Food for thought.....

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
- Lawrence J. Peter

Countdown to Spain

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

As I am just days away from seeing London and Spain, I loved seeing this quote on the blog "Everything Everywhere" today.

I spent Saturday trying on summery clothes to wear in the warmer Spain has to offer. I learned that most of my wardrobe is brown, black, or blue. Oh, with some gray interspersed. I just hope I pack everything I need!

=peace

"Education, prosperity, opportunity, food, jobs, health, safety and justice for all=peace"
This was Michael Franti's facebook post on Tuesday night. Now do you see why you should be listening to his music?
Does this make me sound like a hippie??? I did go to Woodstock 99 (and if I ever get a scanner, I would so share those pictures because some are hilarious!). Alas, I also get my hair highlighted, which I think eliminates me from that circle.

Gratitude

"Selfless and noble acts are the most radiant in the biography of souls"-David Thomas

Yesterday in church we talked about gratitude.

Before I even got there, in my car I had been thinking about ways to verbalize my appreciation for a family who was moving across the country and giving their goodbye talks that day. Oddly, the word "glowing" kept coming to mind. I thought it was just my non-morning-person brain functioning at a low level, able only to think of how shiny all their blond hair is. It turned into a metaphor, though. Glowing also relates to being a "shining example" and not hiding your proverbial light under a bushel. What I wanted to express gratitude for was service, fellowship, and example that was offered to me. Later that day, when I sat down to write out a card, I looked up quotes to aptly say thank you and the one above was the first one I read. Pretty amazing that it would follow the visual lighting theme of the day.

Part of the lesson about gratitude posed the question, "Are you thankful for your challenges?". Obviously, that is a harder task than being grateful for the wonderful things in the world like tulips, Nutella, and indoor plumbing. I will spare you my launch into the woes of my life and the requisite lessons I have learned from them, which are the silver linings for which I am grateful. I encourage you to give pause to this thought, though.

Both Oprah and a former clinical supervisor of mine recommended keeping a gratitude journal. There's plenty of research that shows that people who focus on the things they are grateful for each day are happier people. This is often a tool used in couple's therapy, too. I have a palm sized notebook that I can carry with me or easily keep next to my bed, and I try to list at least three things from that day I appreciated. I try not to duplicate these items from day to day but to find new things to be grateful for each day. It's pretty cool how this opens your eyes to see the good in the world, certainly not what we are used to hearing about!

I am by no means Pollyanna. Complaining is a favorite past time, in fact. Curmudgeon comments are a favorite quirk of mine. I guess I have to have something to balance that out, though.

So, in an effort to do so today, I will share my list with you and encourage you to share yours with me or someone else or just to write it down someplace. I always start the same way.

1/24/11
I am grateful for...
1. The turquoise sweatshirt I bought this afternoon
2. The sudoku book a client brought me today to keep me happy at court
3. A warm coat (It was negative two this morning!! Oh, and I still saw a man wearing just a t-shirt; we are hearty folk here in New England!)

Country Strong

Ok, this should be a quick post but I had to comment on seeing Country Strong tonight. I have a good friend who gave me the greatest gift ever-a VIP pass to the local movie theater. Me + 1 can see a free movie every two hours all year. I hope your jaw dropped at that because it continues to blow my mind! The ultimate point is that I see far more movies than a normal human and am now happy to have a place to talk about them. That's where you come in.

So, back to Country Strong.....I loved it! Please note that one thing I DO NOT like is country music. But I love me a little drama, a little love connection, a troubled lead character. Alcoholism may ruin a life but it enhances a movie, in my opinion. This movie is a quote book keeper's dream, too. I wish I had something with me to jot down the one liners because there were a few gems. One I remember because I repeated it over in my head to hang on to. Gwyneth's character admonishes Leighton Meester's character ( probably just botched that spelling pretty horrendously, I know) to "Fall in love with as many things as you can" or at least something very, very close to that. What a great concept! It's like the saying, "If you do something, do it passionately", only a new, improved version.

I consider myself a pretty passionate person. I love some things so thoroughly that I am forever linked in people's minds with certain things (see favorite things column as some of those fall into that category) and I treasure that. It's my legacy. I have a coworker who is super pretty and thin and funny and kind and one day she brought bugels to a meeting. Do you remember bugels? The corn chip things that are shaped like cornucopeias? It's such an odd thing to link with this pretty extrarodinary female but when I was in Target tonight, living the dream, I saw bugels in the dollar bins and instantly thought of her. That will make her infamous long after our days of working together and that's pretty cool. Infamy via Bugels.

On a final note, Leighton's eye makeup throughout the movie is so stunning that it's almost distracting. And for a non-country fan, by the end of the movie I was having fantasies of singing karaoke duets with my husband. I call that success for that film.