Secret Umbrella Society

Fact #1 -- People are always leaving umbrellas behind at restaurants and never returning for them.

Fact #2 -- People who own umbrellas never have them when they need them ... Like when they're out walking or running to catch a bus.

After considering these facts, Robin created a solution she hopes will catch on. Whenever she goes to a restaurant, she asks whether a black umbrella she left there a few weeks ago was in the lost and found and of course, there are always several. Robin stockpiles the umbrellas in her car and when she seems someone walking in the rain, or running with a newspaper atop their head, she gives them an umbrella and asks them to return it to the umbrella universe by doing the same favor for someone else one day. She tells them that they are now a member of the Secret Umbrella Society and gives them a little membership card she made herself. She can hardly believe how happy this makes people.

Robin secretly hopes that one day when she's walking and it begins to rain ... someone will offer her one of those black umbrellas. Then, at least for that one shining moment, she will feel like all is right with the world. ... 'cause even though a little rain must fall into everyone's life, sometimes we need a secret umbrella.

This tile was inspired by a friend who believes that if she loses her black umbrella she can get another from the umbrella universe (i.e. any restaurant). Robin just took it a step further. Left Robin at the Dunkin Donuts at Southland Shopping Center on State Road 84 in Fort Lauderdale, as she needed a nice cup of coffee.

In other news, Feisty Little Fred, the cat-on-a-tile who went out for happy hour on a Friday and then had a series of adventures that landed him Tennessee six weeks later, made headlines earlier this week in The Leaf Chronicle. Now he is safely settled in at the home of a young artist named Sami.