Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 141

Today's Daily 5:

1. late night chocolate
2. finding a blog late last night that made me laugh out loud
3. This quote from C.S. Lewis (that also made me laugh): "She's the sort of woman who lives for others — you can always tell the others by their hunted expression."
4. keeping a list of books to read "someday" in my phone (I add interesting titles to this on a daily or multiple times daily basis as I encounter them online or in stores or via conversations with friends
5. waking into prayer from good dreams
6. a productive day
7. trying a new burger joint for supper "5 Guys Burgers and Fries" - tasty stuff!
8. coming home for the first time in several days and unpacking
9. painting my toenails
10. a brand new, soft and very supportive neck pillow

First Monday, New Decade

Well now, with a pretentious title like that, how can this post go anywhere?

Actually, I'm just thinking again this morning about newness, and wondering what this year and decade are going to hold.

I woke from dreams this morning that made me smile.  And dreams that stirred prayer.  And dreams that surprised me in what they contained - people and places I wouldn't have expected.

This is the week that I'll find out if I've been accepted into the nursing program for January entry.  The week that I'll either come off of the waiting list, or I won't.  I'll be in school either way, it's just that taking classes as a nursing student would be my preferred outcome.

I'm mentally planning my week as I sit here, too.

Tonight my parents and I are trying a new "cult following" burger chain from the states that has made it's way to Canada.

Tomorrow afternoon I'm skyping with one of my best friends.  Tomorrow night I'm meeting another dear friend for dinner and a chance to chat and catch up.

Wednesday night I know that I'm cooking dinner at mom and dad's, and Thursday night house church starts back up.

This afternoon I have errands to do.  A stop at the library, probably a trip to walmart.  I need boring things like deodorant, and a neck pillow.  (The neck pillow that has been my soreness savior that I purchased for $2 at a local dollar store wasn't all that sturdy it turns out.  I've repaired it twice already, and now I'm ready to just buy something with quality that I won't have to stitch shut every couple of weeks.)

I read this post at Donald Miller's blog this morning, and remembered reading the story of the Scott Street Parade in his book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years."  I choked up a little watching the video in the post, when I spotted the smiling and waving parade queen and remembered the story in the book about how they choose a special woman from the street each year to be appreciated as the parade queen.  Reading the post made me think again about how story was my "one word" for last year, and how it's become an overarching theme to my dreaming and hoping and planning.  It reminded me, too, that I want to give "A Million Miles" another read through sometime in the coming month.

This post at Stuff Christians Like made me laugh this morning too.  Yes, I'm one of those people who is doing the read through the Bible in a year thing this year.  I particularly enjoyed tip # 6: "Start mentally preparing for Leviticus.That book will break you. I promise. Unless you have some very specific questions about mold. It’s a beautiful book, but 87% of all read through the Bible plans jump the sea cow right here. (That will make sense once you get to Leviticus.)"  I've bailed on at least a couple of read through the Bible plans because I got stuck in Leviticus.  So, I'm taking his advice and mentally preparing myself now.  (And grinning at the very idea of that!)

So, on the agenda this week (other than the aforementioned things):

• hang out with dad and do errands with him, stuff he needs to do to get ready for his next trip leading a team to Ghana (he leaves in less than a week)
• create a plan for cleaning and purging stuff at home, and follow through
• catch up on a number of blog posts I've been meaning to write about books I read (many of the books I read when I was doing all that bus reading, before starting my contract job)
• and speaking of bus reading, get one or two sessions of that in (Like I said, I want to make another trip through "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years", and I've got a few other books on the agenda)
• Listen to the audio book I spent months waiting for at the library
• tackle a few little nagging administrative tasks (like product registrations, and some changes to my cell phone plan)

Not perhaps the most glowingly auspicious way to start a new decade, but for me, the stuff of day to day life, the accomplishing of the little things is what lets me tell a better story with my days.  Having a list and tackling it.  Planning the fun moments too.  These are important in my life.

So, those are my plans, what's on your agenda for starting out this decade?

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 140

Today's Daily 5:

1. 1 year, 140 days of making these lists
2. Breakfast in bed (even if I did have to get out of bed to make it for myself)
3. A text message announcing that very dear friends of mine welcomed a daughter to their family in the early hours of this morning (and later in the day, the bonus of being friends with the proud new auntie of the baby as well, meaning I got to see a picture of the new little beauty)
4. smiling at the way a t-shirt that has had some painful memories attached to it in the past just made me grin when I wore it today, because it reflects a part of myself that I love
5. A grande caramel apple spice and an apple fritter at starbucks today
6. spending the afternoon hanging with a friend, doing a bit of clean-up at her place and chatting (really random tasks like having to clean up the Christmas tree because it had toppled over in the 24 hours since she'd last been home can make for some of the best times, laughing over the task that needs to be done, and chatting while accomplishing it)
7. watching church online tonight while I did some reading and surfing
8. one last night of retreat at mom and dad's before returning to my crazy living situation tomorrow night
9. leftover Chinese takeout for supper
10. reading a few new blogs as I surfed around some of the one word posts tonight

Laughing at Myself

I'm chuckling this morning.

I wrote yesterday that after vascillating for a couple of days, I'd chosen the word "Heal" to be my "one word" for 2011.

I was going through a few old blog posts this morning and realized that the very first Reverb 10 post that I wrote asked me to pick a word to describe 2010 (I chose deconstruction or duckless), and then to choose the word I'd like to define 2011.  I'd totally forgotten that I'd written that post.

The word I picked at the beginning of December?  Healing.

Which made me laugh this morning in a "oh God, you're funny in getting your theme across" kind of way.

Because the word that was on my heart at the beginning of the month, is the word that I almost didn't choose.  I'd pondered it as a word, but then picked something totally different. As I was sitting with my journal yesterday and writing out a list of hopes and goals and dreams for the coming year, shaped by my one word, I felt very strongly a conviction that the new word was one that would have to wait.  That I needed to go with my original gut instinct and choose "heal". 

And then I discovered this morning that that was the word I'd chosen earlier, too.  And I smiled at the funny little confirmation of timing and choice.  The whisper that speaks to my heart that this is a theme that God has for me for the year to come.

Most Read Posts December 2010

It would seem December was almost exclusively about the Reverb 10 posts here on my blog.  At the very least, those were the posts that attracted the most attention.

Here's a recap of the 10 most read posts of December 2010:

1. Reverb 10: Day 3 - Most Alive.  In this one I recounted the moment in which I felt most alive.  I talked about the translation of an online friendship to real life.  This post had nearly triple the number of reads of anything else on my blog in December.

2.  Reverb 10: Day 11 - 11 Things I Can Live Without.  This is perhaps one of my favorite of the reverb10 prompts that I answered over the course of the month.  As I sat down to formulate some of my goals for 2011, I looked back at what I'd written.  This post was also one of the hardest to write.  When I started writing, I was very convinced I'd never make it to 11 items.  But somehow, as I sat and stared at the screen and pondered, I came up with a list that really does reflect me, and makes me smile.




3.  Reverb 10: Day 12 - Body Integration?  I don't feel like I live separately body and mind/spirit.  Most of the time I think I'm pretty integrated.  I'm not sure if this is a novel concept, or if the keywords just caught people's attention to make this the third most read post of the month!

4.  Reverb 10: Day 5 - Let Go.  A year of deconstruction, and how I suck at being all zen.

5.  Reverb 10: Day 8 - Beautifully Different.  The one in which I felt like my answer was a cop out, but I really didn't have an answer either.

6.  Bus Reading.  Definitely one of my favorite posts from the last while.  Partly because bus reading is one of my favorite ways to rest and pray and think and be restored.  And partly because it seems like such a random idea - to ride a bus in a circuit, with no destination, but simply the goal to read and pray.  And a random idea like that definitely needs a guide -  a guide which I had great fun writing.

7.  Reverb 10: Day 26 - Soul Food.  Some of my favorite meals of 2010.  And how could a post that talks about Mizithra from Old Spaghetti Factory go wrong?

8.  Reverb 10: Day 24 - Everything's OK.  One of the shortest posts I wrote for reverb10.  Everything may not be okay, but I will be.

9.  Reverb 10: Day 19 - Healing.  A post centered around one of my favorite topics, healing.  For me, healing came in very unexpected places and forms in 2010, and I'm curious to see how that carries forward into 2011.

10.  Reverb 10: Day 23 - A New Name.  Not choosing a new name, but the realization that I've finally made peace with the name that I have.