Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. - Mark Twain,Following the Equator

I have two smiling heart moments today.

To begin with, there was a bag that we sell at my work.  From the moment we got it, I loved it, but I'm frugal and wouldn't allow myself to buy it.  Then, a couple weeks ago, the store manager mentioned that we need coins, and if there's anything that I have plenty of, it's coins.  So we agreed that I could buy the bag with my coins before my next shift (two days later).  I showed up for my next shift with more than enough coins to buy this bag and found out that it had been sold.  I was heart broken.  I figured it was no big deal, she bought my coins from me, I put the money I received aside and decided I'd either wait to buy it or when I'm near another store I'd pick it up.  Today I was going to be by another one of the stores after my shift ended.  I checked to see if the store had my bag in stock, and they didn't.  I was beginning to think that maybe this was a sign and it just wasn't meant to be.  But then while checking what new stock we'd be receiving, my bag was listed!  At that exact moment, my heart was smiling.  As soon as we unpacked it, we put the bag aside and after my shift, I bought it!  It wasn't so much the buying the bag that made my heart smile, it was the fact that as soon as I was starting to give up hope on it, it came through.

The second moment has more lasting reasons for making my heart smile.  Nine years ago I was diagnosed as being deadly allergic to hazelnuts and walnuts.  My favourite chocolates could kill me.  It was brutal.  I eventually got used to it, but it still wasn't a lot of fun and makes traveling to Europe a little difficult. Then after a month of eating tons of avocados, I had a reaction to one that was all too similar to my experience with eating those two nuts.  A week ago I went to get a blood test done to check if I'm allergic to those three foods, and since this blog is about positive things, the results obviously came back negative.  My heart was smiling when I found out that I no longer have to check the ingredients for chocolates anymore!

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet. - James Openheim

I'm not a gardener.  In fact, the full extent of my gardening experience is planting seeds in a Styrofoam cup in kindergarten.  So, for whatever reason, I got this idea in my head to grow a vegetable garden this year.  Of course, I can't just take a garden that is already being used, so my vegetables will be growing at the side of the house in the patch of earth that was being used as a tossing ground for old planters.  Which means that I had to prep my garden.  Which I thought meant getting on my hands and knees and doing a whole lot of pulling stuff up and getting sweaty and who knows what else.

So, my smiling heart moment was when I asked my sister to help me (expecting the huge task of using my hands to pull lord knows what up and out and all other crazy images I had), and she showed me how simple prepping my garden would really be!  We just pulled out the stuff that needs to go to the landfill, and used a rake to pull out the old leaves and twigs and move the soil around.  Hopefully I'll get some top soil to put down this weekend, and will be planting my veggies in no time!