luck

Well, it was going to be a rerun of Monday! Light snow, a frozen car, a morning appointment. This time, I did leave the farmhouse quickly, right after breakfast...





...but halfway to town, I realize that I'd forgotten my folder of papers -- those very papers that I spent a whole afternoon preparing -- for my employer, for the State Bar, all ready to be filed right after my appointment, except that they were on the kitchen counter and not with me, where they should be!

I turn around to get them and now I am again rushing like mad not to be late.

Except, here's the thing: all the lights begin to be in my favor. I approach one -- green! Another -- same! And so on.

My appointment is at UW Hospitals and Clinics -- the place where there is always a long search for parking. Not this time. Someone pulls out, leaving me a space to pull in. And so I am actually, miraculously, on time.

Getting this appointment is a piece of luck as well. A scan of a lung on Monday sent my doc into a tizzy. A spot. With a possible diagnosis of hystoplasmosis -- something that we Midwesterners can readily get by working in the soil or with farm birds. I surely qualify. I spend the summers digging up the farmette! My doc insists I see a lung specialist before taking off into the hinterlands next week. Miraculously they have an opening today.

And the specialists that I see are the type that will sit down with you and address every concern you may have in the most sincere and compassionate way. And they tell you that the scan was read by a superb radiologist who - how lucky is that! - really knows hystoplasmosis when he sees it. (Because otherwise, one would worry that it's something much much worse.)

Because I am in good health, I need no treatment. Just a recheck to make sure all is fine down the road and that the diagnosis is a correct one.

Of course, the fact that I get a good medical outcome isn't really a matter of today's luck. That's more a matter of being born into one family rather than another, with a bunch of other lucky and deliberate events that build on that particular good fortune. But the fact that on this day I could see such wonderful, caring doctors is, I think, sheer luck.

And then, flying, flying as a result of my overall good fortune, I park briefly by the Law School to deliver some papers and I do not get ticketed! And then I park even more briefly by the Union to pick up discount Union member bus tickets for our trip Monday and again I get no parking ticket! And one more time -- I park by the State Bar Examiners office downtown and I would have paid the meter but I had no coins and again -- no ticket!

These are small details of course. And on other days, you feel that you get shot down at every turn. I have to remember then that there are days like today when surely you'll agree -- luck is riding along, right there besides me.


In other news -- in the matter of Isis. Honestly, I think he has an eating disorder. He is tantalized by smells, by the prospect of food when he wakes up. I give him something. He eats a little. A little while later, he meows for more. I give him a little. He comes back. And at some point, he throws up and we start all over again.

We do have a cat sitter for when we are away and I have to coach her to be tough with the old boy because it is quite obvious that Ed and I are both spineless.





(In answer to a commenter's Q -- Isis is old, but we don't know how old. He seemed old when Ed took him in some ten years ago. And it's right that he should be indulged. He's retired from mouse hunting, from climbing trees, from exploring the far corners of the farmette. He sleeps, he eats. And he meows when we ignore him. Retirement behavior, I swear.)