Simply Over

For the past year or so, Dayle at the wonderful blog, A Collection of This and That has opened her blog door every Thursday and invited the world to celebrate the simple pleasures. 

It has been grand.

She challenged us to stop and record the moments that stopped our hearts, to note the things that whispered our names above the noise and said, "Enjoy me, Debbie. I'll be gone in a flash."

I remember the inspiration for Dayle's party. Do you know what it was? It was the simple sight of her twin sister's laughter. Simple laughter... something so small and so common that it can far too easily be taken for granted, as if we will always have those moments,
                 and always have the laughter,
                                     and always have the sister.

We won't.

Dayle noticed that. And because she noticed, she invited us to notice too. Week after week, we gathered at her place for our day of virtual show and tell.

 Mine was always a little heavy on the telling part.

In the year following, I was a pretty regular attender, often dragging Sir Lotsa Hair along with me. He is, after all, my perpetual pleasure.  I brought his rainbow, and his love notes, and his rendezvous.

On my own, I brought everything from 

Bible study to the blue hour...

Calls from the daughters...

The contents from an old box...

Simple treasures, really, and I wonder how many of them would have gone unrecorded in this little blog of mine had a woman named Dayle not stopped to noticed her sister's laughter that day.

Unfortunately, my simple pleasure posts have been rather scarce these days. There's a reason for that, and it's more than just the physical giants I have been battling. It's that those giants, coupled with some rolls in the game of Life, have left me holding a cup half empty.

Oh, I've tried to find the pleasures. I've even noticed them. But when I tried to sit down and put wheels to the words, they just wouldn't spin.

I would think, "Maybe next week..."

Then I relearned that age old lesson about opportunity. Just like a simple pleasure, it's prone to fleeting. There won't be a next week this time. In fact, there won't even be a this week. The simple pleasures party has run its course.

Yeah, I know... Parties don't last forever.

Neither do bloggers.  Am I the only one who gets a pang of sadness when a favorite blogger closes shop?  Some do it conspicuously with a farewell post. Others  just do it gradually and quietly and sort of fade away. And then, there are ones who are blogging one day and gone the next, as if they blogged themselves into the Bermuda Triangle.

I always wish that I had said good-bye before they sailed away and thanked them when I had the chance. Opening your heart and home is a big step, after all.

So today,  I thank you Dayle, from the bottom of my heart, for opening your blog home every Thursday for our little game of show and tell.  I have met some of my favorite bloggers at that party, and I mean it very sincerely when I say that your challenge changed my life for the better.

And that's why I'm going to continue to write  try to write about my simple pleasures, even without a party. In this upside down  crazy world I live in, I need to remind myself that, "... it is the sweet, simple things in life that are the real ones after all."