Life is busting out all over...

One single tulip is in bloom in my back yard.  It was still in a tight bud this morning.  Tomorrow I expect a riot of color back there.  And in case there is any doubt, the stem and leaves are green, the rock is rockish color and the flower is orange!

It is suddenly summer (you don't need to tell me it is still spring, I know that).  In Colorado we tend to have two seasons, winter and summer.  Last week at this time, it was snowing, this week, it is 70º at 8 p.m., the birds are singing, the grass is green, the flowers are in bloom, and life feels like it just might go on - and that we might want it to!

I just had dinner with my oldest sponsee.  She is a wonderful woman who has now been sober 13 years.  She is one of my dearest friends and one of the most important people in my life.  She took me by a house that she fixed and then didn't flip because of the market.  She is renting it.  I last saw this house 2 years ago, and it was an amazing mess - an old man had moved out (actually I think he died).  He had things like a zebra patterned floor in the bathroom - with a chandelier and a hard wired land line phone next to the toilet.   And all those dark, dark colors.  It is now light and beautiful, with wood floors, new paint, new walls, new windows, and a new 1200 square foot garage!  I am so proud of this amazing woman and all that she is.  She has come so far it is absolutely impossible!  

In my own life, there is not one thing I am dreading right now.  I can't tell you how wonderful that feels.  My job is one of deadlines and big deals.  Presentations to give and volumes and volumes to write.  Lately I have not appreciated my job much.  It has felt like a lot of pressure and not much fun.  I really needed to look at it from a different perspective and all of the sick time I have taken in the last month has provided me the opportunity to get that perspective.  I really love my job.  I really love all the writing I get to do. I really love that I sit on committees just to provide my expert knowledge.  I love that people call me to run things by me.  I love that I write and give these presentations.  I love that when the days of intense pressure come, when everyone else is freaking out, I get an unnatural calm about me, like I am just exactly where I am supposed to be and where I want to be - and these are my best days.  

But right now things have slowed.  And I need them to.  I need to rearrange some things so that I can stick around this old planet.  Maybe if I live long enough, I will be just exactly the person I think God wants me to be.  God knows, the years I have had to practice at being a sober woman have taken me so much further than I ever would have dreamed.  

And now I shall go to bed and read for a while before I drift off to sleep.  I am reading "East of Eden" which I am enjoying tremendously.  I thought I had read all of Steinbeck's books, but recently was in a book store and saw this book and realized I had never read it.  What a treat.  It is like finding a forgotten Christmas package.  

Good night everyone...