Smile List - Friday Edition

Things that are making me smile...

• 1 hour, 10 minutes until the end of the work day
• casual Friday
• a new t-shirt from Billabong's Design for Humanity Line that was a great deal on Boxing Day
• the prospect of a quiet weekend
• 5 1/2 work days left before Malta
• lip balm from the Rocky Mountain Soap Company
• the prospect of Corn Dogs for supper tonight. Corn dogs are an occasional guilty pleasure of mine.
• U2's 40 playing on my ipod
• a cup of passion tea this morning after the rocky start to my day
• bottled water
• an almost completed manual for training the temp who is going to my job while I'm in Malta
• an email from my aunt last night, promising unexpected financial support for my trip
• Vietnamese food leftovers for breakfast this morning
• Blue sky visible out the nearby window
• half-day of work on Monday
• comfy clothes
• cute shoes
• friendly little old men who are volunteers with our company calling me on the phone at work
• a funny card from a friend that's sitting on my desk
• the promise of phone calls with various good friends that live far away over the next few days and weeks
• an empty house right now while my roommate is out of town
• milk chocolate
• a good novel that I'm in the midst of at the moment

That should do it for now. I need to do the outgoing mail for the day before the day ends!

Later!

Rocky Start

My day did not start well.

Unless you consider racing to the bathroom to hug a porcelain throne starting a day well.

Danged over-sensitive gag reflex first thing in the morning. Just start coughing a little, and boom. Not Good.

Mentally, I feel cloudy.

Like I've lost my equilibrium, and don't quite know how to get it back.

I'm unmotivated.

I should probably pray, but my attitude sucks, and I'm kind of "enjoying" wallowing.

If I start talking to Jesus, the wallowing will have to go.

I should probably pray. Okay, more than probably.

This is one of those days when I'm going to have to make a smile list.

Or several smile lists.

I'm going to read a favorite Psalm and pray.

I can't handle a full 8 hours at the office when I'm feeling like this.

I need to stop wallowing.

Overthinking

I am...

overthinking.

Crap.

I'm going to bed.

I am...

I am…

• Wearing mostly new clothes with a favorite old sweater on top.

• Glad that tomorrow is Friday

• Perpetually curious

• Bad at sleeping

• Often tired

• A lover of many things green

• Convinced that you are happier when you wear color and variety, than when you wear only black and white, or a uniform

• One who has experienced healing

• One who longs to see healing worked in the lives of others

• A perpetual book buyer

• The owner of well over a thousand volumes (and growing!)

• One who reads with a pen in hand, marking all my favorite bits for easy access later on

• Addicted to memoirs

• Constantly thinking out loud

• Easily distracted

• More likely to drink water than just about anything (except perhaps tea)

• A lover of beauty

• Short (or more nicely put, petite)

• Going to Malta in two weeks

• Rebooking my plane ticket from Malta to London, to let me spend a few days with friends in London before returning to Canada

• A control freak

• In love with cute shoes

• Unable to pass up a bargain

• Convinced that milk chocolate is how chocolate was meant to be – creamy and sweet, and that dark chocolate is just a bit too medicinal to truly be considered chocolate

• A person with texture and smell issues when it comes to food

• A lover of Jesus

• An occasional mystic

• Completely pragmatic

• A loner who loves people

• An introvert who eventually gets tired of herself

• A television lover for the way it (usually) lets me disengage my over-active brain for an hour or two

• More likely to fall asleep if there is a book on tape playing nearby

• Fond of simple things

• A daughter

• A sister

• A granddaughter

• A cousin

• A friend

• An (occasional) writer

• Happily single (with rare exceptions)

• Not a lover of children (with five exceptions and room for more as certain friends begin having families)

• Good at my job (but ready for a break from it)

• Currently sporting shorter hair than I have in a while and dyed eyelashes

• A fan of clean clothes and sheets, but a loather of doing laundry (well, actually, folding laundry) and changing sheets

• Part of a crazy inter-connected group of people spread across the country who love to pray

• At turns quiet and at turns very, very loud

• A lover of U2

• Rather tone deaf, and unlikely to be caught singing where you can hear me

• Completely convinced that singing along with the radio while driving alone is the only way to go

• A country music fan

• Intuitive

• One who cares deeply

• Eventually going to get a masters degree from a seminary in counseling

• A dreamer

• Loved

• Learning what it means to be thankful on a daily basis

• Slightly odd

• Completely sarcastic in a deadpan sort of way in all the wrong moments

• Constantly having to explain that I was being sarcastic when someone takes an outrageous deadpan remark of mine seriously

• An idealist

• happiest when I'm comfortable

• constantly being stretched

• learning to be okay with things that I've known are true about myself for a very long time

• a lover of truth

• often accused of being blunt

• not always quick enough to filter the thoughts before they burst out of my lips

• not usually a poet or a reader of poetry, but every once in a while something fantastic comes along, and I read it, or write it, and fall in love with words and poetry and beauty all over again.
  

• at rest, peaceful and filled with joy tonight.

Another Day

I did the praying I intended last night, and as I suspected it might, it carried into my sleep. Weird dreams. Tossing and turning. And an early morning to get my roommate to the airport on time.

Oddly, though, I'm okay with the turn my life has taken. I'm okay with knowing my soul prays incessantly while I sleep. I'm even kind of okay with the dreams.

There is a certain nearness of Jesus in this space, and for that I am grateful.

So, I'm sitting here at my desk, about to begin another work day, staring at the venti passion tea I picked up at Starbucks after I dropped my roommate at the airport, and I'm grateful. Grateful for a Lord who speaks (even in the middle of the night!).