Self-pity, Serendipity & Tootsie Rolls

Hideeho friends… So yes, I am a tad bit tardy in posting this week. I was out of town again attending to some family matters, but I am back now and aren’t y’all just thrilled to bits?

I confess that I have been just a bit worried about blogging with all my DIs (Darling Inspirations) out and about for the summer, but worry not, things (and by now you should know how I feel about things), well things just have a way of popping up.

For instance, briefly…OK, OK, OK, perhaps not briefly…it was more like a wallowing angst…I wallowed about, feeling sorry for myself and was rather out of sorts, when out of the blue (alrighty then, now we have two–count ’em TWO cliches, perhaps we should all revisit cliche finder and get it out of our system)…So back to the matter at hand…(OK, so make that cliche No. 3)…

Wallowing, angst, feeling sorry…when I received a random email from a former student of mine who served as news editor on the school newspaper and who just landed a job at the Dallas Morning News. Talk about serendipity (and don’t ya love that word?).

At any rate (does that count as #4?), her kind words immediately pulled me out of the “OMG how it sucks to be me because every day is like a bad hair day” funk. And, more importantly, she jogged some other memories I had forgotten about…memories like the tootsie roll chain which is like four to five times taller than she is and wider than I am.

And here’s the deal-eee-oh (cliche number five-o), that tootsie roll chain apparently happens to be serendipitous as well.

You see, Erika always loved tootsie rolls–eating mass quantities of them especially on deadline. She ate so many she started making a chain with the wrappers. That tootsie roll chain not only served as a stress meter of sorts, but also appeared to be rather cathartic as well. When she graduated from high school, she took the 20-foot-long chain with her.

Flash forward to her new job at the DMN…She noticed there were some ladies who were tootsie roll aficionados so she hauled her tootsie roll chain up there. Apparently after they got over the oddness of the chain, Erika reports the link actually made the tootsie roll ladies feel better.

“Now,” Erikia said, “they don’t feel so bad for eating so many.”

So you see, my friends, two seemingly innocuous things––a random email and gajillion long tootsie roll chain––had the power to spread joy and happiness. Now, I know all that probably doesn’t qualify for any sort of Pay it Forward hoopdedoo, but hey, let’s grab what we can––even if it’s only a tootsie roll.