Category: Life

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I am thankful

303-TJS license plate - huge, hanging from the store celiing

Trader Joe’s is in Colorado. I’m thankful. They’ve been with us for a while now (two or three years), and they are a mighty fine store.

Decent value pricing, often healthy ingredients, a wide variety of flavors not available at the big chain supermarkets – and tasty food.

Even though I’m an anti-junk mail person, I love their flyers. Creative writing abounds. And they are effective – I often buy stuff as a result. One time I even cut out the little built-in shopping list and checked the stuff I wanted and bought most of the items the next time I was in the store.

The only thing about Trader Joe’s I’m happy/sad about is that there is one on my way home from work… it’s all too easy to make a detour and buy little snacks I really don’t need.

Take time to be thankful today for something in your life. It worked for me. (I was going to write a complainy blog post – but I listened to my own blog post from last week, Positive.)

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Positive

We’re surrounded by so much negativity, particularly in this election season.

I’m making a conscious effort to get rid of negativity in my own life by turning around my attitudes. It’s all too easy to immediately jump to the thing that’s wrong with something or someone – rather than focusing on the larger portion that is positive, clean, helpful and good-intentioned.

Focusing on the negative side only makes me someone that is no fun to be around. And it greatly cuts into my enjoyment of life.

“Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (from here).

 

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Police brutality and the National Anthem

No doubt by now you’ve read about football players not standing during the singing of the National Anthem. They are using their visibility to make a statement that they stand against our country allowing police to do bad and sometimes horrible things to African Americans.

I believe they could turn that important energy elsewhere. Yes, it’s a horrible problem. But malaria kills thousands of times more Africans than American police kill unarmed African Americans..

I lived in a malaria-prone country for five years. I love that country. Overall, people there seem happier than Americans, in spite of the significant challenges of daily life.

Malaria was not a problem for me there, as we were privileged to have been taught ways to prevent the disease. Many there aren’t – or simply don’t have the $10 for a mosquito net.

I know that no NFL football player will ever read this, but for the rest of you, Unicef is just one place you can give to help prevent deaths caused by malaria.

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Assumptions

escape“Escape from your already fabulous life.”

That’s an assumption a luxury hotel chain made about all of us. Or maybe they are pitching to the group of readers who feel that they do have a fabulous life and don’t care about the rest. Or maybe they want the rest of us to think, “Well, my life isn’t fabulous – but I do like it!”

If your life is fabulous, why would you want to escape? I guess that living a life of ease, where everything is catered to and all wants met, gets boring.

We all need change. Kittens don’t stay small forever. God created seasons for a reason.

Embrace change. If it’s a hard change, see what you can do to find the beauty in the pure white snow. Even when it’s freezing outside.

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The beer can net

beer can net

When I was a sophomore in college, I was counseling a very young freshman about the ways to decorate a dorm room.

“Some people hang a net from their ceiling and fill it with beer cans. But that’s really tacky.” (I don’t know what word I used to say “tacky.”)

Less than a month later, I passed by his room and saw just such a net hanging from his ceiling.

Somehow he missed the part about “really tacky.”

Moral of the story – listen to all of what someone tells you.

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Other people’s lives

hand-written grocery listMy sister and I share grocery lists – other people’s. We find them on the pavement outside grocery stores, because people discard or lose them.

It’s interesting to get that tiny glimpse into others’ lives.

Highlights from this one are Plastic Limes and Kick Starts. The other side featured Lay’s Truffle Chips.

We enjoy the variety of handwriting and selections of household items. I have yet to find a computer-printed list.

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What once held value

Adobe Creative Suite, circa 2004In 2004, I bought this Adobe suite of software. At the time, it was the full complement of software that the world’s best graphic designers would use to create their artwork.

(The current cloud-based version still fills that role.)

I paid something like $700 – and at the time, the regular full price was north of $1,000.

Today? That software is useless. It’s not worth a penny.

The computers it would run on have long since been retired.

And even though the core functionality of that suite of software hasn’t changed, no one would buy that old version.

At least we still hold value when we get older. Our core functionality isn’t that much different, though there are newer faster versions.

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You can’t say that

don't talk illustrationAmerican culture has become extremely polarized. If you are even slightly on one side of a fence, it’s very hard to say anything about your issue without getting shut down by voices from the opposing side.

This current political season has made the polarization much worse. Political candidates from both sides of the aisle are harsh and often unreasonable in their criticisms of their opponents. A climate of combativeness has sucked much of the American public into that same negative vortex.

Thankfully, I have become so tired of pre-election politics that I lost my desire to voice any political opinion. I hardly listen to any news, as so much air time is devoted to the same verses being iterated in some hardly-new direction.

I’ll be glad when November 9th hits, no matter who wins.

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Seasons

car parts in a snowbankIt’s that part of the year when I am totally ready for warmer weather.

Last week, we had a huge snowstorm. The white stuff accumulated so much that cars’ underbodies left bits and pieces all along the roadways as they unsuccessfully tried to be snowplows.

Days went by without sunshine. (And in Denver, we’re used to “about 300 days [with] at least one hour of sunshine sometime during the day.”) When you get used to seeing the sun, it’s hard to live without.

My brother lives in San Antonio. He trades not having snow for putting up with long summers of intense heat. As Americans get older, many move to warmer places. I understand that now.

But I do love the seasons. And the beauty of a new snowfall – before car parts start collecting in snowbanks.

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Let’s go outside

During my frustration with this political season, it’s nice to go outside and take a few deep breaths. (There’s something bigger than politics.)

I took that photo with my phone a few weeks ago.

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