Fried Rice and Solitaire.

We went out for lunch to the Hot Wok today.... which means that we have enough left-overs for dinner. That restaurant is one of the larger Oriental/Asian restaurants around this part of town, and in my husband's opinion, they have the only "fried rice" in southeast Texas that even remotely tastes like the fried rice from the Chinese restaurants up in NY.

You can get a lot of delicious foods here, in the hundreds and thousands of restaurants from Galveston to Houston and beyond, but it's nearly impossible to get Chinese food that's as good as what you can get in NY. And you can add pizza to that as well.... only NY "pizza places" have really good pizza. Everything else is just "almost as good as NY." As for a good NY bagel, we don't even expect to find those anywhere but NY.

But there are other things here, which we love just as well. And, in the words of the wife of Professor Randy Pausch (from last night's "Prime Time" show).... It is what it is. I think that will be my new mantra from now on. It is what it is. Such a simple phrase which applies to anything and everything. If it indeed is what it is, then the trick is to just accept whatever it is, and carry on. Life is just too darned short, no matter how long you may live, to get caught up in meaningless nonsense. And a lot of the little every-day things that we complain about are just that-- meaningless nonsense. Anyone who doesn't have really big things to worry about should be counting their lucky stars.

And heaven knows, I've been trying not to worry about things that I cannot change. Everyone's life is just that-- their life. I can't fix it, change it, alter it, or make things all gone or all better. I wish, though, that I could..... and right now I can list half a dozen friends and family members that I would love to wave a magic wand over and cure their illnesses, cushion their falls, soothe their fears, and just make them happy enough to dance on tables and healthy enough to live to celebrate their 100th birthdays. I won't mention names.... they are always in my mind, no matter what I'm doing these days. I am determined not to worry about them all, because then I can't sleep, but I can't stop myself from thinking about all of them.

So........ I play Solitaire. That old card game that my grandfather used to play at the kitchen table. Solitaire. My grandfather would play that game every afternoon. He said it put his mind at rest. My grandmother said he just liked to play cards, plain and simple. I can see, though, how it did "rest" his mind. After you deal out those cards, your mind is just on the cards....... your eyes go from the cards in your hand to the cards on the table. Hand-eye coordination.... a great thing for the brain to be busy with, at any rate.

There I am, at the dining room table, for a little while just about every afternoon now. Less than half an hour, usually, just enough time to play Solitaire the way Grandpa taught me. I don't know what's better for me--- the hand-eye coordination, the concentration, or the good memories of Grandma's kitchen that come flooding back as soon as I shuffle those cards.

I used to watch Grandpa playing cards all the time..... for as long as he played, I was content to sit there and watch what he was doing. I don't know how old I was, but I remember asking him to let me show him that I knew how to play the same game he was playing. He handed me the deck, and I dealt out the cards just the way he did. I guess I had watched him so many times that I just memorized what to do. I remember Grandpa telling Grandma (in Italian)-- "Look at this... she knows how to play!" I knew how to deal out the cards, and Grandpa showed me his strategies with the game.

After that, there were lots of afternoons when Grandpa would be at his usual spot at the head of the kitchen table with his deck of cards, and I'd be in one of the side chairs, with my own deck of cards. We would play Solitaire together.... every once in a while, Grandpa needed to remind me that I couldn't put a red six on a red seven, or that I needed a picture-card to start a new line.

When I first started playing Solitaire again (a few weeks ago now), it took me the longest time to "complete" a game. When I finally did, though, without even thinking about it, as I put the last card on its suited-pile, I said out loud "This one's for you, Grandpa."

Such memories. No matter what we do and where we go, and no matter how far we get in this life, we are all just filled up to the brim with memories.