Love, Love, Love

It's been very icky-doomy outside lately. Cold, rainy, windy. Even when it's sunny it seems to be cold, rainy, and windy.

Don't know how the weather manages that. Maybe it's just me, as I've been brooding about getting through the first holiday season without my father. I passed by a snail with a broken shell huddled on a concrete retaining wall in the rain the other day and thought, I know just how you feel, pal.

Often I notice things that give me pause and make me think, hey, maybe that's a little message from the universe there, but it's just not happening right now, never mind all those glorious fall colors and the rest of Mother Nature's decorating frenzy.

Still, three oddly related Things appeared in random places within the space of the day, so maybe the universe isn't trying to send Big, Meaningful Messages. Maybe it's just passing along slips of paper from fortune cookies or doing its version of posting chipper quotations on Facebook. Maybe it's just trying to be funny. They made me roll my eyes: Over the top, Universe.

Anyway, here they are--they're really just Loss, Litter, and Leftovers, but one takes what one can get.


This silver ring tumbled out of nowhere in the cargo bay of the Subaru wagon.
A silver ring would normally qualify as aHugely Significant Offering if the
universe did indeed parcel out meaningful messages. But I subsequently
learned it simply belonged to one of my daughter's friends.



These two hearts dangled from a rock wall my dog and
I passed by on our morning walk. (I like saying morning
walk because it leaves the impression that I also take
afternoon and evening walks.)



This heart sticker was attached to the shell of what is, I think, a Nuttall's Cockle
(also known  as a heart cockle--if you put that into a short story, you'd be
accused of being quite maudlin).I didn't find it in nature like this. We found
a box of shells that had been gathered (legally!) on a multitude of northwestern
beaches over 2 decades mouldering in the garage. I decided to dump it
outside around the base of a shrub where nothing else will grow.
Out tumbled this shell, and I only wish there were also a fish sticker
so that I could say it was baring its heart and sole. The bottom
of the box was littered with old stickers left there by my
daughter on a long-ago trip.