occasion. It's me. It's always been me. I'm the one holding myself back. Not life. Not my mother's death, not the birth of our first grandchild, not even my switch back from part-time day job to full-time day job. Just li'l ol' me. Simple, right? My good friend slash sister from another mister (you know who I'm talking about) has been telling me this for years. YEARS. And I know she's still thinking that, only she's much too invested, kind and supportive to keep rehashing it. She's there still, right behind me--still supportive, still kind, still invested, but she has taken a tiny step back and left me to figure things out on my own, for which she will never fully appreciate how grateful I am.

The aforementioned life things. The Boy and his lovely Lady blessed us with our first grandchild last June, and I am smitten. Many friends who have been there forewarned me that there's nothing else like being a grandparent, but I never fully understood what they meant until that precious boy wrapped his tiny fist around my thumb (and subsequently my heart) on the day he was born. I have a renewed sense now of how sweet life truly is, and of how much I should be enjoying the time that God allows me to remain on this earth, each and every day.

Less than a month after Number One Grandson came along, we suffered a loss in our fur-baby family that I'm still reeling from a little bit. Our little gentleman, Merlot, developed diabetes and what we surmise was a pancreatic tumor of some sort, and we had to make that very tough decision that all pet parents must make at one time or another. I was completely heartbroken. Mimosa has done her level best to fill the hole, but she missed him for quite some time herself.

Last but not least, in the spring last year, one of my sweetest and dearest friends from work, whose husband serves our country in the (best darn) military (on the planet), left for parts across the pond via said hubby's transfer, and I was given the opportunity to step into her position. Not something I had planned to do, but as we all are aware God has His own inimitable way of working things out (see Rom. 8:28). I love this job. Love learning new things. Love the extra stimulation my brain is gleaning from it. And I have Tuesdays off, hence the return to the blogiverse this morning. (See what I did there?)

The long overdue book report. So, one of the things I noticed, much to my chagrin (vocabulary word of the day), when I returned to the blog was that I never posted my A+ books from 2016. Shame on me, in triplicate. I'm still reading, of course, never stopped, never will, but how I managed to keep myself away from shouting about it, I'll never know. So, without further ado, there were four books that made the topmost grade that year, and here they are, finally, in no particular order ('cause, ya know, they all got an A+):

• The Cuckoo's Calling, Robert Galbraith
• No One Knows, J.T. Ellison
• The Dollhouse, Fiona Davis
• The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

As most of you know, Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym used by JK Rowling when she ventured past Harry Potter and The Casual Vacancy (no, that's not the ninth book) to write a smashing (yes I said smashing, by Jove) detective novel featuring a very flawed but wholly likeable Cormoran Strike. The rest of the series is on my to-be-purchased list. Really, really great stuff.

J.T.'s book is not on my list just because she's what she is to me. No, it's on the list because it's just so. Freaking. Good. Read it.

And then come back to thank me.

The Davis book was a selection of the book club I was involved with just briefly at the end of 2016-beginning of 2017, and I found it quite entertaining and well written, with a good story at its heart. Type "the dollhouse" into Google, and eight of the first ten hits are about this book. Based on history, embellished in fiction, and thoroughly readable.

Finally, oh my goodness The Girl on the Train. I bought the book because I knew at some point we were going to see the movie, and I wanted a basis for comparison. While the movie was really good, the book was really great. It had a lot of press, praise and hoopla, and all the positives were well placed. Read that one too.

Read all of them. Seriously.

So here I am again. I hope to continue on this upward slope I've started to climb. And I hope you'll climb with me.

In the meantime, read a book. It's good for you.