Let's not take one another for granted

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to take people and things for granted and forget how lucky you are to have either? I have.

Even though sometimes I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger I make the time to read. Usually I have three books going at once: one by the bed, one by my chair in the living room and one in a travel bag that goes with me out of town every Monday.

Someone at the Star Courier left two Michael Connelly paperbacks on my desk about a year ago and now I’m hooked on the guy’s stories. I finished a Connelly book, plus the crime novel in the travel bag and I wanted to leave the Murder, She Wrote tale by the bedside. The bookshelves didn’t yield anything interesting, so I sat in the living room and began to panic about having nothing to read.

Boy, you talk about a “slap to the forehead” moment. A glance to the right brought my Nook into view. There are no words to describe what I was thinking at that moment.
Not counting this week, there are over 150 books on my Nook. They aren’t all novels; I have cookbooks, biographies, memoirs and all kinds of other things, including Reader’s Digest. Almost everything was free or close to it. And here I thought I had nothing to read. How could I forget one of the best birthday gifts ever?

Something else got my brain cells going the other day. Both of the guys were gone for quite a while and I was home with just the sleeping dog for company. As someone who has never lived on her own, and I mean never (unless you count the time I ran away from home for less than 10 hours when I was a teenager), I thought it would be cool to have some time to myself.

As the door closed behind our son, it hit me: So, I thought, this is what it’s like to be alone. I didn’t like it one bit.

The hours stretched and I got little done. It occurred to me that, in time, this could actually happen. I’ll have all the time I need to get things done and there’ll be time left over to think too much about how busy and fun life used to be.

The other day we were talking about this and that and I don’t know how it came up, but hubby said he would rather have me around than a million bucks. We laughed, but he was serious. “I guess you’ve grown on me,” he said. “I’m kinda used to having you around.”

Then it hit me. I may take some things for granted and forget a few of them, but I’ll never take the people closest to me for granted. And though they’ve grown on me too, I want them to be around for a long, long time.