Gifts and Tools and Mornings that Don't Begin the Way You Think They Will

Yesterday's near perfect day morphed into this strange morning.

I went to bed, knowing I'd be writing today with a gift. Literally. An experiment. An adventure.

Maybe I should start with a different beginning.

Yesterday was wrapped completely in gratitude and the day unfolded as if it had been flowing from a magical waterfall. My morning journal writing was a stream of gratitude that flowed right into my blog as if it were a pool for receiving. I headed down into the city to meet my son, who, greeted me with a smile and a gift. A small, portable keyboard that works via Bluetooth with a smartphone.

Last time we saw each other a few weeks ago, I talked to him about my excitement around this daily writing practice and my wondering about how I would do it when I am traveling, if I'd need to take my laptop with me everywhere I go. He popped online and did a few things, told me about tiny Bluetooth keyboards. He also ordered one.

That was my gift.

It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It's about eight inches long and an inch and a half wide when it's folded in half. When folded, it is it's own case, but comes in a drawstring bag that also holds the charging cord. It has a fold out stand to hold the phone, which becomes the screen. It looks like a toy computer when it's all set up. The keys are almost full size and the keyboard is a little bit different than usual for things like hyphens, exclamation points, and such. There are function buttons. I'm not sure how they function. It pairs to your phone and enables you to write anywhere. And since I actually write the blog online, I can use it to write for my blog and publish it. As long as I have an Internet connection.

And if it does nothing more than that, it's worth its weight in gold.

The rest of the day? We had brunch at a great little cafe around the corner from his house in Fishtown. I'd give it a shout out, but I can't remember its name. What I remember is the amazing welcome and delicious fare. I'll shout it out another time.

So the welcome.

We sat down at the table where ivory cardboard coasters proclaimed in bold red letters, "Glad you are here."

I don't know if it was the actual coaster or whether it was because I was moving through the day clothed in gratitude, but that felt so good. It gave me cause to pause and to notice something really lovely. I drank my Assam tea with a glad heart and Charlie and I had so much fun talking and eating we almost missed our movie.

Actually, we did miss our movie.

So we saw a different one. And it was probably a lot better than the one we were going to see.

We saw The Incredibles 2. I hadn't seen the first one. Charlie saw it when he was eleven and it was one of his favorite movies as a kid. So there was so much swimming around and below the surface that made for such an exquisitely lovely time together. And punctuating it was an animated short about the love shared between a mother and a son. Tears were rolling down my cheeks one moment and I was laughing uproariously the next.

As Charlie went off to work, he asked me what I was going to do with the rest of my day.

I went home and puttered around the house, decided I would have a writing adventure today by trying out my new keyboard to take it for a test drive before I'm actually out in the wilds somewhere trying to figure out if I can write and post. I made a delicious dinner and talked to my mom. I corresponded with my daughter in Chicago via text. And as I write this, I marvel that this is my life.

I sat down and watched a movie that felt more like a beach read than a film. And I just discovered that I need to be more careful with this than with my usual set up or I will lose my writing.

So. The strange morning.

I haven't been sleeping well lately and I guess my body decided it was going to catch things up today.  I woke up at nearly eleven thirty feeling like I'd just returned from being kidnapped by aliens, or what I imagine that might feel like. I feel like I've lost half the day and like my body does not belong to me. I had strange dreams that I don't want to talk about. But I am writing, and that is beginning to bring me home to myself. When I'm done, I need to figure out what to do to help me to feel like I'm back in my body.

Of this new writing tool, I must say it's close to miraculous. I wish there was a manual, though, because I can't figure out how to type numbers, or some of the punctuation marks that are on the function keys. Yes. Yes. I've tried everything I can think of. Except, of course, going online to try to find a manual there. I'll get to it one of these days. Until then, eleven thirty is typed out because I did not want to type eleven twenty one. No hyphen access either yet.

The next thing I'm going to try is to insert a picture into the text.

Another adventure awaits.

Post script: I've gone back in and added the tag at the bottom for the Summer of Self-Love, corrected the movie title, and corrected some of the spelling I missed the first time because the letters on the screen are so small. I've added a photo. I will eventually be able to do that from my phone, but it requires downloading some kind of app or building up my library of photos in my Google library (attached to my Google profile which I don't really use, except to host this blog.) More adventures in tech await.


The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice birthed June 1, 2018 as a container for harnessing three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.