A Box of Rocks

A friend of ours at the Colorado Renaissance Festival has a box of rocks.  Specifically, he has a box of geodes, ranging in size from golf ball to small fist.  His father collected them many years ago, and now has no more desire for them.  This friend said, "help yourself!" So I did.

I had no experience opening geodes, so I did a little reading on the internet.  Using a ball peen hammer and a rock chisel, I scored the outside of the geodes, around and around until it finally cracked.

I carefully separated the halves and stared in wonder, and not a little awe, at the crystaline beauty hidden away by Nature. I have to say, it was kind of amazing, realizing that I was the first human to ever see it.

When life hands you a broken taco...

Sometimes, life hands you a broken taco.  You weren't expecting a broken taco.  You had, in fact, hoped for a perfectly made, beautifully intact taco.  A taco worthy of being called a work of art.  A masterpiece taco.

Or maybe your hopes weren't so high as all that.  Maybe you were just hoping for something good to eat.  Something you could hold in your hands and sink your teeth into without any other expectations.

But, then, you unwrap your taco and find that it's broken.  Not just cracked down the middle, which, admittedly, can happen sometimes with taco shells, but broken.  Shattered into several pieces.  Your expectations are as broken as your lunch, and disappointment sets in.

But, why?  The taco is still a taco.  The meat and the cheese, the lettuce and tomato, the shell are all still there.  Why be disappointed?  Because we are still clinging to our expectations.  We are attached to the idea of eating our taco in the usual way, and we are not willing to let go.  But what if we did let go?  What if we freed ourselves of the attachment to eating our taco in a particular way?  What possibilities could we see then?

Instead of a broken taco, what if we saw the makings of a little taco salad?

Thin Mint cookie, I hardly knew ya.

Tonight I opened one of the last two boxes of Thin Mints we have from the 2013 Girl Scout cookie season.  It felt like something momentous, so I captured it in ones and zeros.
Honestly, though, it's really not such a big deal.  I mean, I only ate one of the two packages in this box, and there is another box of two packages still waiting in the freezer.  When I eat the last cookie from the second package in the second box, that will be a momentous occasion.
I suppose what really made tonight notable is that I was able to resist breaking into these boxes for as long as I did, which was about two months.  Finally, when it became apparent that my sister, whose cookies these are...er, were...was not going to claim them, I broke down and broke in.  Sorry Sis.