Help a pal out?

Hi, All!

Someone was sad that I hadn’t posted about my trip to New Orleans.  Well, let me just tell you, it was amazing.  I walked on the Moonwalk, atop the levee, looking out over the Mississippi River in awe.  I listened to jazz on the streets.  I ate great food, and best of all, made friends I’ll never forget.  The keynote was well received, I made them laugh, and then made them cry, and I think they really liked it. 

All very good.  Of course I couldn’t wait to get home, which is always the case.  And now it’s as warm here as it was there, and I’m outside daily and relishing every second.

I have a couple of projects you can get involved with though so I want to get to those right away.  First, our annual SPRING INTO FITNESS CHALLENGE is about to begin over at Maggie’s Health and Fitness.  This year’s challenge is to create a workout plan for the month of April.  It can be anything you like; choose something from the many fabulous workout DVDs, websites, magazines, etc, or make up one of your own.  The idea is to build yourself a month-long schedule.  Make a chart to hang on your wall with what you will do on what day of the week, and what day or days you’ll give yourself for resting up.  Get it all ready so that you can begin on April 1st.

We’ll be sharing our workout plans, and reporting in each day on the page and via the email loop.  (you can subscribe to the email loop too if you prefer it.  Send a blank email to this email address: maggies-health-and-fitness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Best part: everyone who manages to get through the month of April sticking to their plan, will be tossed into the drawing for some neat prizes at the end of the month.  (To be announced.)  It’s entirely on the honor system, and you’ll be granted a few cheat days to use or not at your own discretion.  So please pop over to the Facebook page or join the yahoogroup and join in the SPRING INTO FITNESS fun!  (I don’t make any money or anything off this, or even add you to a mailing list or anything.  It’s just because I think we do better if we support each other.)

Buy it on Monday March 26th and save a buck!

Okay, next thing, and this is big.  DR. DUFFY’S CLOSE ENCOUNTER will be ready to publish on Kindle and Nook over this weekend. (Originally titled OUT OF THIS WORLD MARRIAGE, it’s been re-edited, polished, packaged, and I’m re-releasing it.)  I’d like to shoot for a powerful opening day on MONDAY MARCH 26th! I would like you all to help me spread the word and the links (which I’ll have soon) in my “BUY THE BOOK ON MONDAY & SAVE A BUCK” Campaign.  So if you’ll just check in on my facebook page or on twitter (@maggieshayne) over the weekend, (and I’ll try to post here as well on Sunday with my fellow Broads’ permission)  I’ll get an easy to share post up with the Nook and Kindle links to the book, and I’ll ask you to share them for me. The book will be $3.99 on Monday only. Tuesday it goes up to its regular price of $4.99. Let’s see if we can make this work! THANK YOU ALL for playing along.

Do you love this cover?  My daughter Jessica of Author’s Life Saver did it!

And now you’re all updated for the week!  Make it a great one!

Maggie

There’s a purple and white bead handmade watch, with earrings to match, that my daughter had made for me for my birthday.  She was interning in a law firm and the receptionist made jewelry.  And next to is the madonna and child heart necklace that she gave me for Mother’s Day one year.  She gave me a cross necklace for Mother’s Day one year, too, and I wear either the madonna or the cross always, with Tim’s heart necklace.  (The chains are different lengths so they compliment each other nicely!)

I have earrings made out of 2000 year old glass from Jeruselem.  My mother gave them to be for my birthday.  My grandmother’s antique watch was also a gift from from mother, who shares my appreciation of meaningful adornment.  I have handmade jewelry from my aunt – made with Austrian crystals from my grandmother’s jewelry.  I have Raggedy Ann earrings, playing card earrings, and earrings made from Morano glass that I got on a life changing trip to Italy.

Most of my jewels are not of the ‘need appraisal’ variety.  They don’t have a lot of monetary value.  They have heart and soul value.  And wearing them helps me keep that heart and soul in my conscious awareness, every minute of every day.

And the jewels that carry the most heart are those glass horse earrings up there.  They were a dimestore purchase more than thirty years ago.  I was a kid.  Had just had my ears pierced.  My best friend and I had recently attended summer horse camp together.  And I’d just come back from staying with her for a week during which we’d spent a full day riding the horse she and her mother owned.  I loved those earrings.  They reminded me of the very best my life had to offer.  They stood for a full heart, freedom, summer days and knowing that I was the most important person in the world to someone who was the most important person in the world to me.  I wore them for my most special occasions.  I wore them when I fell in love at eighteen.  I wore them on my dates with the love of my life.  And one night, shortly before he and I misccomunicated and parted ways – breaking each other’s hearts – I left them at his house.  I’d taken them off in his bedroom.  And forgotten them.  We separated before I got them back.  I lost him – and them – all at once.  And later, I lost my best friend to a car accident.

I got a lot more jewelry after those horse earrings disappeared from my life.  Most of my jewelry came after.  Exquisite pieces.  Meaningful pieces.  But none that ever quite captured the magic of those horse earrings.  They were all of my loves wrapped up in fragile little pieces of glass.  Fragile like my heart.

I guess I could be overreacting.  Those horses were cheap dimestore glass with inexpensive wires and no ability to affect life one way or the other.  In the scheme of life, they were little things that most people would say mattered not a whit.  But most people would be wrong about that.  The love of my life found those earrings beside his bed.  He put them in a locked metal box with bee bee holes shot through it.  And he carried them with him through his life.  Twenty-seven years later, when life had forced him into months of soul searching, he’d opened that box.  Those cheap little dime store horse earrings were still there.  People had died.  Lives had changed.  The world had changed.  But those fragile glass earrings were just as he’d left them.  He looked at them.  And he had to get in touch with me.

I took that picture up there this morning.  I wore those earrings on a date this past weekend.  A date with the love of my life.  Who is now my husband, my life’s partner, my best friend.  And as I felt those cheap glass horses gently poke my neck, I was reminded, again and again, about the miracle of life.  And of love.  Those earrings were such a little thing.  They had no monetary value.  They couldn’t even get me a lunch at McDonald’s let alone a roof over my head.  They could easily have been thrown away.  Forgotten.  And yet…they weren’t.  

Those earrings saved my life. 

It occurss to me today that we all have so many riches, sitting right here with us.  Riches that are far more lasting, more meaningful and powerful than money.   If we looked at our days in terms of the little things – the kiss goodbye this morning, or the smile at the drive through, the head on the pillow next to us, or the grouchy child who didn’t want to go to school, the ability to get out of bed and get showered on our own, or the aid of whoever helped us do so, the phone call, or the pet nearby – if we could see our lives through those small things, we’d all smile more, be happier, and we’d all be a heck of a lot richer.

How about it?  What small things are there with you right now?