Note from Michelle: My friend Jim wrote this blog for me in September 2013. As I was going through my Inspire site today, printing off blogs as I get ready to take the site offline, I thought I'd repost it here (sans the photo which I couldn't save)- it also was written just about two weeks after Greg and I met. Enjoy!
This is how a typical conversation with me goes, if a conversation with me can be considered typical. Usually conversations with me are everything but typical. A fairly recent conversation I had with Michelle touched on canned chicken, specifically which kind I should buy. I ended up getting chunked, light and dark in water, if you were wondering. The conversation also included my unfinished PhD, a soccer game, kids, a pedicure, high heels, a time machine, thunderstorms, dogs, pool toys that aspired to be in a future "Toy Story" movie, and an article Michelle was writing for the magazine High Desert Dog. The time machine was a critical piece of our conversation as she needed more time to finish some of her writing. This is where I offered to help and suggested I write her article about dessert dogs. That was my attempt at humor– desert and dessert– get it? And of course I followed that up with some more attempts at pet and dog humor until we concluded our conversation with a wrap up of her pedicure.
And, just in case you are starting to wonder about Michelle, this is how my mind works, not hers. She is very kind and lets me wander where I want over the conversational map until I realize I need to pull it back in. But I also think she might get a small giggle out some of my ramblings. Oh, by the way, she turned down my offer to write the article about dessert dogs for High Desert Dog. That was back in July. Whew!
Imagine my surprise today when she said she needed an idea for her blog, would I write about dessert dogs? This started my mind spinning, spinning all the way back to my creative writing class in college. The only creative part about that class for me were the many creative comments the instructor wrote on my papers in red ink. Getting past that bad memory, I started to think how I could inspire people, like Michelle does, with a story about dessert dogs. How could I spin this? Do I write about dogs that like dessert? Or desserts that are like dogs? There are lots of pictures and recipes for hotdog type desserts. Just try a keyword search– dessert dogs. None of it sounded inspiring. And I am a cat owner; how dare I write about dogs.
So, if you haven’t guessed by now, I am not going to write about dessert dogs. In fact, I really have nothing much else to say. And for those of you who read Michelle’s blogs for hope and inspiration, I know you are hoping for her return. But if there is something to take away from my musings, it is only that I was happy to help her out when she asked. She may not ask again, but that’s okay, too. I was able to step in when she needed help, just like she has done for so many of us. In fact, I think Michelle said it best in an earlier blog, “Sometimes it's easy to forget to ask. The answers are there but we get lost in trying to do it ourselves that we often forget the help that's there if we need it.“ Oh, and try the banana dog.