The last few days my daughter has been feeling the challenge of having to make some difficult decisions about staying in Minneapolis to train (which she would like to do) and going to visit family in California (which she would also like to do) and also spending some time looking at colleges (which she feels she should do). This also comes at a time when she is feeling challenged in her skating. I have been so amazed at how she has been processing the potential complexities and difficulties of her decisions, and I have been grateful that she has been able to articulate her thoughts and emotions around them. In this way, our time together in Minneapolis has been really good for the both of us. In Maybe because it is just the two of us with no friends or much in the way of distraction, and that there's nowhere to hide, makes it so that we just have each other to be with--and to be ourselves with each other. And it's been illuminating and fun.
Today I managed to get my daughter to agree to go downtown with me on the train (it's just a few stops). She has resisted going downtown for any number of reasons, often because it really has been painfully hot almost every single day, with heat advisories, and also because she is often tired from her training and workouts. But today it was only in the mid-80s (hooray!) so we made the pilgrimage downtown with a special goal of visiting what looked like a very cool bakery: Angel Food Bakery.
My daughter insisted (she's very persuasive!) that I try a cupcake (though she didn't because they had no vegan offerings today). It was quite yummy. I even got crazy and had a decaf latte to go with it (let me school you on the dangers of decaf, however). Next we wandered the streets for awhile and perused the very large Farmer's Market. We found a beautiful bouquet of locally grown sunflowers for $5! The combination of flowers in the bouquet makes me quite happy. Here we are together:
I don't know if it's my karma (or my carma--ha!) or the particular energy of this city that manifests some interesting vehicles, but I have been coming across a lot of cars that have caught my attention (see at least three previous blogs and one future one--I staked out the grass-growing car today, so photo to follow soon). This evening as I was leaving the YWCA, I came across this car, with a combination of stickers and figurines. Note the Barbie sunning herself on the bumper.
And here is a close up of a revised bumper sticker I thought was cool. I have often thought this myself!
And finally, though not an unusual car, this bumper sticker has got to make you laugh--particularly (or perhaps only?) if you are a "Gilmore Girls" fan.
I find myself thinking about the many gratitudes I have in just this day alone. Perhaps having had my own version of making some (seemingly) difficult decisions has been less difficult by having so many other experiences and openings--with my daughter, friends, the woman on whose car I painted yesterday, with the woman wearing the coin belt next to me in Zumba class tonight. Perhaps I am having more experiences of living fully each moment (even the painful ones), trusting the process (and myself in it), traveling each day with an open heart, and surrendering the future to the universe.
I guess it really does come down to a bumper sticker motto or two: "Mean People Need Love" and "Oy with the poodles already."
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