Happy Birthday Norman and Clint.

To most of you May 31st is just another day in just another month....in another year that's likely going to quietly slip past you. This year I've decided to claim May 31st as my personal day of contentment.

Here's how I got there.

This is the rainiest May on record in Oregon (OK second rainiest or something, I really can't bear to listen to the weatherman long enough to focus on the statistics). RAIN RAIN RAIN. Rain that even Norman Vincent Peale (5/31/1898) would have trouble being optimistic about.  I really try not to complain about the weather but May always gets me down even though I work hard at making happiness a decision.

May 30th - a skunk sprayed my garage and may have spent some time in my house and ...well it was just plain stinky. I did my best Clint Eastwood (5/31/1930) impersonation but I'm betting that even Dirty Harry gives skunks a wide berth. May 31st - the smell is dissipating and I have a plan in place to thwart the little bugger tonight. All is well. Of course every time the black and white cat walks by me I still jump a little.

Today, May 31, 2013, the sun is shining and the birds are singing and I'm just super content. I'm reading a really good book. One of those you savor and bug everyone you know telling them they really should read it....in fact here's a little plug right now. You need to read this book. Better Off Without Jesus, written by Chuck Bomar (3/20/1975 - really, really too bad he wasn't born May 31st). Yeah that's a link to Amazon and I'm not an affiliate so I don't gain anything - buy it where ever you want. I read quite a bit and this is really one of the more convicting books I've read in a long time and it's any easy and engaging read. And in a weird way reading it is increasing my level of contentedness and if I can feel joy and peace while being challenged I figure that's a good thing. 

Today, May 31st, I'm grateful for peonies, and iced tea that tastes like pineapples and mangos, and for sunshine and a God who created all those things, along with asteroids that zip by (whoops, missed it)*. I'm blessed by people who think deeply, pray hard, and share their insights with the rest of us, by those who developed html and the joy of inserting hyper links so that you are only a click away from scads of trivia. I'm claiming joy, leaving the government of my life in stronger Hands and determined to stay engaged in community. Today, May 31st, I delight in the absence of rain and skunk scent. May it be so with you.

Adios May

*"This is a really big asteroid, similar in size to the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and it's getting very close to us," she said. "Fortunately we've been tracking its orbit very carefully so we know with great certainty it won't hit us.

"We don't need to panic, but we do need to pay attention," she said.  Amy Mainzer, who tracks near-Earth objects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.