Evolution of a Princess

I never mowed a lawn before I got married and had a house with a lawn.  My dad always did it and never enlisted me in the lawn duty games.
My husband taught me how to start our mower and fill it with fuel and empty the clippings on my own.  It took another 20 years before I decided to learn to use a line trimmer, and then "Katy bar the door" when I've got that thing going. 
Finally today after mowing and trimming and he wasn't home to blow the clippings up off the street and sidewalk, I finally learned how to start a gas-powered blower.  wtf?  I kept not doing these things letting them reside in my husband's chore list.  But it was kind of fun.  I know, I know, by the end of July I will hate using it as much as I'll be tired of mowing and trimming and taming the property.
I laughed at myself as I remembered my mother-in-law resist taking my cheesecake recipe because if she knew how to make it she couldn't ask me to do so.
There are choices that I've consciously made.  But this reminds me that sometimes I unconsciously make a decision by not making any decision.  I felt some sort of power or self-sufficiency when I could do something that I had assigned him to do so many times.
Hmmm.  I wonder what else I am choosing not to do just by not thinking about doing it?

How Much Risk

Sliding down a mountain on a set of rails seemed reasonable enough.  I was attached to the rails, plus I had my own brake to adjust my speed as I approached curves and drops.
But yesterday my friend's husband took me for a ride on his amphibious 6-wheeler.  Now that's just ridiculous!
But was it mostly my unfamiliarity with the apparatus?  Or was it my unfamiliarity with the driver?  Or am I just not wired for this type of fun, so that newspaper headlines of people paralyzed or killed from accidents on "toys" kept flashing through my brain?  I don't know. 
There are thrills and then there are thrills.  And I can't help but wonder if excellence requires me to sometimes close my eyes, and hold my nose, and just jump in.  Because I know, I really know that progress is more important than arriving at that perfect destination.  Some days progress looks like a bungee jump and other days it might just be a bicycle without the training wheels.  I gotta jump when the risk seems possible.  I gotta at least entertain when the risk seems ridiculous to see if tomorrow it's actually possible.

It's on Me

Have you ever been to one of those drive-up places that has two lanes to place orders?  This morning I was ordering a coffee and as I started to pull to the cashier window, the car in the adjacent lane lurched ahead of me.  I didn't think she should have charged ahead of me, but it's not a big deal, one place in line.
Only, her haste messed up the restaurant's process.  She realized that she "cut" in line and so she paid for my order as well as her own.
I guess sometimes we are forced to do the right thing right after we do the wrong thing.  That is good karma I think.  When you cut in line at the coffee bar, pay for the guy behind you and all will become right with the world.