Cake...and finding one's bliss

“Love is like a good cake; you never know when it’s coming, but you better eat it when it does.” – C Joybell C. I read that quote this morning and I started thinking….about Karen Smith…and finding one's bliss.

Karen Smith loves cake. Four words clearly defining sheer bliss for an old Country Coach Friend. Cake.  Chocolate, vanilla, cherry chip, Hostess Cupcake…it’s all good. Let us eat cake! That was her mantra. In fact, one birthday I recall I brought Karen a big box of Hostess Cupcakes for her to take home—not to share. Which is just as well, for take them home she did. Good memories of Country Coach friends.

We’re all looking for our “cake in life. That place, that state of mind or being, wherein we have that moment of bliss and know “Life is good.”

 For the Kellogg family of Colorado, they have found their “cake” in selling their home, loading up the 12 kids and hitting the open road in a motorcoach full-time. Home schooling all but the oldest in the mornings and enjoying life in the afternoons. “Every day is a weekend,” father Kellogg says. (You can read about their adventures at www.KelloggShow.com)

For others it may be weekend getaways—you close the office at 5 o’clock Friday and you head to the coast or the Cascades, or to a campground off the I-5 corridor in the middle of wine country here in Oregon to enjoy a wine tasting weekend. All from the comfort of your RV.

And then there are others, a younger set perhaps, who plan for that annual adventure in the motorhome (or tent, or toyhauler trailer). Like my second son Jack. The Anderson family makes an annual trip to Arizona. The parents (and their parents friends) winter in Arizona. The children, now age thirty-somethings,  and their children head out in late February and spend ten days playing in the sand with them every year. With motorhome loaded with toys for the kids, and towing the adult toy, their Jeep, behind, the kids and grandkids join grandparents for some multi-generational memory-making. It doesn’t get any better than this. Sheer Bliss.

When the kids were growing up, we loved to load up the pickup and the tent supplies and head to the coast, or to the Sisters, Oregon area to hike MacArthur Rim with our extended family …aunts and uncles, cousins…all enjoying the beauty of this Pacific northwest paradise while ‘roughing’ it.

I don't know what your “Cake” may be, but now is the time to eat it. For life is short. Take the trips, enjoy the adventures, create the memories. Whatever the flavor of your “cake”—pursue it with passion!