Thought for Today

It's easy to get sucked into your problems, 

but in reality most things are fixable and/or just passing bumps in the road.  

 I learned this lesson back in 1978 while teaching 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade in a 2-room schoolhouse in Supai, on the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  (Havasupai translates to People of the Blue Green Water, and Supai is often referred to as The Shangri-La of the Grand Canyon.)

 To say it's an out-of-the-way spot is the classic understatement!  It was an 8-mile horseback ride to Hilltop (Hi, Richie - can you see me waving from there?) where we parked our vehicles and horses, and then a 60-mile drive on a dirt to blacktop track to the 'highway' (old Route 66), and then still 30 miles to the nearest town (not much more than a wide spot in the road.)  For those of you who have difficulty with math, that's 180 miles roundtrip to/from the nearest gas station.  So you can see I'd be a little stranded without a vehicle.  My Suburban needed to be fixed, and a mechanic friend in Flagstaff of my then-boyfriend was going to do it.  The mechanic said he needed the cash up front to buy the parts - sounded plausible to me - but he spent it on drugs instead.  So I was back to square one, with no vehicle and out my $.

 Things on a 2nd repair try arranged by the boyfriend went better (so I heard) but when they took it out for a test drive it slid off the road (December in Flagstaff is serious Winter).  Not an insurmountable problem in itself, but when they went to winch it out the winch broke and my newly fixed vehicle went crashing down the slope.  When I heard the news I was bummed (no surprise) and felt sorry for myself, and said, "What else can go wrong?"  BIG MISTAKE! DON'T EVER, EVER, EVER TEMPT FATE WITH THOSE WORDS!!!

Seriously bummed, I did what anyone would do - as soon as Christmas Vacation arrived I hopped on a plane (see how easy I made that sound?) and flew home to visit Mom and Dad in Maryland.  To make a long story short, my brother was quite ill.  A trip to the ER had ruled out meningitis (that was the good news my folks greeted me with upon my arrival Friday) but it turned out to be something much worse. Monday we took Andy back to the ER, where he was promptly admitted to ICU - and the next day we were told he would not live another 24 hours!  It's a very long story, but the bottom line is that there's a happy ending! Andy is still very much with us these days, though he did spend almost a year in the hospital on the rehab ward (oh the stories I could tell) once he was finally sprung from ICU 6 weeks later.  Moral of the story?   NEVER tempt fate by uttering those words...in fact it's probably a good idea to not even think them!

Happier times - Andy and Lisa on the family cruise, summer of 2009.