Is your glass (of green beer) half full? Make your friends and neighbors green with envy on St. Paddy’s Day. Fu For Thought is having its first contest and the prize is a free one-hour makeover! This is not one of those blasted sweepstakes things…there are no accountants doing any tabulating or anything, this is just a wee bit of fun to counteract all the doom and gloom on TV and the Interwebs these days.
To win:
1. It’d be better if you lived in the Austin city limits, but if you are an existing client, I will come wherever you are.
2. Leave a comment here with brief details about one of your luckiest days.
3. The writer of my favorite story wins, so make it a good one. If you’re going to say something like, “the day I met my wife was the luckiest of my life…” then it’d better be because you missed a layover connection and wifey was on your alternate flight home and not just because a friend set you up.
4. This mini-makeover must occur on March 17th, 2009 and will comprise a one hour room redesign. Room Fu’s Design Guru will “shop” throughout your house, using your own furnishings and decorative accessories to makeover the room of her choosing.
5. Winner’s before and after photos will appear on a future blog post.
Good luck!
This one is easy for me, although it might not be fair for a BFF to win the contest, eh?
My luckiest day was when I got a very special call in October 2007 while visiting NYC for the first time. My husband and I had just met up with a very old friend of mine from childhood whom I hadn't seen in 10+ years, and we'd just ordered our first drink. I got a call and let it go to voicemail. When I listened to it 10 mins. later, my ears started ringing and I got a tingly feeling like no other. We had a potential match! We'd only been signed up a few months, but there was a young couple very interested in us. It was too late to call back that night, and my husband and I barely slept … The next day we read an email and saw photos of the birthparents and it was an instant connection. You know the rest of the story, Robin. We had Blaise about 5 weeks later. 🙂
Talk about hitting the lottery, Karen. We shared vicarious goosebumps that night too, and feel very fortunate to have Baby Blaise in our "fambly."
Here's an entry that was emailed to me today…
It was 3 PM on a Friday afternoon, about this time of year. I was happily ensconced in my flower shop in the gold country of California, starting to think about the weekend ahead. My orders were finished for the day and ready for the next. The floral refrigerator was depleted but not entirely bare. It was almost time for a cup of tea when the phone rang. A long-time client was calling, hoping that I could put together a few arrangements for a surprise party on Saturday. Ok I said, knowing that I would be able to compose to her liking.
Upon asking for further details, it turned out that she would need about a dozen centerpieces for a reception in a car barn. The gentleman who owned the barn was in the business of restoring vintage cars and had quite a collection of his own which were housed in a climate controlled facility replete with kitchen and bathrooms. He had just eloped with his gal in Las Vegas. The newly wed couple were being feted back home in Calaveras County (of Mark Twain and jumping frog fame) the next day.
I set about gathering glassware and started to wonder if indeed there were enough flowers to accomplish what I had promised. Then the phone rang. It was my client’s husband calling to say he had added five more tables. Nervously I updated the order to seventeen, knowing that I was being faced with a professional challenge and determined to prevail. Living in the foothills of the Sierra, my shop was situated fifty miles from any floral wholesaler. So I got busy forcing open every Asiatic lily bud on the stems available. Gerbera daisies, colorful callas and a few bunches of tulips would have to biblically stretch like loaves and fishes. And then the phone rang.
After further thought, my client needed two more arrangements for the bars. Of course I agreed and changed the count to nineteen. I hung up the phone and began to sweat. It was nearly closing time so I locked the door and directed all my attention to the task at hand. My heart was thumping as I cut each stem. Between the adrenaline and anxiety I worked on the arrangements in a frenetic blur. Upon completion I stepped back, pleased with the results after having wiped out every last flower in the cooler. But what more could I add…
I closed up shop and stopped at the grocery store before heading home. While gathering vittles, I found the missing ingredient—not for dinner but for the arrangements. In the produce department were some unusually plump asparagus, probably only a dozen stems per bunch. They were fresh green with a tinge of purple around the margins, just the bit whimsy I felt was needed.
To make a long story short, I delivered the order the next day, replete with vegetables. The centerpieces were a hit, my clients were thrilled and I was triumphant. Call it luck, karma, talent or whatever, it was an exercise that I will always remember fondly.
Ruben and I were busily preparing for our destination wedding in 2003. Because it was illegal to have a religious ceremony in Mexico without having a civil ceremony first, we we planned on going to the courthouse to get legally married the day before we left. That happened to be the day before Thanksgiving so we planned on getting there early since the courthouse closed at noon.
Thinking that getting a marriage license would require the same amount of paperwork (or more) as getting a driver's license, I gathered all pertinent documents. We went to the courthouse but after going through the metal detectors and getting up to the marriage license office, I realized I was missing most of my papers, including my passport and birth certificate. I must have dropped them somewhere. We frantically scoured the building looking for the papers but they were nowhere to be found. How was I going to get to Mexico without a passport or a birth certificate?
We went home and began working the phone, calling relatives in Illinois (where I was born) and getting them to go to the courthouse. We called friends who worked for members of Cognress trying to get an expedited passport. We wouldn't be able to get either a birth certificate or a passport within a day and with the next day being Thanksgiving, we probably wouldn't be able to get one of the documents until the next week. That would mean we'd have to postpone our flight and possibly not get to Mexico in time for the wedding.
The courthouse was going to close at noon so we decided to go back there to look some more and at least try to get the marriage license without the papers. As it turns out, all you needed to get married in Virginia is a driver's license!
We got the license and started walking through the parking lot, headed to the office of the magistrate who would perform the civil ceremony. As we walked across the parking lot, we noticed a thin piece of paper blowing over the ground until it landed under a car's tire. We walked over and picked it up – it was my birth certificate! That was all I needed to get to Mexico!
We had the civil ceremony performed, got on a plane the next day, and had our wedding on Dec. 6, 2003.
My luckiest day was April 3, 1999. Let me preface by saying out of everything bad that happens, something wonderful will come of it. My step-brother was killed in a car accident. I was at my step-sisters house and was ready to go home after a long, sad day. She asked me to please stay a little longer because her dad and half-brother were coming in from Dallas. Good thing I stayed. They arrived at about 10:30 at night and that is the first time I laid eyes on my future husband. I was in a relationship with another man at the time, but when I shook Matthew's hand it was like electricity was sent through my body. I always describe it from a scene in the movie the Green Mile. It was a feeling like I had never experienced before. That night when I got home, I was sad, but felt happy at the same time. I could not stop thinking about him. We began dating and married 16 months later. We now have two beautiful children together. What makes this story so interesting is that my brother died five years earlier, in 1994. He and my step-brother were close and were/are now together. We feel like they had something to do with our coming together. Another interesting fact is that my husband's father's first wife is now my step-mother. No, their is no blood relation or any of the sort involved, just two people that were meant to be together for life.
The luckiest day of my life was in 1992 when I hit a deer with my car.
I was in undergrad at the time and I was BROKE–but at least my car was paid for.
The car had a good bit of damage, but was fixable. But because it was old and not worth much, the insurance company wanted to total it. My dad talked the adjuster into fixing it instead.
The next semester, I quit my hourly job and took an unpaid internship at the state capitol, which led to my decision to go to law school and become a lawyer–a career I love.
If the adjuster had totaled my car, I would have had to buy a new one. If I had had a car payment, I wouldn't have been able to quit my job and take the unpaid internship and who knows what I would be doing now.