Thursday, January 10, 2008

Catching Up

It's been a busy week and I haven't had much time for blogging.

Started a huge PC project. Trying to get all my photos uploaded to Snapfish. We're talking literally 1000s of photos, uploaded, sorted, dated, etc. OMG, I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't know it was going to be this bad! I've been thinking about getting my pics sorted on my PC, but now my program that I've been using (HP) is not working so well on my PC and Uncle Mark says my motherboard is going. Can't just download all my photos onto a CD, like I had originally planned because my CD drives are not working. So I'm spending hours and hours uploading my photos and then sorting them. Hope my PC lasts the months this is going to take me to get done.

I've started watching Joey & Grace again twice a week. This was my first week doing this again on a regular basis while Carla works. Had a great day with the kids yesterday, spent a lot of time with them playing in their "fort" (blankets draped over the dinning room table). Here I am, 50 years old and playing under the dinning room table, who'd of thought? But the kids loved it! For the first time, when I was getting ready to leave and come back home, Joey got all upset and said "Don't go!" It was so sweet, we had such a good day together.

Miah & Stephanie came over for dinner last night and we had a good visit together. It was nice to just have time to sit and visit with him. Usually he just stops by on his was to somewhere else or he's got the whole crew (Lissa, Chad, Aiden, etc.) with him and we don't really get to visit one-on-one with him. It was a nice evening.

I talked with Charmaine yesterday, finally! I've been such a bad friend to her, haven't kept in touch like I should. She's been having a rough time but is doing okay. It's so hard to adjust to a new life after divorce, especially when you have kids. She's not going to be able to join us on Saturday for scrapbooking, which is really too bad. I love when she joins us, she is such good company. I've got to be much better about staying in touch with her and make sure I remember to call her when we have sb'ing days planned.

Finally finished reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a pretty good book. I got some good thoughts from it and it was beneficial as far as giving me the push I needed to get my life back on track (especially when combined with Ali's "Life Artist"). I'm still not sure how I feel about reading nonfiction. I've always used my reading time as "mind candy" just something to relax and not have to think about. This book went a lot slower and actually made me have to think more.

Well, guess that catches me up a little bit. I've got to keep at this blogging thing, don't want to get too far behind.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Eat, Pray, Love

This morning I was reading a little more in Elizabeth Gilbert's book and found this:

"...people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck,
something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

I know that I have been taught this since I was a small child sitting in church every Sunday, but somehow reading it at this point in my life is like having a light bulb turned on. It is so fitting with my one word, my one resolution for the coming year.

This is my goal for 2008, to find the happiness within me and hold on to it forever.