The Power of Positive Thinking.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, you can now have ANYTHING you want. All you have to do is...(drum roll please...I said DRUM ROLL...) THINK POSITIVELY!! It's that easy, Ladies & Gents, boys and girls. If you want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, you can have it as long as you think positively. Ignore those awful naysayers who tell you you'll shoot your eye out and think positively and ANYTHING can be yours. That's right ANYTHING... You want a new car? It's YOURS, You want a house? It's YOURS! You want your brother to get out of prison? Oh...Sure, WHY NOT? You want your decrepit old dog to get BETTER? Uhhh...OK... You want your dead hamster Fluffy to come back to life...uhhh...sorry kid, it's not going to happen.

Ok, so I don't believe in those fake impossible cheesy versions of "the power of positive thinking", but I do think that a big part of how you deal with life is the choice you make to take situations (crappy or otherwise) and be positive or negative about them. I know many people who are pregnant right now, and often the first response I get from people when we talk about them is: "I thought of you and how you must be feeling right now...(and then in a tragic, sad tone) how are you?". Well, to be honest, sometimes it's hard for me. But that's MY personal issue to deal with, and in the grand scheme of things, how can I be anything but SUPER happy for my friends who are looking forward to a baby. My sadness does NOTHING to diminish the happiness I have for them, and personally, I'd rather talk to you about how happy I am about them than make it #1 about me and #2 a negative conversation.

People tell me how tragic it is that I lost my mother (and she was SO young) is the comment I often hear. I know a student who lost her mom in Grade 8, and her Dad was diagnosed with cancer in her Grade 12 year. I can choose to live my life feeling sorry for myself for what I'm missing, or cherish how long I did get to enjoy my mom. And don't feel too sorry for the girl who lost her mom in Grade 8 - she got her until then! Do you see how it's all in the choices you make and the perspective you have?

And what does this perspective allow me to do? It gives me permission to go on living. Rather than burrowing down into a little hole of self pity and making everyone else's life only be experienced directly in relation to MY life - their happiness is only reflected in how sad I am about what I am missing, and their sadness isn't as great as mine either, for whatever reason (I once had a grieving soul tell me "yes, but at least you KNEW your mother was dying, mine just had a heart attack, and we had no time to prepare". I could have rebutted with "Yes, but your mother saw you have children, saw them graduate from high school, saw you live a happy and long life, and you had her until she was 70", instead, I saw that she was coming from a place of loss and grief, and that this situation had nothing to do with "poor Deb" at the moment, and much more to do with allowing her to express her grief however she wanted.). All that to say, other people's lives are connected to mine, but not a reflection of mine. I have the opportunity to experience joy as well as sorrow. God gives us laughter and pain and by looking at life positively, I see each in both. My joy is only made deeper by the understanding I have of sorrow, and my pain knows hope, and my laughter comes from a place through pain, not denying it.

If you're NOT a positive thinker, it's a choice you make, with each day, with each moment. Choose to look at the world positively, because it develops a habit that will make you a much nicer old person to live with. If you chose now to look at the world negatively, where will that put you 10 years from now? Unable to joke about the bad stuff, and looking for the cloud behind every silver lining.

This is probably pretty rambling, and that how I'm going to leave it. Search for the gems, and let the rest sit. Don't critique it (you negative personality), find the good in it, and let the rest well enough alone. In the end, I'd rather be able to make dead mother jokes (which I do), than have every highlight for the rest of my life become a sad moment of missing my mom, or Stretch, or my pet hamster Fluffy. *sigh* Fluffy...

What I'm learning...

By posting on my blog every day, I'm learning that most people DON'T write every day, and I miss that. Because I'm on the computer every day now, I look forward to seeing who has new stuff out there...and there's less and less who do. Now, I know that life gets busy in the summer, and that there's lots to do, and that some people are busy doing things like planning weddings and growing babies, but I'm not asking for much, really. A little sentence...something to let me know you're still alive & thinking...anything? I enjoy reading people's thought & reflections about life, or simply like to know what's going on with people, and when so many friends are so far across the world, blogs are a GREAT way for me to do that...IF they do that. I know I've been just as bad, and this isn't intended as a guilt trip, but I miss the little pictures with a silly sentence underneath. I miss the one sentence stories. I miss hearing about your lives. I know it's summer, and things can get busy...it's true, but TRY...

Oh yeah, the other thing that I"m learning is that I LOVE it when people comment on my blog. It makes me feel good to know that I've said something that others feel is worth commenting on.

That's what I've learned so far. That, and the fact that some days it's WAY easier to come up with something to write about than other days.

My wedding pictures...

This is the THIRD post I've started today. That's one thing about doing a post every day. I keep wanting to say things, and then think maybe I shouldn't and then I go to say something else, and realize that too, wouldn't be great. So, here were go. My wedding pictures. We were just taking about how happy we were to get our pictures done by a good friend, and I figured that since I did a post recently about how much we enjoyed our day, that I'd include a couple of pictures so you can get a sense of the feel of the day, the fun of the day and how incredibly colourful our wedding party was (which we both LOVE telling people about later - yes, the groom wore a red suit...and it ROCKED!)

So, here goes.
This is one of my favourites of the two of us...

And this one just gives you a TASTE of what the day included....(we just asked this guy off the street if we could use his car - pretty sweet, eh?)

As you can see - fun people, fun day. Just what we wanted!

Have a fun day yourselves.

To Whom It May Concern...

Please excuse Deb from writing a post today. She has been sick in bed all day. She has a cold and nothing to take for it.

Thank you.

The return of the Restitis...

So, I know it's only been a short while since I did a blog on this, but (to quote all the cliche horror movie sequels EVER) IT'S BACK...As soon as we returned from Ontario, took pictures and worked and unpacked an all of that, I finally get my first REAL day off of the summer, and what happens? The Return of Restitis. Blah. I know I'll get better, but it makes it hard to want to do all those fun things Summer dictates we do, like taking a book and reading on the beach, or grocery shopping. So if you're the praying type, pray I get better quickly, and if you're in the area, I like yummy chicken noodle soup I don't have to make out of whatever pathetic ingredients I have in my house at the time (currently lots of onions, frozen corn and spaghetti noodles), oh yeah, and anything sweet. I've been craving sweet things, ice cream, cookies, chocolate, pie, cheesecake, ice cream. Thank goodness I'm not in the mood to go grocery shopping... But hey, I'm still on line. Good for me. I'd pat myself on the back, but ugh...so much energy.

G'night y'all.

A Homonym for you all...

Two days ago I rode on the road for the first time on the bike. I'm feeling more confident, but am also planning on taking lessons in the next month to help with that. What a fun thing to have a bike though. I have a number of friends who "discourage" (or outright ban) their husbands from having bikes, and some of them say to me "wait until you have kids...". I hope I will always be the kind of woman who encourages her hubby to pursue life passionately, and LIVE, rather than merely exist. Both he and I are much more interesting that way!!

My New Committment...

I have decided that from now on I'm going to post on this blog every day. In doing so, I hope to get over the fact that my posts must be momentous things of gigantic importance. If I post only a sentence - that's OK if it's every day. I figure I need to do something with my time beyond watching TV, so this is it!

On that note: Here we go. Weddings. We've been to a LOT of them this last few weeks, and we're not finished yet! It's funny going to so many weddings, because it becomes very obvious what people are like by what kind of wedding they want to put on. You see what they value and what's important to them by they way they want things done, and where the money gets spent, and how you, as a guest, feel when you're there (and we've been "backstage" for a number, so we get to see all the nitty gritty stuff). It's been interesting and cool. At some weddings we felt like we were a very valuable part of things by being invited to be there. When you go to an intimate affair, it feels different than one with 200 people attending. It's fun to be able to enjoy each for what it is. Some have been very laid back, which means more mistakes happen, but people don't care about them as much, others have been meticulously planned, which means they're beautiful, and well run, but everyone's expectations are a little higher for those. Some couples are very close together and focused on each other all day, others are out to spend time with all the cool people in their wedding party. Some feel rushed for pictures, others feel a little TOO laid back (is that possible?). Some had LONG speeches, some had none and as always, some of those speeches were GREAT (even if they were long) and others could have been WAY shorter, or skipped completely.

Each of these wedding brought something different to the table. Each was a celebration, but in some ways, it was like they were celebrating different things. A challenge to my unmarried friends: when you plan a wedding, what parts of YOU (both as an individual and a couple) do you want to bring to the table and show as valuable for your wedding? Let your plans coincide with what's valuable to you as people, otherwise there's incongruencies, and it feels weird. For those of you who ARE married: Do you truly feel like your wedding reflected your values and tastes, or do you feel like you were part of a cookie cutter wedding? If you're a cookie cutter wedding person, think about the next party you're throwing. What can you do at THAT party to make sure it honours the people involved and invited, and reflects who you are as well?

In the end, looking back (and still forward) at all these weddings, we know that each Bride and Groom wouldn't have changed anything (nor should they have). We're both privileged to have been a part of each couple's day, and at the same time it's made my hubby and I very grateful that we had the wedding that we did, that it reflected who we were (and are), and fit into a budget that we could manage at that time. No regrets for our wedding, which I'm forever thankful for.


A SIDE note: as you may have noticed, I haven't mentioned any specific weddings - there's a reason for that. Please, take nothing personally and feel free NOT to try and guess which wedding was which. Know that I remember each day in a unique way, and that every wedding has moments of wonder (and moments of frustration, come on, be honest...you know it's true), and that in the end, we were blessed & honoured to be a part of each of them.

Finally, you can relax

Or at least that's what people keep saying to me. That's the way to begin a conversation with a school teacher in July. Well, just for all of you to know, in general, just because it's July, doesn't mean that we relax, after all, if you're taking courses, beginning of July is when that happens, if not, there's still the chaos of June to recover from (which means you could clean your house for a week straight and still not be done). Of course, for me, there's just a FEW other things on my plate over the next few weeks.

So, here's what things look like for me. Today is July 4th.
July 4 - dentist, birthday party, get flowers, buy plane tickets
July 5 - work at the church, got to BBQ in the evening
July 6 - More flowers, breakfast w/ family, set up, rehearsal & dinner
July 7 WEDDING DAY #1 - doing hair, pictures and am in the party!!
July 8 WEDDING DAY #2 - on the Island - need to get there & back
July 9 Fly to Ottawa - somehow we need to have clean clothes and be packed by the 9th!! AUGHHH!!!


So for all of those who are curious - yes, it's just SO relaxing to be finished school. Now there's NOTHING else on my plate for the REST of the summer!!

FINALLY I CAN RELAX!!!!!!!