Just a thought… Sometimes I look up and smile and say, “I know that was you.” [Author Unknown]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

You know me: I’m the kid digging through manure, looking for the pony. I use that analogy a lot because it’s true. It’s me.

In pre-pandemic (and pre-tap payment) times, I would find dimes all the time, which some say are messages from the ones we love. In fact, the other day, as we were about to visit our friend Mira and deliver her meals as well as a few Hanukkah decorations (again, thank you, Brooke, for making that possible), I found a Canadian penny wedged in a mat outside her building’s front door. Now that’s rare! And, of course, I dug it out of the muck and kept it.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding Band-aids. Don’t ask me why people are dropping wrapped, clean Band-aids, but here’s what I choose to believe, because that’s just how I work: Rob’s thing was and is always to keep a Band-aid in his wallet (I joke that it’s where the condom used to be) and whenever there’s a blister, scratch or minor emergency, there he is to make it better. If it’s a sign from above, it’s a good one. We’re healing.

I had another sign from above the other day, but not a good one. Brooke and I were having a great day: we’d strolled and shopped a local Christmas Craft market and then walked along the main street in our nearby Sidney to pick up a few more gifts. Suddenly, out of the blue, I was splashed all down my shoulder, into my phone holster and down on a plastic bag that thankfully protected a few children’s books we’d just bought. It was a deluge of freezing water from the flat rooftop one storey above.

I squealed a bit from the cold and the surprise of it, and then we kept walking, brushing off the new handmade cloth jacket I had just bought an hour earlier at the market, and looking back and up over our shoulders. Then, as we listened, we could hear someone up there, sweeping off the water from the previous month’s heavy rains.

So now, a couple of days later, I’ve been considering a few things I could have done. I could’ve stopped and yelled, “Hey! Could you please watch where that water’s going?” or gone into the business below that roof and told them what had happened. But I did neither. Why? Because: a) I couldn’t believe it, and b) it had to have been an accident, so why make some poor guy feel bad? I mean, no one would do that on purpose, would they? I don’t actually think it’ll be making into a future episode of Just for Laffs.

So what would you have done? You’re welcome to leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram as to how you’d have handled it. Brooke says she would have yelled; Phil said he’d have gone into the building. Me? I’m more like, “Don’t make a scene – they might be listeners.” Yeah, I still have that nutty mindset almost five years to the day since leaving CHFI.

Maybe it serves as a reminder that I shouldn’t always be looking down, but honestly, if I’d been looking up, I’d have just gotten a free sinus cleanse, so perhaps it’s for the best? And considering what can come from above in a town with a LOT of sea gulls, I guess I was lucky. And…there’s that kid in the manure pile again!

Take good care and I’ll be back here with you on Thursday. And stay dry, if you can, will you?