Unexpected Morning

Today is the day my sister is arriving from New Jersey to spend the weekend with me; she has a business meeting at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis Monday-Wednesday, which means she can come a bit early and play with me.  We have plans to play tourist and drive down to southern Indiana, where we'll spend the night near the site of the historic utopian communities at New Harmony and also see Lincoln's boyhood home.  We Hoosiers feel quite defensive that everyone knows that Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky and practiced law in Springfield, Illinois ("Land of Lincoln"), but fewer people know that he spent his boyhood years right here in Indiana.  In fact, I didn't know that myself until I spent hours poring over the Indiana guidebooks I bought at the airport bookstore a few months ago.  Now I do.  And soon I'll be there in person with Cheryl.

But not as soon as we had planned, for I woke up this morning to find that Cheryl's United Airlines flight was cancelled.  WAH!!!  Instead of arriving in Indy at 8:30 this morning, now she won't arrive until 1.  We would have already been in New Harmony by then, wandering around utopia.

Disappointed as I am, I'm trying to reframe the situation and see this morning as a sort of unexpected gift.  I've been given four and a half hours in Greencastle that I didn't expect to have.  What to do with them?  Catch up on email, of course, and write this blog.  Breakfast at the Blue Door would seem to be in order, as I've neglected my friends there shamefully.  Then I will go to the Putnam County Fairgrounds for the huge Fiber Event being held there, featuring workshops on weaving, spinning, linen from flax to finished product, and more.  I haven't knit a stitch since my last session with the CU Philosophy Department knitting group The Knitted Brow many months ago.  But I do have my knitting bag with me here in Indiana.  Maybe I'll buy some wonderful new yarn today and get inspired to dig out my needles.  Perhaps I can also walk this morning with my friend Nicki and her wonderful little dog, Henry. 

Then I'll hurry to the airport to pick up Cheryl and the real fun of the weekend will begin.  But I might as well have at least some fun in this unexpected gift of a morning.