Today was a red letter day.  It is one of those days I would have to list a million little reasons of why it was so great, but to anyone besides myself, it would be hard to explain.

Waking up (that is something to celebrate right there!) in our own house is still this wonderful thrill for me.  It feels like it has been yonks (a long time in Scottish slang) since I have lived in a house that wasn't rented or had been occupied by my ex or Morton's ex.  There is really even a joy in all the work that still needs done with the place. 

Heading off to my daughter's house I watched my two lovely grandchildren all morning long.  It makes me feel like I know this wonderful secret to life when I'm around them.  Nothing else really matters in the world and if Alexander wants to build dozens of towers out of books and blocks, only to knock them down and say "Again Jam-ma (he can say Grandma, just prefers to call me JAM-ma!) we are both content to sit and do that all day.  Everything else can wait.

My granddaughter Maggie at almost four months now, is really starting to get in to our "hijinx" as well.  We all sit on the floor together, fritter away the hours coloring, singing songs, writing letters (Alexander can make the following letters perfect...T, I, V, L, H, N, M, W, Z and sometimes a few of the others) and I know every grandparent says this, but they really are perfect.  Even when I'm almost pulling my hair out because Alexander had decided to play his kazoo just after Maggie fell asleep.  They are angels.

When my daughter came home this afternoon and she was feeding Maggie, she asked me to pull up the corner of her carpet (which they have been wanting to replace since buying this place almost two years ago) and peek underneath.  I think all the DIY we have been doing at our place had given her the fever.

In their lovely Cape Cod house, right in the middle of the afternoon, I discovered a lovely oak floor.  It took just 30 seconds for us both to decide to go ahead, rip up the carpet and if the middle of the floor held a messy secret, so be it.

After a few hours (we had children to take care of too!) we had before us, or more accurately, underneath us, a floor that was almost 100% perfect.  There is one small area about 8 inches across that is a bit darker.  It was worth all the sweating, pulling and bending to see the afternoon light shimmering on this hidden treasure.  We both agreed we felt like we were having a great dream we would wake up and tell each other about...but it wasn't a dream.

My job was pulling off the carpet strips and helping to pull up the staples that still had tufts of beige carpet in them.  As I removed them, with the lovely grain of the wood, the holes seemed to disappear. 

Doing this job I started on my backside, laying over on to an elbow, not wanting to kill my knees.  I then moved (after about 6 feet of slow going) to my knees.  This was sore and not at all clever of me.  So I stood.  I bent over, almost in half and as I stood like that moving around the edge inch by inch, I was really glad there was less of my belly to crush.  This is something that would have been impossible to do at 440 pounds, but I managed nicely at 329.whatever!

As we threw the carpet out the back door we both were giggling as we were wondering if her husband would notice the change when he came home.  He did and was well impressed!

This was a red letter day when we discovered something very special that had been right under our noses (and feet) for a long time that we never bothered to look for before.

Explore the world around you, look under things (and above) and email me if anything like this has ever happened to you.  You can't put a price tag or summon the words on a day like to day, but "perfect" comes pretty close.

Priscilla

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