Back To Work

Way to make my friends at home envious. Ah, winter in Florida!

Surfer Boy and I are back from our one-week vacation in Florida, and it was heavenly.

We spent the week eating, singing karaoke, riding bicycles under the warm Florida sun and binge-watching Who The Bleep Did I Marry? which is a train wreck of a true crime show.

Every year my family binge watches one show or another.

One year it was Seinfeld, another year it was The Office, then Fixer Upper, Bates Motel and this year,  Who The Bleep Did I Marry?

You may think Who The Bleep Did I Marry? would give you nightmares, but with my family, it's actually more of a comedy fest.

I mean, how can you not laugh at a woman who attempted to kill her husband five times and failed every time?

Especially funny was her three by five index card on which she'd scrawled "Ricin Recipe" at the top as though instead of a deadly poison it was her aunt's coveted Tic Tac Pie recipe.

She didn't make the poison strong enough, so all it did was put her husband to sleep at which point she tried to shoot (at point blank range!) him but missed.

I gotta tell you, there are some fantastic story ideas there for my thrillers.

When we arrived back in California, the first thing that happened was we received a text stating that our luggage was on another plane.

"This will be a great opportunity to practice the art of allowing," thought I.

I've been studying a course entitled Living From a Place of Surrender, and it's one of the most mind-blowing studies on living a happy life I've encountered.

One of the tenets of the course is the fact that much of our unhappiness stems from trying to control outside forces.

The fact that my suitcase was circling the sky in parts unknown was definitely out of my control.

We made our way to the airport help desk where the helpful young woman advised us that our suitcases would be delivered to our home somewhere around one in the morning.

Okay fine. I can hear you saying, "What's so important in that suitcase that you can't live one night without?

My night guard.

I clench my jaw at night and haven't slept without my night guard for twenty years.

So how did I do with my moment of surrender?

I went to bed and then spent the next several hours waking up at intervals to see if our suitcases were on the front porch.

Finally, just as promised, around one thirty there they were.

I stood on the freezing cold porch (completely naked) and decided to throw on some sweatpants and a T-shirt lest I give those late-night revelers a peep show.

You'll be happy to know that I successfully retrieved my night guard, but with all the interruptions I did not sleep well that night.

Surrender?

Back to the drawing board.