My Sister’s Keeper

The Book

I finished the book last week. I had originally intended to read it all in one sitting, much like one of my BFs did, but I wasn’t able to find a period of time where I could just sit and read. So, I dared to brave reading the book on my commute.

There were so many times I really really wanted to cry, but because I was on the subway or the bus, I forced myself to close the book and get it together. As you can imagine, it took me a lot longer than I had thought to read the book. I’m so glad I read it though. It’s definitely one of those I’d read over and over again. I also dog-eared many pages, which I tend to do when I find a quotation that I like, particularly when it relates to the appreciation of life.

As I got closer to the end of the book, I really couldn’t put it down. I had to ask my husband to drive so I could read in the passenger seat. I finished the book as we were pulling into our driveway, and I was already in tears. My husband wasn’t sure how to console me given I was crying from a book, which he hadn’t read, so he wasn’t’ sure what was wrong. When I did finish the book, I couldn’t move. I sat in the passenger seat and cried and cried, sobbing and sobbing, and had to let my husband know that yes, I was okay, I just needed a few minutes to cry alone and I’d be inside in a few minutes. Whew, that was a good cry.

The Movie

My husband and I almost always watch movies together. He may not always enjoy my chick flicks, but he comes anyway, and surprisingly enough, he tends to enjoy himself, and if he’s lying about that, he’s good at it. He came with me to watch the movie, especially since he knew how important it was to me and I don’t think he knew what he was getting into.

With the narration at the beginning of the movie, less than 2 minutes into it, I was already crying because I had remembered the book. My husband made sure to take note of the new movie-crying-record*. When I walked into the theater and muttered out loud that I wasn’t sure I had tissue in my bag, the women who were there laughed – but I assured them they WOULD cry. And I was right (and I did have a ball of tissue with me, thank goodness). There was so much sniffing and squeaking throughout, and even at the very sad parts, there was so much crying followed by quiet laughter because all of us realized that all of us were bawling.

As is the case with most movies based on books (I think LOTR is the exception?), I felt the book was much better than the movie. While they changed some characters and events and removed or inserted others, I could understand, given that the movie could not have included all the details because it would be more complicated than some viewers would have anticipated.

The big difference though is that the endings are completely different. I enjoyed each of them though, and if you look at the two media, they’re excellent pieces on their own.

What I love about movies based on books is you get to see the details that you don’t realize when you’re reading. What got me was seeing Kate (the sick sister). While I did imagine a sick girl with cancer, I had completely forgotten what it was like to see someone with leukemia. It brought me back to a place I hadn’t visited in my memory for a very long time, back to when my Mom was sick – especially the visits and the many things I had seen and heard but was supposed to be hidden from. It was quite surreal to see it again. Of course, given my memories and what I was seeing, I was probably crying much harder than other people there.

I also loved seeing the two sisters. It made me wish that I was a big sister to a sister but at the same time, made me appreciate even more the brilliant gift of sisterhood I share with all my sisters. And that's exactly what it is, a gift.

All in all though, I highly recommend both the movie and the book. Excellent, excellent work.


*I'm a crying mess in some movies...I had ALMOST cried when we watched Transformers on Saturday. I'm such a geek.

Superkid

Enjoy!

Thanks Michael!

For me, this is one of those times when you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. I had no idea that anything was even going on since I was at work all day and then chose not to listen to the radio in the car and instead hooked up my iPod.

I was at Bulk Barn shopping for ideas for the next phase of my baking binge. I was checking out fondant packages when I heard on the radio that was playing over the sound system in the store that he had collapsed and there was word that he had passed on in LA.

It's amazing, the first things you think about when you hear that a celebrity has died. For me, I remembered the good things about him, all his music and how influential it was, how I didn't watch the Thriller video from beginning to end until I was in my twenties because he was so successful at making it so scary, his very unique sense of style, that he was able to share this gift he got with the entire world. I couldn't imagine what it would be like for future generations to live in a world without Michael Jackson, and I am so thankful to have lived in the same time as this man who changed music forever.

I prefer to think of him the way I did and I think that's the way we should think of him-- always remember the good things. I think life could be even better if we choose to remember the positive.

Michael Jackson, The King Of Pop
1958-2009

Adventure Time

I have an amusing story for you. It requires that you use your imagination because it will only be amusing if you tap into that vivid, crazy imagination that some of you may have not used since your childhood. Yes, locate that section of your brain before you continue reading.

I haven’t had a post about my (mis)adventures in a while, actually. I think I usually end up exhausting the story by telling everyone in person because they get to be just that WHACK. Even though I’ve told people about this already, I thought it would be fun to illustrate it, in words, on my blog. This is definitely something I’ll want to read about years from now after I’ve completely forgotten about it.

Here goes…

A few weeks ago, I left work early to go to the dentist. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and well, everyone loves the opportunity to leave work early. My dentist is only a few blocks away from the office, so I was happy to have a nice walk.

As I was walking with a smile and exposing just a bit more of my face to the bright sun than usual, I brought my head back down to reality since I was approaching an intersection. Then my eyes re-focused and I spotted…


A FRIGGIN’ WASP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I had been too close already and it was too late to dodge the MotherEffer. This thing was flying right for me. It ended up coming so fast and so close, I lost track of where it was. Where was it?!?!??!


IN MY MOTHEREFFIN’ CLEAVAGE.

<freakout>

Friggin’ perv…


Trying not to look like a complete idiot, I stopped in my tracks and tugged at my shirt desperately hoping that this thing would magically find its way out of my top and fly out the bottom. NOTHING. Oh crap, was this thing in my bra? I tugged at my bra and my shirt, forgetting that I was trying to stay composed in broad daylight and still, NOTHING. I hoped that it didn’t fall into my pants or something, but there was no way to check.

So, I braced myself and decided that I needed to suck it up. I was gonna get stung. Having never been stung before, I wondered what if I was allergic? What if I swell? What if it just stings my boob and only one boob swells? How can I go to my dentist like this?

A flurry of thoughts ran through my head, each one as outrageous as the next. I continued to walk to my dentist’s office, waiting, just waiting for that stinger to pierce my skin. I almost wanted to swear at the thing to hurry up and sting me already.

As I walked into the lobby, I impatiently waited for the elevator. The doors opened and I walked in, no one going before me or after me. I decided that this would be the place where I could check if that darn thing actually flew into me or if maybe I had imagined the whole thing (and was walking down the street like a crazy person). I didn’t care that there was a possibility of surveillance cameras in the elevator, that some security guard in the building would be watching me.

The doors closed and it was as if I got the green light to go crazy. I took off my sweater that I had on unbuttoned, shook it out, found nothing, then threw it on my bag that I dropped on the floor. I tugged at my top again and still nothing. Then I peeked down into my top and found it.

I HAD SQUASHED THE THING WHEN I WAS TUGGING AT MY SHIRT.

A dead wasp had been sitting in my cleavage, stuck to the inside of my top.


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!


I HAD to get it outta there and so without thinking of how nasty this would be, I pulled it out with my hand and flung it onto the floor of the elevator.

IT GOT STUCK TO MY FINGER…WITH ITS GOO!!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I shook my finger until it finally flew off and landed on the floor. I grabbed my stuff, put my sweater back on and noticed –

I HAD A FRIGGIN’ STAIN OF WASP JUICE ON MY TOP RIGHT BETWEEN MY BOOBS.

FRIG!

So, I tried to cover it up with my sweater, walked into the dentist’s office and used the washroom. I took off my top and washed my skin and the section of my top that had the WaspNasties. I quickly dried it (it dried pretty well) and covered it up with my sweater again. I thought, “I can always pass it off as sweat since it’s hot outside and I’m wearing a sweater”, as nasty as that sounded.

And well, thank goodness for dental bibs.

</freakout>

It's scary outside

In the spirit of dark and scary weather, here's the new trailer for 2012. It looks pretty crazy.



For more information about what is allegedly the end of the world, click here.

For your amusement

My friends at work were talking about kids and the dentist and we ended up watching this:



HILARIOUS!

Then there's this -- my brother showed me. He finds the weirdest things on the internet.

Quirks

I’ve been learning from various groups of friends that I have these quirks that I had no idea about. Apparently they all noticed them but didn’t really tell me because apparently I seem like the type of person who doesn’t realize I’m doing them. In all cases, apparently they’re hilarious. Here are a few they brought up:

• When I talk about food, apparently I bring my fingers to my mouth and sorta drum them as I’m talking. Then apparently I make a “uuuurrrrrghhhhh” sound when I’m done talking (provided I’m talking about food I like).
• When I’m telling a story or talking about something and I briefly lose my train of thought, I apparently say “Whatchamacallit” all the time – and apparently I lose my train often.
• After a good, hearty laugh, or sometimes in the middle of it, I apparently say things like “Oh shoot!” or “Oh darn!” like it pains me to laugh but it feels so good.
• When I talk, apparently my face tends to move a lot, in what may or may not be classifiable facial expresssions. I can apparently be on camera, muted, and people would still laugh at me.
• Apparently, it’s very easy to tell if I’m excited about something I’m talking about because apparently my volume knob turns progressively to the right and cannot be stopped unless I’m interrupted. This has also been expressed to me as “you have no inside voice”.
• I have a very distinct laugh. Apparently if I’m supposed to be somewhere and other people don’t know if I’m there yet, they can tell by hearing my laugh first and then by seeing me.
• I sneeze a lot. Apparently the above point applies to my sneezing.
• When I forget what I'm going to say and I'm trying to remember, apparently I always put my finger to my mouth like I'm trying to tell people to be quiet so I can hear it coming back to me...and then if I don't remember, apparently it's followed by, "OH SHOOT!"
  

Now really, is this all true?!

Room for Improvement

I'd like to be good at golf. I think I'm gonna go the "Rubik's Cube Route" (that's what we're calling it), meaning that my husband will get good at it first and then teach me how to play well. It's expensive though. But what's good is that I'd use clubs for Juniors, which are cheaper...but then again, it'd probably be better to have women's and cut them down. I don't know.

You should see us now. Actually, no, you shouldn't. It's embarrassing. My husband and I like to pretend we know what we're doing, but we're not very good. Plus it's hard to play with boobs. Kudos to all those amazing female golfers. The "sistas" get in the way sometimes, but they just know how to forget about them! I don't think that's something my husband can teach me. Anyway, we have fun when we do play, and that makes saying, "Who cares?!" much easier.....FORE!!!!


I’d like to be decent at bowling. Prior to the beginning of May, I hadn’t been bowling since high school, mostly because every time my boyfriend/husband asked if I wanted to go, I’d say no. I didn’t want to risk the embarrassment. Haha! But, I’m finding that when I forget about being self-conscious, I do alright. We went cosmic/disco bowling a few nights ago, and I wasn’t too bad (until my arm died, but whatever). Maybe I could do this more.


OMG, maybe I should give tennis a second chance.

WATCH IT!

If I had a million thumbs, they'd all be up. We finally got a chance to watch it last night and OMG, it was so good. It's one of those light, true to life, all-around feel good movies. When I laughed, I was laughing hard (I think my husband was probably a little embarrassed, but I couldn't help it. It was so relate-able!), when I cried, I was crying hard. And if you cry, you cry with them. It was the perfect movie for yesterday. Perfect.

Father’s Day

We went to bed late on Saturday. It was Sunday morning actually. It seemed to be a 3:30AM-bedtime-weekend. In our half-asleep-tired-ramblings that usually consist of I love yous and Good nights and Thank yous and Is the window opens and Do you have a glass of waters…I came up with,

“Happy-one-day-you’re-gonna-be-a-Father’s day!”

Then it was followed by more Thank yous and Hmmms just at the nice thought. We slept deeply.

Peanut Butter

I have a deep love for peanut butter. It gets horrific sometimes. While I’ve stopped eating spoonfuls or caking it onto my toast like it’s icing on a layer cake, I think I have it under control for the most part. On the other hand, I’ve gone back to the “bad peanut butter”, in that it’s not the natural stuff. I thought I could do it, but it’s not doing the trick. I think I have to watch a documentary or something about how bad the bad peanut butter is for me to seriously consider switching for life.

ANYWAY, I have a jar (is it still a jar if it’s plastic?) of peanut butter at work. Several other people in our office have their own as well, but I wanted my own because one, I didn’t wanna mooch off them and two, well, I just wanted my own jar. I used to keep it in my cupboard by my desk (I know that sounds selfish) and then one day my friend (she’s my coworker-turned-friend, so since she’s become my friend, I say “friend” before coworker) happened to finish her cream cheese for her bagel and had nothing to spread on it. I offered her my peanut butter and decided to put it in the kitchen cupboard in case she needed it again. It made it SORTA communal, but just between us officially.

Then I went through an oatmeal phase. Actually, it wasn’t really a phase by choice, it’s just convenient to use those oatmeal packets in the morning since I still cannot get up early enough to eat breakfast at home (OMG, what a horrendous success story for my new year’s resolution). So yes, I’ve been shamelessly eating sugary, flavoured oatmeal in the mornings.

This week though, I went back to toast and the taste of the peanut butter was wonderul – but back to my point.

The jar is almost finished.

When I last left it, the jar was pretty new and pretty full. Now, I look at it and I can see the bottom – like the scrapes at the bottom of the jar!! And I know my friend hasn’t been using it much because she’s been either eating at home (like I vowed to do…womp womp) or eating cereal or something that doesn’t allow peanut butter (but really, what doesn’t allow peanut butter? If it can go with ox tail and tiny shrimp, it can go with anything! Right, Filipinos?).

So, WHO’S BEEN EATING MY PEANUT BUTTER?!

Things I will try to say/do more often:

-“I’m sorry.”
-“You’re right.”
-“Please.”
-“Thank you.”
-Look people in the eye when we talk
-Cross my arms less
-Listen more
-Help turn around others’ bad days
-“Excuse me.”
-“Have a good day!”
-“I love you.”
-Pay more compliments
-Shake hands
-Send more invitations

Blog Rules

I'm not sure if, when you spend time with me, you wonder if I'm gonna write a post about you and publish it on my blog. Before I was an avid blogger, I used to wonder if my blogger-friends would say something about me or our time together. I'm not sure if I felt excited or worried. I guess it depended on the situation.

My general "rules for my blogs" are pretty simple.

• I don't usually blog about specific people. I'm not sure why.
• I don't blog about EVERYTHING. Let's face it. If I did, we'd be here forever. I try to keep the things that are sacred, sacred. That's not to say that the things I blog about aren't sacred, it's just that there are some things I like to keep to myself or to the people involved. It's nice to keep things intimate and secret and sacred sometimes, right?
  
• I very rarely use names. I like to keep things general. At the same time, sometimes people like their privacy. I like to respect that.
• I refer to my husband as "My Husband" because of the rule preceding this one and because well, I just like the sound of it. My Husband. My Husband. My Husband. I don't think I'll ever get sick of it.
  
• As much as I'd love to gush about the children in my family and in my life, I prefer not to, for reasons I've already mentioned, but also because I believe it's extremely important to protect their parents wishes in case they prefer to keep those things private. I think I'll be the same when I have my own kids.
• I try to keep things positive. It's just nicer to read. As a plus though, everything's positive in some sense really, so it's pretty easy to write positive posts.
• If I have something to share, I share it. Why not, right?
• I've started posting my running blog posts on here as well as on my running blog. They're not 100% the same, but I use this blog as my main one, and so, since running is a huge part of my life, I feel like I can't exclude them.
• Sometimes I'm too serious. It's important to be silly sometimes, hence the "Comic relief" label
• Yes, LOST is that important to me that I have a gadget devoted to it. What?

I think that's all for now...

Two years ago...

...my life changed. It was a change I knew was coming, but it was a huge change none-the-less. It was one of the best days of my life, I know that. It was one of those days that was just for you -- no matter how the planet rotated like every other day, no matter what everyone else was doing, the entire day was JUST FOR YOU.

We don't celebrate the anniversary of this day like we would with usual anniversaries or things like that, but we always talk about it like it's the first time we ever did, like it just happened. It was a beautiful day just like today. I hope someone else gets to be as lucky today.

I even began this morning the same way I did that morning, "I don't feel like today's gonna be the day..." My husband laughed with me.

I don't think I've ever gone back to the person I was and back to the life I lived before this day two years ago. Basically, after that day, the green light was flashing, and flashing brightly. Plans went into action, calls were made, dreams began coming true -- we, especially I, went into full-blown wedding craze.

We got the green light to begin planning for the first day of the rest of our life. And that we did... GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

It was such a wonderful adventure, and sometimes I wish I could go back to all that and just watch us...but we've got more plans to make...

BrWOWnie!

I am eating a brownie for breakfast. It’s a goodie. I’ve finally come up with an excellent recipe. I concocted it last night. It’ll likely get you wired for the entire day and make you feel like you downed some banned Japanese version of Red Bull, but, it’s DELICIOUS…and I don’t even like my own baking.

I'm totally gonna crash in a few hours.

Where's the milk?

The Resiliency of Relationships

Think of one of your favourite couples in the whole wide world, one of those ones you might consider ideal. You and your partner? Your parents? Your grandparents? One from a book? One in your own imagination? Just pick one. Why are they your favourite couple? Chances are, the couple you’ve picked is still a couple, right?

What is it about these relationships that they last, while others don’t? Perhaps it has something to do with the personalities of the people involved. Perhaps it has something to do with their zodiac signs. Perhaps it has something to do with their culture, their beliefs, their traditions. Perhaps it has something to do with destiny. Perhaps they’re soulmates (how much of a shoe-freak am I? I just spelt it “solemates” by accident. Now you know what drives my relationship with my Husband. j/k). In any case, you do know that one of the key things that drives these relationships to last is work.

No relationship is easy. For some, there is very little to work on, while with others, it’s a constant battle which, in the end, is fought together towards the same goal – sticking together.

For those with little to work on, they’re most likely the exception. Ask anyone the ratio of couples they know who fight rarely to couples they know who fight often. It’s not to say that these couples don’t encounter problems. They do. They just deal with them differently than the majority of the couple population, don’t you think?

In the heat of the moment, some couples tend to forget that they want to be together and come to a disagreement that escalates to a full-on fight…with each other. We’ve all seen our share of those. Heck maybe we’ve even been in that moment when we want to use the 4-letter “H” word. Some use it loosely, while some would never dare. They take that word seriously; after all, it’s just as strong a word as the 4-letter “L” word, right? But after all the bickering and the nonsensical spatter, it’s the ones who later remember what the real fight should be, that stay together. The ones who don’t remember, well, we know what happens to them.

I’m talking about the fight to remain together, to remain in love and at peace with each other, to remain HAPPY. How often do we fight for that? If everyone in relationships worked half as hard at making each other happy as they do when they’re trying to prove each other wrong in the middle of a fight or half as hard as they do when they’re trying to figure out what game their partner is playing with them, there’d have more happy relationships. The exercise of thinking of your favourite couple would have been more of a challenge because you’d have so many to choose from.

I believe that ultimately, the happiness of a relationship is a choice, much like you can choose to be happy. The people involved can choose to be happy. They are in charge of their relationship’s happiness, much like you are in charge of your own. It’s teamwork. I think in any good relationship, there’s roughly an equal amount of give and take from either side. It may not look comparable on the outside, but within the bounds of the relationship, it is.

Now, when you think about that relationship you chose when you first started reading this, isn’t it beautiful how resilient good relationships are? They just last and last and last. There are those old couples who you see celebrating their 75th anniversaries. That’s hard work. That’s a strong relationship.

It’s a wonderful thing to witness making up. It’s not one person giving in to the other or one person being weak while the other is dominant. It’s forgiveness in action. It’s the realization that “Yes, it will take some work, but we can stay together and get back to being happy and remembering that we love each other.” It’s remembering that this person is someone you truly, truly love and with that being the case, you would never leave them just like they would never leave you. It’s not worth anything to be without them.

Another movie!

This one looks pretty interesting, and I'm glad that even though it looks like one of those movies that is about all the negative things about the food industry, it also takes a look at the positive and helps to yield change for something better.

How awesome is this?

Miracles

This morning while walking to work, for some reason, I found myself thinking about miracles. Do you ever wonder if you’ll ever witness a miracle in your lifetime?

I can assure you, you will, and you have, you just don’t realize it.

When you look up MIRACLE in the dictionary, you’ll get something like this:

1: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs

2: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment

3: a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law

You most likely already knew that miracles involve the divine and humans as witnesses. Everywhere around you are miracles. Even the creation of the monitor you’re looking at is the product of many miracles and is a miracle in itself. Someone created this and something divine happened that caused its creation. The little things that make the pieces of it, the people who put it together – there was some hand in that from the divine. Even the power you are using to turn this monitor on is a miracle. The eyes you have to view all this is a miracle. Think about the love you feel for your partner, your sibling, your parent, your bestfriend, your pet -- even that's a miracle. You weren’t made from nothing. You ARE a miracle.

All abord the Monday train!...

YIKES.

Happy Monday, folks!

Happy Birthday Tetris!

To my favourite video game in the whole wide world,

Happy Birthday! Wow, you're 25 already. I didn't even know. Thanks for sticking by me in all those awkward video game situations. You know me, I'm not very good at those, but whenever you were around, you made me feel smart because I'm pretty good and I don't mind people watching when I know what I'm doing.

Here's to 25 more years of variations of you. Personally, I like you best the way you were when we first started out. Aw, I'm so sweet.

Love,
Treeh

Rubik's

I have a new addiction -- Rubik's Cubes.

My brother-in-law has always fascinated me because since I was little, he knew how to solve one. I did too,  but apparently switching the stickers around doesn't count as solving. A few months ago, he taught my husband how to solve them. 

My husband taught me all the algorithms this weekend. I saw this as an opportunity to improve my memory (I have next to none these days).

I've been eating them up since. On the weekend when I was learning, we were using my husband's cube -- it must have been a keychain or something from a loot bag. The thing is tiny, say 1.5 " x 1.5" x 1.5". I got frustrated with it because it'd stick so we bought a normal-sized one while we were out.

Today, I forced myself to keep messing it up and solving it with as little help as possible from my husband to gradually solving it on my own to solving it without making any mistakes. It reminded me of practising piano. 

I'm happy to say that I can now solve a Rubik's Cube! And it's so mentally stimulating*. I love it!  Now to figure out those 4x4x4 ones or those 5x5x5 ones!

*Speaking of mentally stimulating, I forgot to mention that while I was in Montreal I lucked out and stumbled on a bunch of photocopied pages from a Calculus textbook. Must have been some tourist's kid's homework or something. I took the pages home and have been saving them for a rainy day. How exciting! (I can hear the kid now, "Sorry sir, I couldn't do my homework. Some woman stole it while I was on vacation and didn't give it back to me.")

Discount? Where?!

I’m a sucker for discount cards. I used to be a REAL sucker for discount cards and an even BIGGER sucker for discounts, sales, bargains. My shopping mantra during clearance season used to be “I can’t afford NOT to buy it!” With discount cards though, if there was one offered in a store that I would definitely use and it’d pay for itself before it expired, I got it. When I worked in retail, I used to sell these things like hotcakes (do hotcakes go quickly? Is a hotcake a pancake? If so, then yes, they do go quickly!) AND as an incentive, I'd get a dollar or more for every card I sold. I was really good at calculating quickly how much they'd save with and without it and how much they'd be paying for it with the discounts vs. paying regular price for it. And then I became the sucker at the other end of the counter -- maybe I felt the need to give that sales person whatever incentive it was they'd get because I was once in their position (I've had the discount card of the company I used to work for EVERY YEAR since I've worked there! EEK!! SUCK.ER.)

And then I woke up. My name is Katrina and I’m a sucker.

I’ve been in the non-sucker club for a while now, and my bank accounts are much happier, as is my peace of mind…and my husband (who has also joined the non-sucker club). It’s amazing how much more you can appreciate life when you unload all the unnecessary material things. Your eyes open and you come to love the things you DO have. At the same time, you learn to really think about the things you purchase – do I really want this? Need this? What will it do FOR ME? Is this worth what I’m spending for it? Could the money I’m spending be better spent elsewhere?

Now, it’s kinda funny – the discounts are coming to me! I’m finding that I’m still getting discount cards – only, they’re FREE!! I think in the past month, while shopping for various gifts, I’ve gotten around 3 discount cards, all FREE, all for either points towards a gift or discounts with every purchase. AND, since they each offer something for free in your birthday month, I lucked out and got a gift right away since it was May! I know they’re going to keep encouraging me to come back, but it’s fine, I know I don’t have to…especially because I already have my free gift!

Summer Blockbusters

(or “black busters” as my niece says)

There are so many movies coming up that I’m excited to see. I mentioned some before (My Sister’s Keeper, Bruno, Astroboy, Away We Go…). Summer is a great time to use all those movie passes that I’ve been accumulating in my wallet from those PC points I haven’t redeemed for free groceries ;)

Here are a few more I’m excited to watch:

• Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
• Land of the Lost
• GI Joe
• Children of Invention
• Julie & Julia
• Adam
• Paper Heart

Summer also brings out nice night time weather…and DOUBLE FLICKS at the drive-in! Last year, my husband and I caught an awesome comedy double flick so hopefully we’ll get this lucky again this summer.

Speaking of drive-ins, here’s some info on the Drake Drive-In event this summer. I’m eyeing the PeeWee’s Big Adventure screening…

I redecorated

It felt like it was time for a digital change. Do you like? I had some other options but I thought this was more "me". ANNNNNND, the template is called "Bright Side of Life". It fits!

Let go and let God.

Every time I use my sister’s kitchen sink, I am reminded of a simple prayer:

Let go and let God.

She has a suncatcher on her window with these five simple words, that when put together remind us that not only are we are not alone, we have God on our side and He knows what to do when we have no clue. We may not always understand it at first, but when we step back or push through it, it always works out.

My sister and I were talking this morning about life and the changes that go on in it and how best to deal with these changes. She’s in the middle of a week full of changes. These changes are not small. She’s staring them right in the face with open arms, knowing that it will take many adjustments in her life, but she’s embracing them nonetheless. The way she makes it look is so easy and after talking to her today, she made me realize that it is easy, like all things, when you let go and let God.

There are so many times we struggle through life, wondering what it is that we should do, why we’re in the situation we’re in, how we’re gonna get out of it, how we can turn it around. Sometimes you feel you’ve tried everything and nothing’s working and you don't know what to try next. In times like these, it’s easy to give up and lose faith. But in times like these, it’s also easy to let go and let God do His work. He knows you’ve tried and there’s no shame in asking for some help, some guidance. Just like there's no shame in asking a friend to help you out. He's your friend, an like any good friend, He's there for you. It’s amazing, the things He does when we let Him.

Just think of a time when you felt that you were wading through some heavy stuff that you eventually conquered. Did you wonder why you were experiencing those things? Did you try your best to fix it? Did you learn something about the experience? You probably didn’t understand it at the time, but looking back, has it made you grow as a person? You weren’t alone in it and really, you never are. Look at yourself now -- you're a changed person, maybe in a little way and maybe in a huge way. But you do know more about life and about yourself as a result of getting over that hill.

There’s a lesson in everything. I believe that if you can’t think right away of something good you can take from an experience, there’s always the lesson(s) you learned. It's not always about getting what you want. Sometimes it's about getting what, in the end, is best for you and building your strength, courage and faith to accept it.

This is an excerpt

…You’re probably reading this thinking I’m crazy, which may, by now, be normal for you. All children think their mothers are crazy at some point in their lives, so it’s okay. I won’t put you in a time-out or ground you or anything. It’s true though. Sometimes mothers are crazy. But can you blame them? One moment you’re a twinkle in their eyes (as Tita once called you), a figure only seen in dreams, a happy face only glimpsed with eyes closed and then…YOU’RE HERE. We’re overwhelmed. We hide it well sometimes. We don’t know what to do with ourselves sometimes because well, we weren’t entirely prepared for you. We thought we thought thoroughly about you and all the ways we’d raise you and discipline you and treat you and play with you but then again, at the time we didn’t know you. So now you get why mothers are crazy. Because of you. You drive us crazy, because really, the only thing we completely knew before you arrived was that we’d love you unconditionally. And guess what, even though I know you think I’m crazy, I love you...

I write letters to my children. While I can think somewhat clearly, I write to them so they know what I was like before they drove me crazy.