things i love about spring.

Things I love about spring...

• Warmer weather.
• Backyard barbeques - someday I'll have a house with a deck and a grill, and I'll know how to use it, and I'll have people over every weekend.
• My birthday - on Friday the 13th this year!
• Things blooming everywhere.
• Watching Harvey and Dakota enjoy the backyard.
• Smoothies (am I only the person that starts to crave smoothies and ice cream when the weather gets warmer?)

Things I don't love about spring...

• Pollen. But thanks to some heavy-duty doses of Zyrtec, I'm not letting that hold me back from enjoying this season.

What am I missing? What are your favorite things about spring?

watching the sun rise over the ocean.

If you know me at all, you know that I am not a morning person. And though it was really hard to do it, I got up early this past weekend to watch the sun rise over the ocean (and cross goal #19 off my list).

My friend Mary remembered this goal, so when her husband wanted to get up early to go surfing, she called me.


Oh, and it was beautiful. Not as much red as I expected, but still gorgeous.


I took Harvey with me (which brings me half-way to crossing #9 off my list). She wasn't crazy about the water, but she loved the sand, and loved being around other people. She also loved chasing the birds, which meant I got a work out walking her.

sunday.

Ever have one of those really good days, where you fall into bed at night knowing that you really like your life? The kind you just want to bottle up, so you can pull it out on a day where life seems so much harder?

The temperature was 63 on Sunday, after several days of gray skies and nearly constant rain. I love the first day of warmer weather (and this was our second one this year). I opened the windows and let the dogs play outside, and even joined them for a while.

My day didn't actually start that great - I overslept and had to rush around in the morning. But then I was there for an incredible and powerful worship service and I got an amazing amount of stuff (fun stuff) done in the afternoon. I ate dinner on Nick and Heather's back deck at Nathan and Seth's birthday party (I love back decks but don't have one, so I live vicariously through them). And then I went with several friends to the Norva to see my friend's band Triomorrow play in his first concert.

I loved Sunday.

i remember.

I think every generation has at least one significant moment in history, one where we can all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we got the news. My mom and dad remember where they were when President Kennedy was shot. And I remember where I was when I first heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

I was in my car, on my way to take the train into Chicago for work. They interrupted Eve 6's "Here's to the Night", so I always think about this when I hear that song. I listened to the radio in the car as long as I could, called my mom, then gathered the rest of the news by the bits and pieces of cell phone conversations I could overhear on the train.

By the time I reached the city, everyone was getting out of the city as fast as they could, because no one knew where the next plane would hit. I remember thinking that I worked in a fairly short building, only 5 stories tall, but there were plenty of tall ones all around me.

Its interesting to me that these moments stick in our minds with such clarity, years or even decades down the road. I think its important to remember, because those moments represented a significant change in our world and our culture.

But there are other moments that its equally important to remember. This is why God instructed the Israelites to build monuments and to choose significant names for places, because it was a way to remember the things that He had done. I need a better way to remember those moments, because its when I forget that I find it most difficult to trust Him.

focusing on the good.

I have this tendency, when I have a lot going on, to tell people just how crazy my schedule is. I don't know why I do this - maybe its because I'm buying into that warped American culture that says that busy is good. Maybe I want sympathy. Maybe, like last night, I felt like I needed my cold and my schedule to justify how tired I was.

Regardless, the only thing I really end up doing is stressing myself out.

But last night, as I was driving home, I realized that each of those things on my calendar, and every additional item they add to my to-do list, represents a blessing in my life.

The meeting that's taking up my time this evening is for a church that I love, and that I'm thrilled to be a part of. The meal planning and grocery shopping and bed making I'm doing this week is because my family, that I love, is coming to visit me. Even the upcoming work deadlines reflect the fact that I actually have meaniningful work to do.

There's not much of anything on my schedule that I'm really dreading, that I'm not looking forward to. But taken as a whole, I still paint them in a negative light.

Instead, I'm resolving to focus on the blessings. Yes, I'll be busy, but I'll be busy doing things that I love, with people that I love. Now I just need to kick this cold.

smile.

Things that made me smile today:

• The creative name my cousin has chosen for her new baby, that my father will never be able to pronounce correctly
• The old man on the bike beside me at the gym, just plodding along
• When I told Scooter to stop chewing on my shoe, and he turned around to try chewing on Harvey's leg instead
• The sign at the library advertising their new building under construction, that reads, "We want to be well stacked"

perfect day.

Ever have those days that just feels like a perfect day?

I called Heather on Friday, and told her we should have a cookout to celebrate Memorial Day and the beginning of summer. (As I don't have a grill, this means it would have to be at her house). It was a relatively small group of people, but still a great time. After we ate dinner on their deck, the kids played in the yard, several people threw a football or Frisbee, and I rocked on the swing, holding baby Seth and talking to Errin.

It felt like we were smack dab in the middle of a commercial for American life.

I so love this time of year.

The good life

Ever have those days when you just look around your life as it is at that exact moment, and you're just overwhelmed with how good it is? That's what I'm feeling right now.

I'm sitting in the corner of my sectional (my favorite place to sit while I'm working), covered by the afghan that my mom made me when I bought my first place. Dakota is laying at the other end of the sectional, while Harvey is curled up under the blanket at my feet keeping my feet warm. The cable Christian music channel is playing in the background (Starfield's Everything Is Beautiful, and the title seems appropriate given what I'm feeling right now). I leave tomorrow for Orlando, and get to spends lots of time with one of my favorite people in the world. I have lots of good friends, one of whom came by this morning to help me stop birds from getting into my attic (there's a whole story there, but that's for another post).

Seriously, I feel like if I were to actually start to list out all the things that I'm grateful on this day, I would never go back to work.

Days like this are so precious, and so good to hang on to. It can be so easy to fall into the trap of longing for another life, the way I thought my life was going to be at this point in my life. Its hard to always remember to be thankful for right now, for the gifts God has given me here, in this place and at this time.

But on days like this, it's not so hard.

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Challenge update

(Warning - another long post ahead.)

I've been working steadily in my office, hoping to get it (mostly) finished before my family arrives for a weekend visit. That's today that they're arriving, and I'm pretty satisfied with what's been accomplished so far. Looking at these before and afters, I'm not sure how much progress is visible, but it feels completely different to me.

Before - The bed was cluttered with papers and bags to be sorted, and a few items to be donated.

After - There are a handful of things on the bed now, but I'll be taking care of them today. The basket and magazine holders are returns that will go in my car, and the other items are paper supplies that need to be moved to the kitchen. You can see the trundle bed in the corner of the picture, made up and ready for my family's arrival, and the items on the floor between the two beds are items to be donated.

Before - The desk was a dumping ground, full of active projects or things that needed to be dealt with "someday."

After - The desk is mostly cleared, and most of the items left belong there. The few that don't, should be easily sorted. I'm thinking of rearranging the furniture in the room a little, and pulling the desk into the middle of the room. Besides that, the next step is here is to manage the cords (this will be easier once I replace the no-longer-working wireless router). I also still need to go through the two blue file boxes in the corner - I think I can eliminate the need for them.

Before - The bookcase was somewhat organized, but there were still some things that didn't have a home, and the top was cluttered.

After - The folding chairs are still in here for my family's visit - I'll move them to the back room once they leave. I took some time to make a list of everything that needed to be stored in this office and best way to do that. I moved a lot of things around, bought a few more photo storage boxes, and labeled everything. The green tote is for Active Projects (anything on my to-do list that can't easily fit in the file folder I keep on my desk). Still to do here - I'd like to buy magazine holders (sturdier than the cardboard ones I had before) to take some of the weight out of the magazine holder on the wall (I'll need to find another home for the large frames and decorative items currently on the bookcase). I'd also like to paint the nine-drawer cabinet and label the drawers, find a better way to store ribbon, organize the photos in the photo boxes, and finally do something with the large frames leaning against the side of the bookcase.

So, overall, there's not that much more to do in here. My next stop is the garage.

One more thing...in my quest to enjoy the little moments, this is what I did after worship team practice last night.

Progress

I really did want to finish dealing with paper before the weekend was over, but after helping Trish and Billy with their move on Sunday, too, I was just too tired. I came home, sat on the couch and started to watch Cold Case, picked up the first piece of paper to deal with it, and immediately realized that I was too exhausted to do anything other than go directly to bed.

But - I did finish dealing with all the paper Monday night. I also started a list of what exactly I need to store in here, with ideas on how it should be stored, keeping in mind the containers I already have. So, that means I need to go shopping.

Also, today, I read a few entries from Kristin's blog, which is so fun because she's just a really good writer and its so great to read about the stuff she's doing while she's in London for the semester. I love that she's writing about real life stuff, too, like what she's thinking and feeling. And I love that she seems to be really enjoying these moments, and it made me think that I need to be careful to really enjoy moments in my life, too.

Last night, I wore Christmas socks with bells on them. I have a lot of Christmas socks, because I went through this period where I had a kind of sock thing and I bought a lot of them and a lot of people bought them for me, too. I don't wear these outside the house, because I think it would be really annoying for people to hear a little bell every time I took a step and because, let's face it, I'm not that much of a dork. But I like them. So did Harvey - she kept trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.