Taking action, not inaction

Most years for Lent I have given up sweets. I was successful only once, in 2001, I think; I forget the year, but I had devoted myself to fitness in an almost obsessive way. It was a tough 45ish days without a piece of candy, cake, or bowl of ice cream. But I was doing that more for myself than to bring myself closer to God, which is a big part of doing (or not doing) something for Lent.

I don't have nearly the faith I did then, but I do try most days to be a decent human being. If everyone strove to do that, the world would be a pretty great place, and it likely would not matter so much which religion people were, or if they had a religion. But I digress.

This year for Lent I have decided to do a few things.

Try to lessen my "saying the opposite" of what the hubs says. I do this. A lot. It is not so much that I have to be right. I am pretty sure I AM right most of the time (he would disagree). But I am going to try to let things go more. This one is going to be tough. Really, really tough. But important. I don't expect to go 40 days (or even 4 days). But if I can do it a little less, that will be all the better for our relationship.
Be thankful for what I have daily. Although I am not the steadfast prayer (prayor?) that many religious people are, I try to pray most days. And I try to say thanks during these prayers. But I am going to make a conscious effort to specifically name one thing every day that brings me gratitude and put it on Twitter and maybe FB. I have committed to do this in both places, which will likely compel me to carry it out.
While I am posting about what I am thankful for, I will also post something good I have done. I am not looking to save a life or bring someone immeasurable joy, but small things can add up. And even if they don't seem to, doing something good is still doing something good and will hopefully make me a better person. And, as Pope Francis recently said on Twitter, "Do not underestimate the value of example, for it is more powerful than a thousand words, a thousand “likes”, retweets or YouTube videos."
Eat better and eat less This is not really related to Lent, though, but I want to include it here. I joined a "weight race" at work with two other coworkers. We each set a goal to lose so many pounds in 12 weeks. My goal is 6, but I will be somewhat satisfied with 4. If I lose only a pound or two or nothing, I will be disappointed, and it will tell me that I did not fulfill #4. I am keeping up with exercise, but eating, unfortunately for me, is a bigger part of losing weight. I have done well the last two weeks during the week, but I kind of faltered last weekend. We shall see how the rest of this weekend goes.

So there you have it. I am hoping #'s 2 and 3 will help lessen my anxiety. And I have felt better this week once I started to make a conscious effort to do those things.

I am heading out to walk the dog now. Hopefully during that walk, I do some good (other than picking up litter, which I do nearly every day, and seems "unfair" to count it more than once). If not, I will definitely be counting the 3 loads of laundry I am doing. If that is not a good, selfless deed for the family, I don't know what is! :-)

Let's build something together!

That is one of my favorite slogan's (Or is that a tagline? Over a year removed from a design firm, and I can no longer remember). It belongs to Lowe's, although I am more of a Home Depot gal. But suffice it to say if someone handed me a $5,000 gift card to Home Depot (or Lowe's), I would be ecstatic. If I had $10,000 to spend, you could hear my shouts of joy from miles away. The things I could do with that money. Well, the things I could have Brian do with that money anyway. I love walking around Home Depot and admiring the fancy bathroom sinks and tubs. I look at the lighting and think about where I would put each fixture. I touch textured and colorful tiles and wistfully look at the fancy kitchen cabinets. I admire the various carpet styles and blinds. I look at the fancy front-loading washer and wonder what it must be like to have a steam dryer. I even look longingly at the vacuum cleaners because I can no longer buy a replacement filter for my eight year old mo...

Summer in review

This summer I made it a point to try to take at least one pic of Jordan whenever we went somewhere, which most often was a park. I wanted to capture all the great, fun things we did this summer, knowing that it was probably going to be my last summer not working for quite some time. So here goes. I have expressed my love of Frick Park, particularly Blue Slide Park, in other posts ; it really is one of our favorites. And this summer marked the first one I did not feel the need to follow J around like a little puppy dog. I actually let her run around and explore, though, admittedly, I would panic if more than three minutes went by and I had not seen her. In the pics above, J is at the end of the blue slide, and then hanging several feet above concrete (which scared the crap out of me). We also visited another section of Frick Park, the area on the corner of Braddock and Forbes, a few times. There is not as much to do as Blue Slide, but we go there to mix things up a bit. In the p...

If only I had taken pictures of my detoured drive

When I moved to the Burgh just over 14 years ago, I had a lot of anxiety about getting from "here" to "there." I found the city, which is triangular, and even some of the suburbs quite confusing. On top of that, a lot of the signs were of little help. Clearly they were put up by either natives who had no need for directions or people with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be funny to put signs in random places, leaving off important roads. At some point, I got over that fear of driving to a new building downtown. I don't recall when it happened, but eventually I just figured most of the city out; and when I had to head to a new place, I just drove around, no longer with a feeling of dread, knowing I would eventually get there. But on Sunday morning, that awful, long-ago feeling returned, thanks to the closure of the outbound Fort Pitt Tunnels. I had to pick my mother up from the airport, so there was no avoiding it. (For some reason, my family think...

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