Lizards, Lizards Everywhere

As sometimes happens when you are working on noticing things, I got up Saturday morning, opened my fridge, and thought of y'all. I have been giving some brain space to the Inner Lizard (but not particularly on Saturday morning) when I opened the fridge to get milk for my coffee (so you KNOW I wasn't fully awake OR functioning at my peak) and the picture on the left is what I saw.

Now -- lest you think someone was playing a crazy prank on me ... let me properly introduce you to my Fridge Lizard. A few years ago (and by a few I might mean closer to 10), I bought a BRAND NEW refrigerator. Some weeks later, my whole family was over for a birthday party and my sister brought the fridge lizard as a gift. (I don't really know why a lizard -- who can really fathom the thought processes of that dear brain) -- Anyway, after showing him to me -- she put him in the fridge and that was that. He has been in my fridge every since. Even when I moved, he moved too (traded in the white and up to stainless!)

I see him everyday. He is always in there. The kids don't bother him or take him out or play with him or hide him anywhere in or out of the fridge. When I notice him, he makes me think of my sister and that makes me smile. But I don't always notice him -- he has just been waiting there ready to be notice when I have taken the time to learn something that makes me look at him in a different light --like Saturday morning.

Now, that's one lizard but....then....I went into my closet while I was waiting for the coffee maker to do its magic and what else did I find??? My fav hat was sitting on the shelves -- just where I left it -- to be put on at a moments notice to cover really bad hair when I take the kids to the bus stop in the morning. I love this hat! It is my almost constant summer companion.



After noticing the fridge lizard and thinking how ironic it is that I have one (considering the posts I have been writing), the hat was another little revelation. I am surrounded by lizards. And I was so much quicker to pick up on the second one once I had made the connection of the first. I wasn't trying to think about them -- I wasn't writing a post in my head (like I sometimes do). The first one was just there and the second one recognized even quicker.

Keep your mind open and sometimes things that have been sitting right in front of you jump into clarity when you aren't even looking for them. Sometimes you need to learn a new way of thinking about something and then the next step seems obvious.