Picture This: The Same Only Next Year

To say, “I guess so,” sounds like I had no goals a year ago or that I’m so stuck in repetition that I can’t imagine life being different in a year.

But, yeah, I guess so. I pictured more of the same.

I like my life.

I like going to the local diner by myself for the same breakfast I’ve ordered for twenty years – vegetarian omelet with feta cheese and gyro sauce. Yes to the hashbrowns and no to the fruit. Sourdough toast and endless coffee.

I like reading a new story – called Fish Girl – to my Red Oak Writing group and having them handle it gently like the baby it is.

I like going to Street Angels to help with meal prep for tonight’s outreach and splashing a ton of pork gravy on my sweater trying to get 250 pork chops into little containers using a pair of plastic tongs that kept popping out of my plastic-gloved hand.

And on that note, I like rolling and labeling men’s underwear for Street Angels with three other women who know how to crack jokes and keep it moving.

I like going around the block with the old man in his walker so he can exercise his new bionic knee, and the dogs can do some serious sniffing and, in Tempest’s case, some street snacking (as we are now calling it).

I like dogs sniffing my pork-splashed sweater and licking the hand that just held a bunch of cashews and a cat invading my space while I try to write this blog.

I like it that it’s going to snow and that I just realized I have Christmas cards in the attic that I could be sending to some folks I really like.

I love it that I’m going to make oatmeal cookies tonight and watch the Bucks win whatever the name of the tournament is they’re in tonight.

I like it that someone brought us an enormous amount of homemade spaghetti that we could, conceivably, live off until the New Year.

I never pictured any of this. Never thought about it. Just figured the beat would go on and, so far, it has.