Que Sera Sera

Folks have odd habits - or rather I should say funny little "rituals" to bring on good luck.  There are the old wive's tales of things one should avoid to prevent bad luck. A prime example is the obsessed fan who refuses to change his underwear as long as his team is winning. Or the single women who have tossed thousands of dollars in fountains in hopes of a man. (That made for a great movie in 1954, long before my time - I might add.)

Of course the Gullah culture had a whole issue with the haints (ghosts or lost souls) that they said lurked about. They would paint all the door and window frames of their houses blue to keep the haints out. For years you could still see houses with the blue around the doors and windows. Now they are all but gone - the blue windows that is, I cannot speak for the haints.

One of my Mama's favorite songs was "Que Sera Sera". Of course the irony there was my asking her what that meant.  

She used to tell me things like:

• Warm hands, cold heart, Cold hands, warm heart
• Washing a car will bring rain
• It is bad luck to open an umbrella in the house
• Lady bugs bring good luck
• You must get out of bed on the same side you got in on or you will have bad luck

That last one was always confusing to me as a child, given I was constantly being told I had "gotten up on the wrong side of the bed" when I came down for breakfast in one of my more surly moods. But I digress.

I personally have found that every time I get myself organized, my house in order, something major changes in my life. Some examples in my past have included the simple act of getting a new office set-up at work. At one of my earlier jobs, I had just gotten all the furniture installed and finally moved around as I liked, when I was offered a better job with another organization. 

When I was with the Judge we had extremely nice chambers. However given all the space we had, I had this very small desk. Finally after 14 years we remodeled the office. My junior size work space was replaced with this much larger (appropriately sized) desk that made my daily life so much better. I was able to reorganize and make my office more efficient. Naturally, it wasn't nine months before the Judge was diagnosed with early onset alzheimer's and I found myself closing the office and packing everything to be shipped off - including my nice desk.

Over the past several weeks I have gotten very industrious. I have gone through my orchids, thrown out any dead plants, divided some, and re-potted and fertilized all of my them. I have reorganized all my photography files and made sure all my external back-ups (as well as cloud backups) are working. I have cleaned and filled my fountain pens. Then I went through the random papers, notes, and bills that were scattered about, filed the relevant ones, and trashed the rest. 

Now, does this mean I am close to winning the lottery? Is some other fortune coming my way? I dare to think. Whatever the winds bring I will have at least organized part of my life. So as long as I have cold hands, get out of bed on the same side every morning, don't open an umbrella in the house, and avoid the haints - life should be OK. 

"The future's not ours to see, . . . What will be, will be,"

On second thought, maybe I should go get some blue paint.