Gratitude Monday -- The Magic Cupboard

This morning when I opened the cupboard to get some cooking oil I saw lurking at the back a large container of olives. This was a wonderful vision, and for it I am grateful, but it was an unexpected one. I'd opened the 3L container of Kalamata olives a few weeks ago.
We love these olives. The nearest source for these containers ( 231-260 large olives in each) is Edmonton so we buy three at a time usually and they last us perhaps a year. We stocked up last April so opening the last remaining container recently was no surprise, but I took a second look afterward to make sure.
I moved several containers around to make sure it was the last of its kind and realized, with a pang, that when it was gone we'd have to find a reason to go to the city.
This morning's discovery was the very happiest of surprises, but similar things have happened in the past.

We used to have a magic freezer. I'd think I'd be out of something and then one day, there's be one more of it in with the other frozen foods.
It started about 25 years ago when we got some sauerkraut from Mike's dad in the fall. It was so good that we went through it quickly, probably less than two months.
I craved it and looked several times in the freezer in a case a container had fallen way down to the bottom and gotten covered. I emptied the freezer. I rearranged the contents. Nothing.
Then one day in the following March I went in to get something and there was a container of it, sitting almost on top of the rest of the food.
Oh yes, I was grateful.
Over the next few years similar things happened with that freezer . I dubbed it "The Magic Freezer" and often wondered if I was ever really out of anything.

We had to get a new freezer last spring. I am not sure if the magic has transferred to the new one or not, but if not, then at least it found a new home in the cupboard.

Gratitude Monday - Somewhere Under The Rainbow

Rainbows are fine things.
I've always enjoyed them and been grateful for their promise of leprechauns and magic and maybe all the other special things we have in life but forget about because we've forgotten how to see.
What do you think about when you see a rainbow?
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This is from a recent trip out west. It's across the road from the Nordegg.
I played with it a wee bit.
Camera filters are fun and good for the creative side. They can bring out the stuff we've forgotten to see.

Photo-Finish Friday -- Faery Silhouette

Fog and rising sun bring out the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Usually this is a normal hawthorn tree with leaves and branches. Against the early morning sun we see the other side of it, the magic side.
See the branch in the centre toward the bottom? There's a faery with an arm raised and a leaf held high.
Tell me, what else do you see?

A Horse Is A Horse Unless Of Course...

Ever see a Unicorn?

I have.
And no I wasn’t on anything at the time. It was broad daylight in the middle of a July afternoon in 1984.

I’d gone for a job interview in Olds and was on my way back along Highway 2 when I passed a field where horses were grazing. It’s a common sight and nothing to turn your head over.
But my head did turn, rather sharply in fact, when I clearly saw the horn protruding out from the forehead of the mottled gray horse nearest the highway.

I only saw it for a split second because when I turned for a full on look it was gone. The other horses -- all of which were assorted shades of brown -- were still grazing.

I didn’t say anything about it at the time chiefly because I was rendered speechless. My parents, who’d accompanied me on the trip, didn’t notice anything or just didn’t admit to it.

I can’t write this off to imagination because of the accompanying feeling. It felt like change. It felt as though everything was going to be fine, that I was on the right track, and the Olds job was mine.

I got the reporting job in Olds and stayed there for 33 months. I passed by that field dozens of times, but it must have been a very specific sign because I haven’t seen it or its kin since that day.

I want to. I have hope that one day it’ll show up on the edge of my awareness signaling another big change or just reminding me that there’s magic about.