So that happened

The other day, I sent off this text:
"this is Elise. I think I left a hot pad at your house on Tuesday and wondered if you'd found it laying around by chance."

The answer I received was:
"Huh?"

Yeah, so what I really send was:
"this is 3. I think I left a road at your house on Tuesday and wondered if you'd found it laying around by chance."

Which makes zero sense. So I replied:
"Sorry, Elise. [meaning, "Sorry, I meant it's Elise" but clearly doesn't read that way.] I think I left a hot pad behind. Sheesh, I get an F for that text!"

Anyway, we made arrangements for me to get it back, and life went on. The next day, at a church meeting, I noticed a text that said:
"3, this is 4. I have your road. I can meet you at the East door after the assembly. Come alone. Don't tell 5."

Which is honestly one of the best texts I have ever gotten in my life. And, quite frankly, is there any other way to respond to the texting fiasco I created? Brilliant.

The moral of the story is, I'm bad at texting, when you get weird texts from people you know, you should just have fun with it, and it's still not as bad as the time auto-correct told me Satan would help me find a ride to Church.

Viva la musica!

On Monday, I went to the symphony with a friend from work. I was excited, because it was the

¡Celebración Sinfónica!, so music from Latin America. Which sounded very fun and enjoyable.

Side note. It took me waaaaay too long to figure out why they were doing the Latin American concert that night. I mean, it was a whole big festival--dancing outside, a pre-show with local kids performing music and such. And I knew there had to be something going on. Yeah, after about half an hour of thinking about it, I realized it was Mexico's Independence day. It took me so long because in my brain, I was still thinking we were in August. I'm not currently processing time very accurately. Sorry, everyone. And now back to the main topic.

I was totally right. The concert was fantastic. The pieces came from countries all over Latin America. The conductor, Carlos Miguel Prieto, was Mexican but had traveled all over Latin America and the US and for each piece, he'd ask the audience who was from the piece's country and kind of speak to them about their cultural identity in terms of music and dance. And the music was great and the conductor was dancing and the audience was dancing and even I was dancing in my seat. It was fantastic and joyous. I know not all music from Mexico, or Colombia, or Brazil, or Peru is so full of life and energy and happiness, but they do have really great music, our neighbors to the south.

One of the great advantages of having a world with so many nations and cultures is that you get to see so many different ways of living and thinking and being. And you can say, "Hey, I like that. And maybe I can be more like that." Or even, "I'm not that type of person, but I'm glad others are so I can enjoy who they are." I don't know if that makes sense, but life is so much richer when you get to enjoy all the different kinds of people in the world. 

Reader's guilt

Yesterday, I woke up and finished reading a book. I just spent maybe an hour or two reading, doing nothing else.

Now, I used to just read all the time. As a kid, probably half of my summer hours were just lounging around reading. We went to the library practically every week during the summer. Somehow, I could just read and it was fine, no guilt.

But yesterday I kept thinking that surely there should be something else I should be doing. Adults can't just sit around reading, right? That's not a thing? But honestly, why shouldn't it be? Not everyday, necessarily, but I should I feel guilty? It just seemed like there was something more important I could have been doing. And there were, but at the same time, not necessarily a better use of the limited time I have on planet earth, depending on how you look at it.

So, I finished the book--which meant I walked to the library to return it, which was healthy--and I enjoyed it, so I'm not going to worry about it. But I do kind of miss the guilt-free days of reading.