My Happy Place

Yesterday was the Pi Beta Phi Founders' Day luncheon for the Tucson club. I was one of the organizers for this event and, as the resident geek, one of my tasks was to print the programs. I went to Office Whatever on Saturday evening and got nice marble-printed paper that I thought would look nice. I got up at 5:30 on Sunday morning to start the print job. The first side (150 copies) printed perfectly, but when I flipped the stack of sheets over to print the reverse, the printer jammed with each sheet. After an hour of trying, I gave up, got dressed, and headed to Kinko's. I walked in, saying I had a crisis, and 15 minutes walked out with 150 perfectly printed and folder programs.

Then I headed for Starbucks to get my Sunday morning smiles.

I was wearing my newest creation, a coral shibori-dyed, sashiko-quilted jacket embellished with silk-screening outside and in. I have somewhere between 40 and 80 hours of work in this jacket and I absolutely love it. As I approached the door of Starbucks, a diminutive (read: cute and petite) woman was talking on her phone and held the door for me. She stopped her conversation to say, "great jacket." I replied, "thanks, I made it." I placed my mocha and scone order and was standing in line waiting for the mocha to be prepared. The woman, now finished with her conversation, came over and asked me to tell her more about the jacket. She is also a fiber person, but not as avid as I. She described the ways she improved her wedding gown ten years ago, how she removed the paste pearls and embellished with freshwater pearls, and so on. After she got her coffee, she came and sat with me and we talked for another half an hour.

She is an R.N. but getting very active in the holistic community in Tucson. She's involved in publishing a directory of holistic activities and practitioners in Tucson, and she's an absolutely fascinating woman.

So this week my happy place gave me not only smiles but a new friend.

Oh, and the luncheon? It went off without a hitch. We had about 100 of the Arizona Alpha actives (members of the collegiate chapter) in attendance — the largest number of actives who have attended this event in my seven years in Tucson. We recognized five women who have reached 50 years of Pi Phi membership this year. The only sadness of the day was that one of the five, my friend Pat Davis, couldn't attend, as she is in hospice with ovarian cancer, not expected to last out the week. My heart goes out to her sister, Ginny Wolfe, and her husband, Baird Davis.

I live for the day we find a cure for cancer.