Give Me The Grateful Life - Monday

I feel like I was just here.
Oh yeah, that was Friday.
Well, considering how little I've been posting lately,  I WAS JUST HERE.

But it's Monday and I don't want to forget to show my weekly gratitude hence I start the week with some bad karma.

1. I am grateful for selling some of our furniture on Craig's list so we can afford a bit of new.
2. I am grateful for the burst of color from the budding flowers in my yard.
3. I am grateful for spending some time (albeit brief) with just my family this weekend.  Sometimes I forget we make a pretty good team.
4. I am grateful for being one of a few people in the room when a spontaneous jam session broke out with John Mayer and some friends.  That was definitely the coolest thing that's happened to me in a long time.
5. And, of course, I am grateful FOR MEETING JOHN MAYER THIS WEEKEND CAUSE HE TOTALLY ROCKS AND IS SO COOL AND PUT HIS ARM AROUND ME AND LAUGHED AT MY WEAK JOKES.  (If you ever want to feel like a gushing young teen again, take a picture with a rock star, that'll do it.)

What are you grateful about this week?

An Autopsy of My Day

Today started out with beautiful weather and endless possibilities.
I was going to clear off my desk,
Write.  Write.  Write some more.
Clean out my son's room because the handyman was coming to take apart some furniture we're selling.
I was going to do carpool.
And write or even READ before dinner.

Sounds lovely.

HA!  Joke was on me.

Instead...

I took my dogs to the park because my puppy would have eaten me otherwise.
I talked to my pool man for 45 minutes about ...nothing.
I talked to my neighbor for 30 minutes about ...nothing.
I watched my handyman try to disassemble my son's furniture for an hour.
Which ultimately he couldn't disassemble without breaking because the person who helped us put it together in the first place, did TOO good a job.
I spent the next hour watching him take a very loud hammer to it and waiting for the cops to come.

Did I mention this was the piece I had designed for my first born as a show of motherly love?
The piece that I lovingly handed down to my son after he was born.
The piece I was hoping to hand down to some other lucky child the day my kids got too old.
Like today? 

Wanna see a picture?  

Okay, it was messy (8 year old boy's room, yo!)
But cute, no?

WELL, NOW IT'S DEAD!  Slaughtered. Along with my heart.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon reaching deep inside my pantry and pulling out comfort food: a chocolate bar, some cookies, some tortilla chips (hint of lime, yum, ugh), peanut butter, dried apricots, peanuts...there was more but I think I blacked out after that.

Did I mention I'd been cutting out carbs and sugar?

So, I didn't get to clear out my desk, or write, or read.

And the only thing endless about this day turned out to be MY STOMACH!
UGH!

Anyone have a Tums?

Give Me The Grateful Life - Monday

 

I need to be extra grateful this week since I missed last Monday the last two Mondays, has it been three?
Anyway, I hope you'll join me in acknowledging the good and momentarily forgetting the bad and the ugly.
 
And let's get to it!

1. I am grateful for my new favorite show, The United States of Tara.  If you get Showtime and you haven't seen it, SEE IT.  Between Diablo Cody's fabulous, oddball writing and Toni Collette's brilliant acting, you will see your own home life as positively SANE.
2. I am grateful to all of you who answered my musical quest for new tunes.  Thanks to you, I will be exercising with a renewed vigor tomorrow!
3. I am grateful for the longer days (or, rather, I will be when my body clock catches up).
4. I am grateful for the gorgeous California weather.
5. I am unbelievably grateful for my new neighbors, who happen to be old friends, who happen to have a boy my son's age and an adorable girl my daughter can babysit, and a dog my dogs can play with, and who give me the opportunity to scream "DINNER'S READY" from outside my window like my grandparents from Brooklyn did before me.
   
6. Oh, and I'm grateful my daughter is (at least for the moment) over her fear of having a Bat Mitzvah.  I'm crossing my fingers.
   

 What are you grateful for?  It's good therapy, give it a try.

Won't You Help Keep Me Sane?

 

I am miserably out of touch for oh so many things in my life but particularly in the world of music. I am stuck in the '70s. Classic. R&B. Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, the Eagles.

It's not like my head is totally buried in the land of Elton. I do like Jason Mraz, Mary J. Blige, and John Legend. But my knowledge of new artists is as thin as the aging skin on the back my hands.

I've been exercising more lately. I realize now (hello, it's never too late, right?) that cardio is not only good for the body but great for the mind. I find that when I don't exercise my mood predictably becomes heavy and dark. I need the cardio to KEEP ME SANE and keep my family from kicking my beyotch-ass to the curb. I've exhausted my playlists and need some new juice to keep my legs moving and my fists pumping. 

I don't have the time to start swimming the great I-Tunes sea of new artists. So, I'm asking you.

Would you share with me some of your recent finds? Or old favorites (maybe I've forgotten some).
Pretty please?  My sanity and the stability of my family depend on the kindness of strangers my internet buds.

My family and I thank you.


This has been a public service announcement.

Bernie Madoff: An all around Shanda*

 

This short video courtesy of Huff Post and Vanity Fair is heartbreaking.
If you don't want to invest the whole 4 minutes, go to 3:30 to hear the Rabbi.
Devastating.  Mindboggling.  Tragic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/04/bernie-madoff-victims-spe_n_171773.html


* For my Yiddish-challenged readers, Shanda is defined as: A shame, a scandal.