I have been craving these locally made potato chips and dip for well over a month. My husband brought them home for me tonight. What a sweetheart!

Last night’s dream created a dilemma for me. I’ve often wondered what I would do in a similar situation,

In the dream, I was in Rome, NY, a lovely city not far from my home city. I was visiting the family of a school friend–why they were living in Rome, I have no clue. I was cooking dinner for them, when one of her parents called me on my cell phone and told me to look out the window. One side of the house was bright and sunny, the other was scary-dark. And in the distance, I could see a funnel cloud. A tornado.

In the meantime, I was called into a trial in another room in the house. For some reason, I’m sitting in the press box, which was also the jury box. There were people there from my current day job, and somehow this trial was related to the day job. I was stressing about how we needed to get water and supplies and get into the basement because of the tornado, and the jury was arguing about the dial-designation of WKRP in Cincinnati. No one from the current job understood the danger of the weather, and nothing I said had any impact. Every time I looked out a window, the dark, swirling mass was growing closer.

I also wanted to take photos of the tornado and text them to former colleagues in newsrooms back in my home city–except I didn’t know to whom I should text them. I didn’t have anyone’s personal number in my cell phone, and I was torn between the NBC affiliate (which essentially simulcasts on my old station’s channel) and the ABC affiliate. My desire to give someone “live, local, breaking” was stymied by reality.

I was really glad when I  wakened.

Sometimes, especially when a lot of Kool-Aid is being distributed and consumed, small acts of kindness–including a kind word or two–can make a world of difference to a person. And Karma works two ways, for both Kool-Aid and kindness.