Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Sunshine Through The Rain

Do you ever have those little surprises that make an otherwise lame day totally awesome? I experienced this yesterday, and although it may seem like a simple thing to you, I will never forget it.

To preface my story, I have to say that I am sick, yet again. I know, I think I have the Bubonic Plague or something. This time my symptoms are swollen tonsils the size of Texas which make swallowing as pleasant as chewing on steel wool, the pain spreading up into my ears and continuing on to my head. Oh, and the Bubonic bug seems to have trickled down to my stomach, making for some very unwanted nausea. (Is nausea ever wanted?)

So that was my day yesterday. I dropped Payson off at preschool and knew I had two and a half hours to wallow in my misery before I had to pick him up again. I knew exactly what I was going to do: Take a bath. I only take baths when I am sick and they never fail to make me feel better. But I cannot take a bath without something to read. And I had NOTHING to read. I literally searched my house from top to bottom (read: checked my bookshelf) and still came up dry. I finally went into Macy's room and grabbed one of my favorite chapter books when I was a kid. It was better than nothing. At this point I was thinking, Why, oh why have I not borrowed The Host from anyone yet? Today of all days would be the perfect day to have it. I tried to think and couldn't remember if any of the people I had talked to about it had mentioned owning it. I made a mental note to blog about it later and ask anyone if they had it and if I could borrow it.

Skip ahead two and a half hours later. I am pulling into Miss Molly's driveway and I happen to see a friend pulling out of her driveway just down the road. I thought to myself, she must be going to pick up her Kindergartener. But wait, she's going the wrong direction. She's headed this way. Hmm. She must be going somewhere else. I got out of my car and ran through the pouring rain into Miss Molly's. I was a few minutes early, so I sat on Miss Molly's stairs in her house and watched the kids sing the Finger Song with a perma-grin. (Cutest. Thing. Ever.) It was then that I saw through her front window my friend whom I had seen pull out of her driveway. She was pulling up in front of Miss Molly's house. Odd, I thought, she doesn't have a preschooler here. Maybe she's picking someone else's kid up for them. I went back to listening, expecting her to walk in at any moment. I got distracted by the singing, and other moms walking in, and gathering Payson's things, and forgot about it. I didn't realize that she never walked in.

It wasn't until I walked outside with Payson (still getting soaked) several minutes later and opened my car door to find this laying on my front seat:


It caught me so off guard and made me so ridiculously excited that I literally clapped my hands together quickly and bounced up and down and made some noise that resembled a baby giggling. For anyone who knows me, this is not behavior I normally exhibit. I looked around at the only two moms still standing there, chatting, and was just about to open my mouth to ask which one of them was the bestower of my surprise when, just in time (thank goodness, I would have felt like a complete idiot when they had no idea what I was talking about), it all made sense. It was at that moment I realized my friend had never come inside, and was now gone. I looked over at her house, and there was her car, parked as if it had never left.

At that point the entirety of the kind act sunk in. My friend, either knowing I would be picking up Payson at that exact moment or happening to see me, went out into the rain, drove down the street and back, in the rain, just to give me this book...IN THE RAIN. I was slightly in shock, even to the point of questioning if I was mistaken, if it really was her.

It wasn't until about Chapter 15 that the book jacket slipped enough for me to see her name on the inside cover, clear as a bell (yeah, it hadn't occurred to me before that to actually check for a name on the book). It was in fact her, and I was no longer surprised. She is just the kind of person who would do something like that.

So now I could spend a horrible sick day exactly how horrible sick days should be spent: curled up reading a much-anticipated book. And just like Twilight, I was so skeptical to read it, as it sounded even more sci-fi than the Twilight series, and, just like Twilight, I can't put it down. I read all day and had to force myself to put it down at 2:30 this morning.

So thank you friend, for making my day. Although you are usually silent in the blog world, I'm fairly certain you are reading this right now, and you are awesome!!

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