Totally Unexpected Visit

I have to confess that Fridays are never quite the same since that fateful Friday the thirteenth in 2017 because praying the Sorrowful Mysteries on a Friday often brings me back to the flight I had taken on that particular day.  

The rosary beads were my companion on that unplanned flight to the home country.  If I had flown on a Thursday, I would have been praying the Luminous Mysteries.  If I had left on Saturday, I would have been praying the Joyful Mysteries. If I had waited for Sunday, I would have been praying the Glorious Mysteries.  Alas, it was a Friday. The reason for the trip home was sad enough so praying the Sorrowful Mysteries during the flight just added to the sadness and tears.

(Interestingly enough, praying the Sorrowful Mysteries on a Tuesday does not have the same effect on me.  It is my personal Friday syndrome.)

As I walked to church this morning praying the rosary, that same sadness hit me again.  I missed Father even if I knew he was in a better place.  I recalled one of the shows I had recently seen where this lady was talking about how she had asked her ailing mother to send her a cardinal as a sign after death that she was in heaven.  The  cardinal was not a common bird where they lived.  Yet on the day after the mother's funeral, she and her sister heard a thud on the window and found it was a red cardinal.  They took this as a sign from their mother.  When they tried to release the cardinal, it flew back and stayed on the sister's shoulder for a while.

Did I believe in these signs and wonders?  

Honestly, I am skeptical person.  I told myself, that is a TV show, this is real life.  My thoughts turned to stories about people who had butterflies visit them which they considered as  signs from departed loved ones.  

I was walking to mass and praying the rosary, so in my resolve to dismiss the distraction, I said to myself, 'Fine, send me a butterfly.'  

The likelihood of a butterfly was pretty slim as far as I was concerned.  I hardly see butterflies around here.  So asking for a butterfly was a long shot and enough to dismiss the distraction.

The day moved on as any other day would.  I sat in front of the PC working from home as usual.  My workstation is right beside the glass door to the garden and the blinds would often be partially opened to let the light in.  At about 11AM, I decided to shift the angle of the blinds and look outside.  Anyone who has seen me at work would know that these breaks are few and far between.  And yet, at that exact time when I looked outside the window and shifted the blinds, there it was... a beautiful blue butterfly. 

The butterfly just flew past the rose bushes then left.

If I had not stopped at that exact time, I would not have seen the butterfly.  If I had looked out the window a few seconds later, I would have missed it.  If I had not changed the angle of the blinds, I would have missed it.  

I was meant to see that butterfly.

I believe that God has sent me the butterfly to cheer me up.  Of course, it could also God telling me that I should take more breaks from work.  

Whatever it may be, I was happy for the visit.

And by the way, Happy Lunar New Year!

It's All in the Genes

We had such a hard time trying to figure out what to get MyGirl for Christmas.  She has been working part time for quite a while and with her eligibility to get Jobkeeper payments, she usually had extra cash to buy the things she needed. As Christmas approached last year, whenever we asked her what she wanted, she would reply, "I don't need anything."  Eventually, we were able to extract an answer out of her.  She wanted to get one of those ancestry DNA tests.

(I teased her saying that I was 100% sure she was my kid and we didn't need a DNA test for that.  She rolled her eyes.)   

There were several local options available, but in the end, we finally settled on 23andMe.  She did her research and figured that the additional cost would be worth it because the 23andMe ancestry breakdown seemed more detailed. 

The Fedex truck passed by one day in December to pick up the sample and off went a tiny bit of MyGirl to the US.  We waited in anticipation for the results of her Christmas gift to arrive.  

We were expecting the results to come in March but they came in today!

I was with her when she got definitive proof that she is Filipino-Chinese with a hit of Spanish blood.

94.9% Chinese & Southeast Asian.  That's pretty solid.

Aside from the ancestry details, the report provided information related to appearance and senses based on genetics.  This report included things like possible hair colour, texture or thickness, likely eye colour or earlobe type (detached or not), the possibility of bunions, dimples, cleft chin, widow's peak, or flat feet, whether or not she was likely to have fear of heights or public speaking, even what her ice cream flavour preference might be, etc.  

Of all the details found in the Traits Report, I think the one she found most justifying was the result related to Cilantro Taste Aversion.  It reported "slightly higher odds of disliking cilantro."  

Am glad that she was happy with her Christmas gift.  She can now confidently claim that she has Chinese and Spanish blood.