July 14, 2010 @ 6:36 am | Filed under: Pure Sunshine,Soul Food,Uniquely Me

There is something refreshing about things that are real.

Real chocolate. Real deals. Real people.

When we walked into this old-fashioned hardware store on Saturday and spotted glass-bottled Cokes for sale for $1.00, it was a REAL deal waiting to happen.

Not to mention that it was an “honesty policy” and you merely pulled your ice cold beverage from the cooler and left your dollar in a simple attached tube that read:

 ”LEAVE $1.00 HERE”

There is something so refreshing about moments like this one.

Moments where you find tiny treasures hidden amongst the dusty ordinariness of normalcy. Moments where those treasures remind you that it’s the dust you truly treasure, ’cause that’s where the work is, that’s where the memories are, that’s where love resides. Quiet and paitent…waiting to be lived.

Moments like this are refreshing.

There is something equally refreshing about sharing them with someone who is the real deal. Someone who says what they mean, and mean what they say. Someone like my MJ.

Today is his birthday, and the birthday boy will be on the Red-Eye home from Chicago sometime later tonight. 

I’ll ask him Thursday morning what he wants to do for his big day (even though it means we’ll be celebrating a day late) and he’ll shrug and say, “I’m doing it already.”

And then we’ll pretty much just hole up in this happy solitude playin’  life by ear. We’ll sip coffee at ten and shower by eleven, or maybe noon. We’ll have a loose plan for dinner, meaning all the while to shoot for a real, honest-to-goodness night out, but in the end we’ll probably have another impromptu living room picnic.

We love life, love our home, love each other.

We love the beauty of our languid mornings and cozy evenings, but sometimes it’s during the in-between that we notice most what makes us happy. It’s during the demanding weeks when he’s on the road and I’m immersed up to my neck in school or writing that I’m more inclined to notice just how extraordinary the mundane moments can be.

I’m reminded how happy my favorite coffee mug makes me.

Or how much I love hot baths.

Embracing the real things rises to the occasion best when life is nitty gritty. Or when it’s tough and busy and not-always-fun.

But today is good. It is very, very good.

It is real.

And I do love  real things.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Tags: living simply, summertime memories