Never give up

This is beautiful morning. Everything is going right.

I woke at six because I just couldn't sleep. Don't remember the dreams, but I felt a sense of urgency even though no place I need to go today was open at that hour. Bathroom, throw on a long T-shirt and check my email, all the time deciding whether or not to buy a new multifunction printer since my HP died. I checked online for deals and steals and found quite a few, but as my finger hovered over the enter button I hesitated--a lot. I checked more places, more sites, and even went to some auctions to find even better deals with add-ons, but as my finger hovered over the button I couldn't bring myself to send my money and my request into the cyber ether. What if I could fix the ailing HP? I closed the browser and went to the HP's side and took it apart.

Lo and behold, there was something wrong and it was a simple fix. Getting my tweezers, I removed a sticky label stuck in the gears of the paper feeder. One tiny piece eluded me because my tweezers didn't bend (they are after all for eyebrows) and weren't long enough, but just maybe... I fed in a sheet of paper, stuck a book on the copier bed, pressed copy, OK, and start and held my breath. It worked. The gears didn't clash and grind. The paper fed through and disappeared. Message said: out of paper. But where did it go? I looked around and noticed a clean sheet of paper on the floor. I forgot to put on the back of the machine. One more time into the breach.

Paper in the feeder, hit copy, OK, and start and . . . wonder of wonders I heard the printer element sliding over and over the sheet as the paper emerged from the bowels of the machine with . . . an image on it. It worked. I got my laptop, hooked up the USB, and got down to the business of printing everything I had held over the past month. I'd meet my deadlines and I didn't need to buy another multifunction printer.

However, I am still going to spring for the flash drive. It will save me so much time when it comes to getting minutes from the club secretary who waits until the last minute. Maybe I can even convince the president to write his monthly column by the date of the board meeting and kill three birds with geek fix. Anything is possible right now.

I have been sad and frustrated for about a month since my printer died, especially since some publications refuse to take articles and stories by email. I received a much needed and anxiously awaited substantial payment for my writing yesterday and paid up all pending accounts, with a little left over for a new printer, I had waffled about actually spending the money. A friend offered to give me a printer but I just didn't want to let go of the HP. It was a Yule gift to myself four years ago when I moved up to the cabin, bought with an unexpected windfall, that made my life so much easier, and it has helped out friends and neighbors when they needed copies or to fax something.

I haven't scanned anything recently, but I've decided to make use of all my resurrected machine's functions. I have a lot of clips to document and store. Now I can even afford to buy that DVD burner I've been eyeing for so long. Life is good, especially when I'm going to get paid for an article that will be received well ahead of deadline. Life is very good.

That is all. Disperse.

Just breathe

The greens are brilliant this morning and the sky a perfect Colorado blue. Sunshine lightens everything and shows up the rain-washed clean, warming the lilacs and spreading their scent everywhere while the breeze wafts it through the open windows. It's cold but not a sharp, bitter cold, rather a blunt-edged cold that hints at the warmth to come.

Time moves so quickly, the soft yellow-greens swelling to the brilliant growing green that will soon darken in the sun to a deep verdant green like sun-dappled pools where light is a stray fiery diamond shaft softened by its passage through the heavy canopy of the forest. This is one of my favorite times of year, when the air is soft and fragrant with new growth before the blaze of the relentless summer sun sears away the fragrance of earth and bursting seeds and spring petals that emerges only when rain releases what hides from the sun's brazen glare.

A few months after I moved here, I got caught in the rain. As I passed a towering full-figured pine in the middle of a parking lot, I caught the scent of spicy green. I stood and just breathed, surprised and pleased. As the sun burned away the clouds, the scent faded, going back into hiding until the rain would bring it out again.

There are moments like those, surprising moments when a sound or a scent or a flash of color, movement or light, remind me what a wonderful life I have. Some days, when the work seems endless and I've been hard at it until my eyes burn and a sharp pain bores relentlessly into my head, I'll catch a glimpse of a bird with scarlet feathers warbling on a branch in the squirrel porn tree in front of my desk or see the tarball twins--most likely the offspring of the female black squirrel that disappeared last fall--tumbling and carousing along slender branches or see birds and squirrels dining together at the now open all you can eat gutter buffet next door, and I am reminded there is something in life other than work . This is one of those days, a gift that makes me want to just breathe and enjoy the flowering wealth of earth, air and sky before I turn back to the necessity of work.

It isn't as though the days aren't full of these moments--every moment holds the same promise--but rather that I get so wrapped up in what I must do that I forget to pause and just breathe. I need these reminders and I'm glad they land in my trees or whisper through the open windows to catch my attention. Those moments are my little vacations, moments that make it easier to survive the seemingly endless working hours and just breathe.