~The world's shortest blog post and we laughed until we nearly cried~

Ok, ok...this is probably going to be a "way too much information" kind of moment here as well as the world's shortest blog post by me (oh yeah, let's see if THAT happens).  Last night we decided to take a photo of our left hands and wedding rings~not exactly sure why but we did.  The photo above shows the finished product but the REAL picture, a thing that made us laugh until we nearly cried was cropped out at the last minute.  I wasn't going to share what was really happening but when I woke up this morning I thought "What the heck?"  But to tell the story, we gotta backtrack a little bit by say, oh I don't know, 2 years or so.

After my "infamous" curb jumping incident back in 2011, poor "old lefty" was left in a rather messed up sort of state.  Nine months of having a broken left arm/wrist and well over 200 days of having my arm enclosed in a heavy 25 pound exoskeleton (ok, that's an exaggeration) took its toll on the overall health of that busted up limb of mine.  By the time it was all over and the last cast removed it was apparent that my left arm and hand would never match the right arm and hand again.  Once in a while, I still get an occasional extra glance from people who notice it for the first time but mostly I'm used to it by now.  And I guess I should be remembering the comment that my son Grahame always gave to me when I would complain about having a left hand that was smaller and all shriveled up now~"Mom", he would say to me, "at least you have a hand left to use, remember that, ok?"  

It took about 6 times of trying to take the photo last night before we could come up with one that suited me.  Each time I took a picture and then stopped to check to see what the image looked like, "vanity" reared its ugly head and I would cringe to think that it looked so bad.  "Not good!" I would repeatedly tell Mike, not once but 5 times in a row.  On the sixth time though, something special, something very loving happened.  Sensing my dismay of having plenty of extra skin with no muscle to keep it in place any longer, Mike reached over and with his free hand pulled back the skin of my left hand to keep it out of the photo giving it a more normal, 57-year old appearance.  It was one of the most touching things I believe has ever been done for me since "old lefty" and I have made the long and arduous journey of post-recovery time together.  It will now rank right up there with my son Grahame's "faster than the speed of light" race with me to the emergency room and Dr. Chan's miracle surgery to put all of the busted and "smashed to smithereens" bones back together again.  Hey, and so my hands will never win the most beautiful hands in the world contest again~how important is that in the scheme of things of this life any ways?  Somewhere out there in the universe is someone who needs that special honour a whole lot more than I do.

Everything happens for a reason in this life and I guess the Lord must have decided that Mike and I needed to laugh last evening.  And laugh we did, so hard that it was difficult to even finish taking the photo that we finally came up with.  His simple gesture was a wonderful reminder to me as I was a witness to such a genuine act of kindness and love.  It was an example of the gift of the "human touch" at its finest and I'm glad that my eyes and heart were open to accept it.  My dear friends and family, may you be the recipient of that "gift" yourself this day.  Material things will come and go, money lasts only a short while to begin with but the people we love and cherish, well those are things that really count in the end.  

Have a great day everyone~love you guys all out there.  Have I told you lately how glad I am that we are friends?  Well, I am!  

The end result of taking the world's most expensive bike ride EVER~August 4th, 2011.  It changed me forever and made me a much stronger person despite the fact that it broke just about every bone imaginable in that arm.  :)  Me and "old lefty" together through thick and thin and everything else in between.