Today's fortune: October 17, 2011 - PHOTO ESSAY

Today's fortune: Wish you happiness.

This three-word gem is by far the shortest, and the one least resembling a complete sentence, I've received in nearly 300 tries so far. But it came on the perfect day. Although we celebrated it with a party on Saturday, today is actually Jamie's birthday. I took the day off work and Jamie shrugged off substitute teaching assignments so we could spend it together. Today's fortune wished me happiness - and a day on the town with my wife, a classic Kansas City day, gave us both a memory's worth of happiness.

We began the day meeting Jamie's mom at one of our favorite Indian restaurants for a terrific buffet lunch. CARROT UPDATE - The orange stuff at the front of the picture is called Gajar Halwa, and it's a sweet carrot pudding.

Afterward, we shopped around the Westport area, including a stop at Pryde's Old Westport, a kitchen supply store and one of the most unique shops in the city. Then we headed to Crown Center for more shopping, including a stop at a wonderful-smelling chocolatier, where Jamie and I sampled some cake pops - a small ball of cake dipped in frosting and impaled on a stick. Mine was strawberry flavored...

... and Jamie enjoyed a chocolate, Halloween-themed pop.

One of the boutiques at Crown Center featured a perplexing deal on greeting cards.

Finally we drove downtown and then across the 12th Street Viaduct to the West Bottoms, where Jamie and I spent some time at Jaskki's, a cool hookah cafe, where Jamie made a furry friend named Loki.

We were also treated to a grimy-but-beautiful industrial view of the Kansas City skyline, some West Bottoms warehouses and the 12th Street Viaduct.

Now we're back home to watch a movie. Jamie is using her birthday prerogative to pick the film, and she's making me suffer through "Beaches." But I don't mind. I was blessed with happiness today, and the chickiest of all chick flicks won't take that away from me.

Happy birthday, darling.

Today's fortune: August 24, 2011

Today's fortune: The love of your life will appear in front of you unexpectedly!

I had a pretty good day today at the ol' widget factory. The new inventory was fairly light, and I was able to get caught up on a bunch of stuff, including all the old widgets that I would have polished up last week if I'd had the time.

But at one point today, it looked like the day was taking a turn for the worse. I was working on this one particular widget, and the customer was being difficult. Really difficult. We ended the call on bad terms, and my frustration level was climbing.

Then it happened.

My cell phone was sitting on the desk in front of me. As I was processing the widget I'd just finished, it started to vibrate.

When I receive a text message, the photo of the person sending the message pops up on the screen. The message I received was, "Hi babe, hows ur day? Love u!" And the picture that appeared was this:

That's one of my favorite photos of the love of my life. That's my Jamie. And that's the picture I see when she texts me.

And like magic (the magic of computer chips, satellite signals and wireless devices), Jamie's image appeared unexpectedly in front of me.

It's the kind of thing I wouldn't have thought about had I not read this fortune today.

Today's fortune: April 10, 2011, by Jamie Kelsey!

Today's fortune: You will bring sunshine into someone's life.

When I asked my husband what his fortune was this morning, he got a weird look on his face.

First of all, let me say that I consider Matt to be slightly introverted, so seeing him go outside of his comfort zone to share this experience with those around him makes me very happy - like when he lets his coworkers make all of his decisions for a day.

When I pressed him about today’s fortune, he said he wasn’t quite sure how to find out if he brought sunshine to anyone’s life. “You bring sunshine to my life every day!” I said. His demeanor changed again, and he looked up at me shyly and asked, “Would you write today’s post?”

My heart melted. And that was the first little bit of sunshine he would bring me today.

But it did not end there. I believe Matt has written about our Sunday morning ritual of reading the newspaper in bed. Usually, Matt goes out to get the paper and I scrounge up something for us to nibble on while we read. But Matt had awoken early this morning, slipped out of the bedroom and came back with the paper AND some bagels and cream cheese. All I had to do was shake the sleep out of my head and sit up!

Then, as if he timed the whole thing, once we had our paper laid out in front of us and our bagels were ready to schmear, he turned on “CBS Sunday Morning” just in time to hear that unmistakable trumpet opening. And I got another touch of sunshine…

Get it?

Today, “Sunday Morning” was all about animals. Matt hasn’t talked a lot about my obsession with animals on this blog, but I am – obsessed. This obsession even led me to give up eating meat nearly two years ago.

I believe this obsession nearly drove Matt crazy in the early years of our marriage. We lived in northwest Missouri one particularly cold winter. Our apartment building seemed to attract a large number of feral or otherwise stray cats. I fed them on the occasions when I found myself with a spare can of tuna. (Matt still doesn’t realize it, because he would have freaked out if I’d bought actual cat food, but we bought a lot of tuna that year) Well, I would’ve liked to kick Matt out that winter (because he was allegedly “allergic” to cats) and brought those poor babies in out of the cold. But none of them allowed me to get close. I took all the spare blankets and any crummy towels we owned and lined cardboard boxes with them. Sure enough, after a few days, we had ourselves a little kitty boarding house on our back patio.

I say all this to make one last point. Matt brings sunshine to my life every day because he loves me, and I know he would do anything for me.

Case in point: when we moved back to Kansas City, we were working complete opposite schedules and I became very lonely. One Saturday in October, two weeks before my hmphsfy^th  birthday, my wonderful companion Matt introduced me to another wonderful companion - our first of three cats, JoJo. And luckily Matt had mostly grown out of his allergy (just as I’d suspected), and he has since become a cat person.

Sometimes, with my work and school schedule, Matt and I don’t get to see a whole lot of each other (should I buy him a cat now?). But through hectic times, losses, bad moods or whatever the world throws at us on a given day, Matt always finds a way to bring sunshine to my life. Even on days when he’s being the biggest BUTT, I look at my three wonderful cats, and I know he loves me.

- Jamie Kelsey