Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Staying UP

I saw UP with my children recently. I just loved it - I it was a lovely reminder to hang onto dreams loosely, since they come true in their own time. I like stories about not letting life get you down. And crotchety old men with soft hearts. Stories about them, that is. Not the men specifically.

I've been a little crotchety myself lately. Cottonwood is flying on my Chitown block, coating my walkways and dog with its insidious downy fluff. I used to think it was charming, likening it to manna, the biblical foodstuff that nourished the Israelites in the desert. Over the last few days I've hauled several omers of cottonwood fluff into yard waste bags. It's not my custom to employ Talmudic units of measurment, but keeping my mind on the Biblical story has kept me, thus far, from hiring someone to gouge the tree in the middle of the night like Daley did to Meigs Field. Just this morning while walking the dog I was entertaining a diabolical scheme to destroy the dread arbor when - and I am NOT making this up - I was approached by a perky Greenpeace volunteer who asked me if had a minute - just a minute - to save some trees.

And there I had it - a call to gratitude and a reminder that unless I want to become a curmudgeon I should not think like one. Within minutes I had something else to be happy for...the City was out delivering blue bins in the hood today, meaning the arrival of my recycling bin is nigh. No more driving piles of recycling to the blue dumpster! Wahoo.

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