Leaving on a Jet Plane

I leave tomorrow for Minnesota. I won't be home until August 17th.

My parents and sisters will be so busy getting ready for April and Joe's wedding reception (that is on Saturday) so my cousin is going to pick me up at the airport. I am very grateful that she is able to do that for me/us. And I can't wait to chat books with her. She is an avid reader - even more avid then myself though.

I look forward to seeing all of my family. Almost everyone will be there for the reception. It is at my parents home. And I am sure my Mom is in uber hostess mode getting ready for it.

My Grandma and I are having a slumber party on Saturday night. I am staying with her in a hotel room as she has trouble with my parents steps to their guest room so on Saturday night she and I will stay in a hotel room. I look forward to just chatting with her.

I am staying until August 17th so that I can be there when they bury my Uncle's ashes. I wasn't able to go the funeral so I really want to be there for this. It is at the small country church cemetery. I know my Uncle had many good memories associated with the church so it will be a good place for his ashes.

When I get back from Minnesota, I will be home a day and then leave for Denver for several days. So lots of traveling coming up for me but for good reasons.

Love

Only sharing just a couple photos from my sister's wedding. Michael and I have been working hard on editing them. I won't be able to finish them before I leave for Minnesota tough.

This is during the ceremony. Michael and I were both wishing we would have had a video camera. Because during the ceremony Joe would squeeze April's hand and then April would squeeze Joe's hand. And back and forth through the ceremony. It was very touching to see it.


Next to the lake there were pretty flower gardens so this is one of them after the ceremony and dinner walking amongst the flowers.

Enhance

I like taking care of Michael. I mean he takes care of me too. So why wouldn't I want to take care of him too? We have things we do that enhances each others lives. I am about to go out of town so I would like to have some of the things I do for him be a little easier. I know he can take care of himself...cook, clean and do laundry. But I like that I can help him out when I know he will be so busy with work.

So I made breakfast burritos, French bread pizzas, garlic toast and several dishes that are all frozen in individual servings for easy defrosting and reheating. I made sure things are washed and ironed. Obviously with me being gone almost 3 weeks he will have to do some more washing and ironing but at least he will be good for a while. And the house is completely clean.

Hopefully I will have made his life a little easier while I am gone. As I said I know he is going to be busy with work and I want things to be easier.

Gratitude Friday

I am thankful for...
1. a new guilty pleasure - Work of Art
2. Sonic after dark 99 cent sundae's
3. girls night out that I will have with my sister, Mom, cousin and aunts. We are going to see Eat Pray Love
4. having very patient and loving friends that understand I have been isolating myself and trying to just get through each day due to grieving
5. mail love from 2 friends - wonderful cards to make me smile

Boyfriend

There is this scene in Sex in the City Movie (first one) where Mr. Big and Carrie are looking at apartments. And one of the people showing them an apartment calls Mr. Big Carrie's husband and she quickly corrects the person by saying he is my boyfriend. And Mr. Big said, "Aren't I a little old to be a boyfriend?" And Carrie say she will start calling him her Manfriend. Mr. Big didn't find that amusing either.

Anyway - I go through a similar thing as Mr. Big - it sounds so corny to me to call Michael my boyfriend. We are in our 40's - so not boy and girl but man and woman just not in the marriage sense. But yes in the dictionary definition of the word Michael is my boyfriend. Occasionally I will say significant other but you know that just doesn't flow very easily either. I really would like to come up with a different word then boyfriend.

I just called Michael my Manfriend and he looked at me like I was very strange. He should know that by now. So I think Manfriend is out. So any suggestions would be helpful.

Nice Note Photos

Here are just a Nice Notes we left around downtown Grand Junction....others we left in books, shopping carts, shelves at grocery stores and then several at my doctors office.

This was at a bus stop with lots of graffiti in it. As you will see if you look closely - I put it next to the word hate. Hoping it would be something there instead of hate.

On a parking meter....this one and the one above stated around the longest.

Library book return

Grand Junction downtown has what is called Art on the Corner. Really it is art all along main street. It is one of my favorite things about Grand Junction. Anyway, I put one Nice Note on a statue along main street.

Gratitude Friday

I am thankful...
1. being able to do nice notes and hopefully making others smile and feel good when they came upon them.
2. for the rain - sound and smell of it
3. for the beautiful fields we saw on our road trip
4. for iced chai
5. for really good book I was sent to read and review...Of Bees and Mist (review coming soon)

Nice Notes

I read the website www.operationnice.com often as it just makes me smile and reminds me to be nice in unexpected ways. I hope I am nice most of the time - but going out of my way to be nice, especially when it isn't how I am feeling, is something I am not sure I always think of so Melissa of Operation Nice gives me those reminders.

Operation Nice was celebrating her TWO YEAR BLOGIVERSARY and Melissa asked her readers to participate by doing Nice Notes. And so Michael and I went around town sticking up nice notes. The photo above is one of them that we did in downtown Grand Junction. Some of them were still up today. We went out to run errands and decided to check to see how many lasted through the Farmer's Market and many did - and I hope they made others feel as good as it made me feel leaving them.

Gratitude Friday

I am thankful for...
1. Being able to see my sister get married to her love
2. Michael and our families making it possible for us to go to see her get married
3. Road trips - Michael and I love road trips.
4. Godfather's Pizza - it is something we can't get in Colorado but I grew up with when I lived in Omaha. So we stopped on our way through to get a pizza and then we arrived in Storm Lake and right next door to our hotel - was a Godfathers.
5. Family

To Iowa

Well we had an unexpected change of plans. My sister is getting married in Iowa on Thursday but we really didn't think we could go. But a few things came into place and we are now heading to Iowa. We are in Denver now. We attended Michael's brother and sister-in-law's 25th wedding anniversary surprise party on Saturday - which was so nice. Their kids did a great job with it.

Because this was a change of plans, means I wasn't at all prepared to be going to a wedding, but I am very excited that I get to see my sister get married.

Gratitude Friday

I am thankful for...
1. that our one cat that has allergies seems to be getting over this run of them a little faster
2. some good recipes tried recently and will start posting recipes soon
3. air conditioning
4. sliced pork on whole wheat with spicy mustard and tomato
5. meeting old and new friends this weekend

750 words

A friend of mine posted this website on Facebook - 750words.com. From the first look it looks like yet another blogging/journaling site. But with another look I realized it isn't.

"....The Artist's Way called it morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in "long hand", typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day."

If you are thinking of doing this, don't think you need to be an artist. Basically it is just writing to write. Writing to empty out what is going on inside.

A very cool feature of the site is that it tracks things for the entry....

This was how my Monday writing stats looked....
Words today: 796
Time to 750: 00:15
Total time: 00:16
Words per minute:51
# distractions: 0 Good job!

Rating:PG Sexual content (nothing to do with sex in my entry but I will get into how it tracks below)

Feeling mostly…Affectionate but also Upset, Sad, Self-Expressive, Anxious

Concerned mostly about…Family but also Religion (again it is wrong on this but I understand why it put this), Death, Eating/drinking, Success, Leisure, Home, Relationships, Work

Mindset while writing… Extrovert (it was almost 50/50 on extrovert/introvert), Negative, Certain, Thinking

Time orientation: The Future
Primary sense: Hearing
Us and them: Them

And then it also does a word cloud of frequently used words.

It tracks words so such if I say kiss in the entry they would put that as sexual content. Said I was concerned about religion but I wasn't but was mentioning Christianity in my entry just as description though not as an issue. So it tracks words and then puts them into stats. Even if not totally accurate - I really like the stats.

I just like the concept of emptying out my brain too. It has felt good.