One Good Thing: 1/7/09

N coming home from work and making pancakes for dinner!

One Good Thing: 1/6/09

Hearing R singing the songs he is learning after choir practice.

One Good Thing: 1/5/09

Getting the chance to visit with a few friends for an hour.

One Good Thing: 01/04/09

R waking up this morning, coming downstairs, and putting breakfast on the table for the family (cereal, bowls, spoons & milk).

One Good Thing: 01/03/09

I was complimented on the dinner I made tonight for Mom & J.

New Year, New Ideas, New Hopes

Happy New Year!!

I sit here, a little stunned by the passage of time.  Then again, aren’t I always?  It just goes so fast. 2009, really?  Sometimes it feels like it’s all a dream…one of those ones where in an instant, years have gone by.  N and I will celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary this year.  Our children will turn 7 and 5 years old, and our youngest will start kindergarten.  So many other things, expected and unexpected, will occur this year.  I can’t wait!

I’m not making resolutions this year.  They never work out all that well for me anyway, and too much is up in the air at the moment for me to have any clear idea of where this year will end up.  However, I do have something I want to try.  I’ve been struggling for years to find peace and contentment with myself.  One thing I’ve read is that it can help to write down the good things…the little things that make a day a little brighter.  So this year, I want to hold on to and write down one good thing each day.  I don’t doubt that there will be many duplicates.  There will be days where the only good thing is that I’m still breathing at the end of it.  There will probably be days where I don’t consider that to be a good thing.  There will be the other kinds of days, too.  The kinds where choosing one good thing from the myriad that happened that day will feel impossible.  I’d love to see myself post one day that the good thing from that day was The Day…to have one of those days where nothing goes wrong at all.  Where everyone is relaxed and happy, where money woes don’t rear their ugly head, where there is no arguing, no tattling, no forgetting to thaw the meat for dinner, no car issues.  Just an ordinary, but good, day.

So welcome to 2009, and I hope you’ll stick with me for another year or so.

Wordless Wednesday on Thursday, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Wordless Wednesday, but not today

Sorry, no Wordless Wednesday today.  There’s a picture I want to do, but I don’t have it yet.  So you are stuck with my words this time.

So much has been going on, anyway.  The good and the bad…

First the good news!  C and H welcomed a brand new baby girl on November 21, 2008 at 7:14 am.  Anabelle Lee was 6 lbs 9.5 oz and 19.5 inches long.  I can’t wait to meet her, guys!  Welcome to the world baby Bella!!!

Then, of course, there is the other news.  N’s grandmother, G, became very sick a few weeks ago.  After various doctor visits and tests, it was determined that she had cancer in her abdomen, and she had surgery last Friday to remove the tumor.  Thankfully, surgery went well, and she is now recovering at home.  We are praying, and hopefull that she will make a full recovery.  She’s only 93 years old!

And finally, tomorrow being Thanksgiving, I also want to add in my thanks for the following blessings:

Good health, a wonderful husband, and two great kids.  It’s not always easy but we still have a home and food on the table.  N’s family who have really taken me in as one of their own, and shown me what ‘family’ can really mean.  Friends, especially the ones who still put up with me despite how horrible I am at keeping in touch.  My boys…mentioned already but I can’t ever say enough how thankful I am for them.

I am also thankful to be able to see the beauty in the world, hear the sounds of laughter and singing, to smell the wonderful aroma of a crisp fall day or a whiff of honeysuckle on an early summer evening, to taste the delicious foods that are available, and to feel a hug from my son or a caress from my husband.

I am grateful to have a warm place to come into from the cold, to have a reliable car to get me where I need to be, and to have access to everything I need and many of the the things I want.

I strive so hard for contentment and happiness, and I so often backslide… thinking that if I only had *something* more, I’d be happy.  Once again, I am going to enter into the holiday season with the goal of coming out the other side content, happy with what I have and who I am, and ready to face a new year with my head held high.  One of these years, I am going to succeed at that goal.  Here’s hoping it’s this one!

How far we’ve come

I’ve recently gotten in touch with some old school friends through a social networking site.  It’s interesting to see where people have ended up, all across the country.  I grew up in North Jersey, and I now live near Philadelphia.  Some of the girls I went to school with are now clear across the country on the west coast, some of them have left the country all together, and some are still right where we started.  One even lives in the town in Pennsylvania where I lived before moving here!  What are the odds!?!?!

I for one have always wanted to live in other parts of the country.  That idea is pretty much on hold now, because you can’t just pack up the kids and drop them into one school district after another (well, you can, but I would rather not.)  N and I got married in California, but I’ve still never seen the Pacific Ocean.

When we do travel, which is pretty rare, I almost always find something to say “I could live here for that” about.  Hell, there are some places I’d move to sight unseen just to experience them. (Ireland and Australia come to mind…)  Living near the ocean (any ocean) is one of my fondest dreams.  With the glaring exception of our most recent adventures on Assateague Island, the ocean usually is a calming force for me, and I could do with more calm in my life.

But here we are in Philly, and I guess we’ll be here for a while.  As long as I’m with N and the boys, it’s all good.

This is a blog roll post.  The topic was “How far away do you live from where you grew up?”   For other posts in the blog roll, please see the links to the right.

Superhero

The Blog Group Question of the Week (chosen by none other than yours truly!) is:

“If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why.” There is also a bonus question… “If you were a superhero, what would your foil be”

Because I’m a big dork and couldn’t come up with a better question.

So, would I want to be able to turn myself invisible? No, not really, I already feel that way too much of the time.

How about mind reading? I do love to know what people think of me, but I think being able to read people’s uncensored thoughts would drive me insane(r).

Flying? That has real possibilities…

Teleportation is also intriguing.

Super strength has no appeal for me, and neither does zapping things with my laser-beam eyes, although my inner pyro is drawn to the idea of being able to start fires with my mind.

OK enough of what I DON’T want to do…

Seeing as how N has gotten me so into Doctor Who recently, I am going to have to go with time travel. It has so many useful and fun applications! I could leave a message for my younger self, to fix some of my stupider moves. (It seemed like a good idea at the time!) I could see the seven wonders of the ancient world with my own eyes. I could read books without having to wait for them to actually be published. I could solve my problem of the boys having the same dismissal time from two different schools next year. I could help people, I could go on and on and on with ideas.

Now, as for my “foil”, the thing that would stop me or block my powers. It has to be something not readily available, but not so obviously foreign as to have interest for someone. I guess it would depend on where my powers come from…do I have my own TARDIS type machine or is it more like Hiro Nakamura’s powers on Heroes? It’d definitely be something insignificant yet hard to obtain, like a tiger’s third eyelash or a shark’s forty-second tooth.

However it may be, it’s getting late, I have a busy busy day planned tomorrow, and my foil at the moment is definitely lack of sleep.

Please see the list on the side for other people in the group’s superpower ideas