Colorful Sprinkles

Every morning no matter if it is 6am or 7am, when there is movement on the bed our puppy Charlie gets the tail wagging. She is crate trained and so she sleeps in her crate at night, so mornings are one of her favorite times. She watches for movement of any kind from my hubby or I and she starts with this quiet whine. Then when she sees that it’s working she starts the tail of happiness. Slow and steady at first and then when the door opens it is full force wag. This isn’t her only weapon of choice. She has to have a toy, it doesn’t matter which one but she must have one. Then it’s all out waggle time. Her tail wags so hard her butt moves with it. Then as she is waggling her prance around the room with her toy in her mouth finishes off the routine. Most days we are up and getting ready to take her for a walk with her brother Jorj, but weekends, weekends are the day of snuggling in bed before starting the day.

Charlie is the best kind of alarm clock. It’s not always easy to want to get out of bed much less get the day started. She makes it that much easier. She is my morning sprinkles. My son had his birthday party this last weekend and requested cupcakes. So as he and his friends were carted off to the movie theater to watch his chosen movie my daughter volunteered to make the cupcakes. At first she was going to make the cupcakes black since my son likes to play Dungeons and Dragons but the end result was pink. Go figure? When I asked what happened she said she decided to go with red but got pink instead. The fix to the pink was to add sprinkles.

Sprinkles at the pop to the top of a cupcake, they had the pizzaz to the hot fudge sundae, they are the fun to the whip cream on a fruit smoothy. When we interact with people we can be the sprinkles on top. During tax season one of the businesses has a person out near the road that holds a sign telling people to come in and get their taxes done. This person is suppose to catch your eye with the sign and with their movements. Most of the time it was a person standing there that looked bored and cold, but on most mornings as I drove by I would see this gal just seemed happy. She waved at people but she did it with a smile. That’s adding on the sprinkles!

We do our day by day, day in and day out. Most of us have our routines. Parents work to get kids ready for the day, men and women get ready for work all the time. Kids navigate school, friends, peer pressures as best as they can. Let’s face it we all have stress in some way and capacity. It’s not easy to be the sprinkles for someone else when you feel overwhelmed in your own life. You know what though? Actually adding in the sprinkle time will make your day better too.

This weekend was full of things that needed to get done. It was also full of cupcakes with sprinkles, cornhole with my son and his friends, and a surprise visit to an airport and hour plus away just to see my sister and her hubby before they hoped in a rental car to get to their final destination. This weekend was very tiring, but I am a happier person because of the fun I got to have with other people. I got to be sprinkles for others. There is a time and place for everything. This includes going out of your way to do something fun or special for someone else.

Charlie is an automatic sprinkle spreader. She can’t help it. We can become an automatic sprinkle spreader with practice. Smile at someone you don’t know. Look someone in the eye. Call a friend and say “Hi!” Text someone who may be doing something hard and tell them they are doing a good job. Make some cookies, try a new recipe and invite a friend over. Walk the dog (yes even dogs at time needs some “sprinkles”). There are so many ways to spread joy. We just have to get past what our tunnel vision is to see where more joy is needed. Until next time:

Kindness and joy are free, sprinkle that stuff everywhere!