Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs

This is a post in which I once again prove that I am the luckiest woman on the planet.

No. Seriously.

Yesterday, I had a Migraine of Epic Proportions when I woke up. So I took my medication, which makes me loopy. (Oh, gosh, you people are a TOUGH crowd. OKAY. Loopy-ER. Loopier. There now, satisfied?) Only, I couldn't shake the damn thing, not totally.

But it's my parents' first visit to Long Island and I wanted to show them around a little. So, when my head finally stopped threatening to make me throw up, we set out to drive through a shore town and then we stopped to have lunch at a lovely little restaurant on the beach. Then my parents took a short walk while I, ever gimpy, sat on a bench. I took some pictures of the beach and then took out my knitting and sat and knitted for a while.

Gosh, I felt terrible. Later that afternoon, after I'd napped a little and gotten the girls from school, I noticed that I also looked just terrible. I've said before that I have Mood Hair and in this case, the mood was grim. So, on a whim I stuck in a few hot rollers and put some make-up on. When I took the rollers out, I looked JUST like Mary Tyler Moore in her Dick Van Dyke Show, Laura Petrie phase. It was so funny that I came downstairs to show Ana and I asked her if she'd take a picture of me for the blog--because I am always willing to make a total fool of myself for your amusement. (I'm very giving that way.)

Only, we couldn't find my camera.

I panicked. There are few things I love as much as my camera, you know. It's the only real THING on my Joy Rush list. (Well, okay, besides the Claudia Handpainted sock yarn. Just work with me, People.) I tore apart my car and house and concluded that I must have left it on that bench at the beach.

And if I did, it was gone, gone, gone.

I called the restaurant but no one had turned it in (the guy told me a great and comforting (not) story about how his son had a camera stolen off of his shoulder in an airport once. He asked if it was a good camera. I said, "Yes."

In despair.

So I took a little trip back out to the beach just to look for myself.

The whole way out there I was thinking about how I could possibly replace the camera if it was gone. And I was thinking about how if I found it, it would be a sign that everything was going to be okay--that our house in Austin would sell (after the repairs have finally been completed which has to happen SOME day, right?) and the kids would find new best friends here in New York and my husband would be fabulously successful in his new job and how my book would find its way into the hands of a publisher who would love it and want to publish it and... oh yeah, my camera.

I approached the bench where I had sat and there was a woman sitting there who smiled when I got near. "Are you looking for your camera?"

Hope began to dawn in me. And sure enough, there was my camera. Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!! THERE WAS MY CAMERA, sitting on a public bench at the beach where I had left it some five hours before.

"Is this a great neighborhood or what?" said the woman.

On the way home, this song came on.

(Sorry for the annoying handclaps which were, hello, RUSHING--not that I'm a bothered by a little thing like that.)

Dudes. I live such a charmed life.