Before and After

September 16, 2015

20150916-033939.jpg This post is about many things. Life really. And how life is not perfect, but that is what makes it fun and keeps it interesting. I promise I will get to the story of the above table, and all this will make sense. We had a group of friends out to the island on Sunday for dinner and the conversation turned to social media, Facebook mainly, but also blogs and Instagram. It was fun to sit back and listen and take in all these sides/takes/opinions. The general consensus was that often times social media is a ‘curated’ look at one’s life, and that it is only a look at the good stuff. I chuckled as did TPS, because we feel the word ‘curated’ is now so overused that I cringe a tad when I hear it. My point with writing this is that even though social media is about life, keeping it real wins out over keeping it curated. No one lives a perfect life. Trust me on this one, they don’t. Life just throws at each and every one of us ‘stuff’ that makes our lives interesting/challenging. How we choose to deal with them is what makes up a life. We have all burned a piece of toast at some point in our lives, is how I like to think of it. But you just scrape off the burned bits, and enjoy the heck out of that toast.

Now this table. It looks so cozy under the umbrellas as the misty day started to clear up. It was a farewell to Summer, one heck of a glorious Seattle Summer, supper. We were having just the best of times with friends and dinner was just about ready to be served. I was in the kitchen finishing something and I hear a yell. Several actually. Every once in awhile, a huge gust of wind will come out of nowhere racing down Colvos Passage and just hit the house like a boom. Which when you are sitting inside the house with a fire going can be charming. But when a table is fully set and 2 large umbrellas are up, bad stuff is about to happen. Those umbrellas came a tumbling down so quickly, landing on the table. Luckily, no one was hurt. But the mess that was created in a matter of seconds was comical. This is when as hosts, you either wilt or bloom. And you all know how I feel about a blooming flower! Everyone pitched in to clean up the water from the dozen quite tall single stem vases holding those divine dahlias that came crashing down. The amount of water that came out of them was quite something. The vintage linen tablecloths I painstakingly ironed before everyone arrived were so wet you could wring them out. We quickly washed all the plates, silverware and glassware. I cut the dahlias really short and put them in 3 low glasses and put them tightly together in the middle of the now tablecloth-less zinc table. We were back up and running! We had a good laugh about the wind and had just the nicest time/dinner with friends. That is life.

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