Today's Karma

Christopher and I got back from Montreal (and Quebec City), yesterday. We specifically planned to return on Saturday so that we could have a day to recuperate, do laundry, and readjust to being at home before the week started. Christopher's sister picked us up at the airport last night with food and drink in hand (she made pumpkin "whoopie pies" with buttercream frosting filling, and brought them with sodas), and it was one more meal to add to the list of amazing food we'd had all week. 

I promise to tell you all about that trip in the next couple days. I'll fill you in on walking through the rainy port in Old Quebec and marvelling at the Chinese lanterns in the Montreal Botanical Gardens. And I can't wait to tell you about the food! We ate and ate, hoping that all of the walking would help our pants keep fitting. We were treated to everything from an amazing "potluck" which was part of the four-course "snack" my aunt made for us the first night we got in, all the way to a ten-course meal (with six different wines) which we had our final night in Quebec City. Oh. And the Maple Sugar cotton candy. And the aperitifs. And cheese courses. And macarons. And...

But that's for the next post (or three). For right now I have my own little story to tell:

As many of you know--and some of you may have guessed by now--I enjoy the idea of Karma and how some kind of cosmic balance often works out for people. This is not to say that good things always happen to good people, but sometimes the world does even itself out.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon. I was shopping to fill the fridge with milk and yogurt for the coming week, and also buying some supplies to try to duplicate a dessert my aunt made for us while in Montreal. I was standing in line getting ready to check out, musing on the amazing meals of the past week. And then I saw it: The display of "food shelf" bags--the ones you can buy for $5 and donate to the food shelf either at the grocery store, or somewhere else. 

Mind you, I saw them, but I didn't pay the closest attention. Instead, I was looking at my grocery cart, longing for the amazing cheeses and meat we bought in Montreal. And I was looking at the ingredients in my cart and imagining how bad for my health the Chewy Bars would be to have in the house. 

But then I thought about how much I had spent on travel and food in the past week--and how much I was going to be spending on the ingredients for those bars alone--and I grabbed one of the bags and put it onto the conveyer belt. 

Five dollars isn't much. It's less than a meal at McDonald's. It's even less than a meal at Taco Bell. It's not like I was doing anything all that great. But when I walked toward the door and dropped the bag into the almost-empty donation bin... well... it felt really good. 

I figured that warm fuzzy feeling was my Karmic return. It felt great. Just what I needed on my first day back from vacation. 

As I was walking outside, I stopped on the sidewalk so I wouldn't be hit by the ever-present rush of cars going by. It took a moment for me to realize that the rush wasn't present. I looked up and a young guy in an SUV had stopped off to my left--He was waiting for me to push my cart into the parking lot. I looked up and he waved me across. I smiled and waved back as I crossed the lanes to my car.

Karma. Some days it makes life worthwhile.