Five things in five minutes

Let’s see.  What can I tell you?

1)  I figured out and filed our taxes all by myself this year for the first time in many years.  I used Turbo Tax and a friend of ours reviewed the forms before I hit “submit” and sent them off.  I tell you this so you feel my pain over spending two whole Saturdays finding the paperwork and then filling in the forms.  Also?  I still have piles of tax-related papers on my desk.

2)  Several weekends ago, I went to a Storyline Conference featuring Donald Miller.  I met a high school English teacher from Los Angeles who happened to have the same breed of dog that I do (which is relatively uncommon) and the exact same business card design.  So it was excellent to hang out with a new friend.  Donald Miller turned out to be an interesting speaker, amusing and engaging.  (Better than I expected, actually.)  The second day, I met a different new friend in the cafeteria line (an aspiring actress and screenwriter) and we’d put our things down on a table to save ourselves spaces.  I was also saving a space for my new school teacher friend.

When we came back to the table with our food, there were several other people at the table (designed to seat six) which would have been fine, except they took the space I’d saved for the school teacher.  I was trying my best not to be annoyed, smiling tightly and assuring them it was fine, just fine.  Then one of the ladies waved her hand toward the other older lady and said, “That’s Donald Miller’s mother!”  I looked at her as if I didn’t speak English and said, “I’m sorry?”  And she repeated it.  “That’s Donald Miller’s mother!”

And that’s how I ended up sitting at Donald Miller’s mother’s table with his mother and two aunts and their friends, all from Texas.  (Favorite quote from his mother:  “We’re from the Bible Belt.  We shock easy.”)

3)  Why does Easter always sneak up on me?  Just a few weeks and it’s here.  Somewhere I have bunnies and eggs and decorations.

4)  We went to see the sunset last night, me and my daughter.  The others refused to leave the house.  I can’t understand why you would give up the chance to see the sunset at the beach–considering that each sunset only happens ONE TIME.  But whatever.  As soon as we started down the road, I saw a huge bank of clouds squatting over the horizon.  As we drove closer, the fog rolled in.  We nearly turned back but decided even a cloudy beach was worth visiting.

We parked and saw that a narrow strip of sky along the horizon glowed.  And so we were able to see the sunset.  I would post a photo but . . . the photos are on my phone and I’m so tired, too tired to transfer them tonight.

5)  I ran out of ideas.  So there is no five.

Goodnight.