A New Beginning

"Good morning, Ms. Howell."
"I loved your book!"
"Thank you for coming to our class."

What a wonderful way to start a beautiful Sunday morning! At church today, fifth and sixth graders greeted me at the door. They had read True Friends. What a lift for me! With that and today's sunny, spring-like weather I'm ready for a new beginning.

Since last October, I've been tied up with so many things, including the last nine months of 2007 whenI battled with what I and my doctors thought was some kind of contagious crud. Then the consenses in December was that my old nemesis, allergy to almost everything, had me in its grip. Now that I'm shooting myself in the leg every Monday morning, I can breathe again and even think. Woo hoo!

I'm ready to go full steam ahead, but everything is now on hold. Why? I have federal jury duty for the month of March and will report to the Federal Building tomorrow morning at 8:30. I'm not complaining. I've always wanted to be on a jury but never been called before. I plan to chalk jury duty up as a real learning experience. Who knows when I may have a character in court? So I plan to be the alert, bright-eyed juror in the second row, taking all in and doing my civic duty at the same time.

I'll let you know how it turns out.