smile it’s free

Gratitude challenge: day 7

Today the things I’m grateful for starts off with “mornings.” Not only should we all celebrate life, but another day of it to hopefully do better than the last. Priceless!

Amy Wise said it like this “Staying stale or starting fresh you choose!”

We can dwell on the facts that life isn’t all that fair, or we can work to make it as fair as possible for those we come in contact with. Although this morning is great and all, I’m still having internet problems and the tech says another week of this to go. My apologies for irregular posts on feeling grateful and this challenge in general. But that proves that living life is challenging. It’s a dance, so keep on dancing.

2) challenges
After all any challenge pushes us along to those places we all have said, we would go if only…(we all to often say “later”). When someone challenges us, there is an expectation to preform with a double helping of healthy competition, a competitive spirit to out perform those who challenge us, to rise to the occasion, to win fair and square.
In short challenges get us moving–what moves you?

3) cookies

Who doesn’t love the cookie? Besides competition makes me hungry for junk food. Is a cookie really junk food? Raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the reason I have trust issues. Never the less, I will eat both just as easily as one or the other. I just don’t like it when my taste buds are all prepared for the taste of chocolate, then it comes up with raisin flavor’s. I guess that’s why there are split personality cookies (chocolate chip raisin)?

4) tech support

Because cookies can’t solve everything without milk, and tech support is that support that helps me clean up my connection issues like sweeping up cookie crumbs. Problems with the internet hopefully solved, just need to wait for new equipment to be delivered. And then we once again we will have the internet back for more than 1 minuet at a time followed by 5 minuets of “re-loading”. :^(

5) delivery people.

To the likes of UPS and similar services, delivery people are great. Providing they aren’t copying the opening few minutes of the movie “Pet Detective” with my deliveries? I have heard the horror stories of others, their packages that were delivered and looked like the aftermath of a shredded package bomb. So yeah. I’m grateful and feeling much gratitude for my delivery people. Disclaimer includes (All rights to change my opinion are reserved, they may change without notice everything is possible.)

6) Pizza
Is there such a thing like eating too much pizza? I love being married but sometimes I miss the days when I could sit on the couch in my boxers and eat an unsliced microwave pizza by myself. If I would do that now I’d look like an older fat guy. And that’s never good for anyone’s own appearance or sex appeal. Eating cold pizza in the morning while everyone else is sleeping–game on!

7) Out of the ordinary Humor.

Thank God for that. To see the funny in the ordinary things of every day life isn’t easy. But it can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, the somewhat boring into the interesting, and the doldrums of sad times into more hopeful and positively bearable times. “Laughter cures all”, my late Dad used to say, “I would rather have people laugh, and remember, and re enjoy those pranks, jokes, or just generally fun and funny memories, than all of my embarrassing short comings I fought to avoid but failed at. Even a bad joke is better than that.”

That sums it up day 7, thanks God, somehow you got me to remember Dad again. Send help, because I need it! Amen.

All the best.

Quote a day

“The fastest way to cheer yourself up is to help lift someone else up.”–Mindwarpfx

This saying may give an impression of climbing out of a hole, or the way I choose to see it…a superhero climbing up to great heights.

Have you ever noticed in movie theory the superhero always needs the help from the unsuspecting average Joe with no real powers. The interesting thing with the average Joe is that they usually hold the moral high ground, the moral compass, while expressing the importance of the freedom to choose.

If your stuck in a rut all you can do is look up, wanting, contemplating a way to get out if it. Nothing can give you more confidence then seeing a helping hand reaching out towards you. Nothing pushes you harder towards any goals than a combined effort. The theory behind team sports pertaining to living life.

Though the importance of these institutions in out modern times seem a bit out dated, (all to often thought of having limited impact), marriage, and church express like in team sports a cornerstone belief of a commitment to encouraging combined efforts to a common positive goal (that ever extended helping hand). The importance if these two institutions are as bold a difference as a positive image vs. a negative image in the societal photo album.

At its core a superhero conquers their own personal weaknesses like those feelings of greed, and comes to give a helping hand to those in need. A villain is fueled by greed and always looks to profit from extending what appears to be “help”, but ends up personally taking advantage.

It’s your own movie, the character you decide to play is your choice to make or remake each day.

Enjoy the day.

Gratitude challenge: day 6

I’m grateful for these things:

1) the internet & having my connection back.

I know that’s a stretch for some. It’s been said that the net wastes time, takes you away from reality. But clearly the net does allow people to make those choices for themselves using their own values at play. It can be used for good, bad, or indifferent, but when you loose connection, suddenly you realize just how good it can also be. Because bad people won’t complain, damn the nets down…guess I’ll have to be good now. The evil within will find a way. I’m just using extremes here to make a humorous point.

2) back yard chickens

Well I can sum it up in a word or two–eggs! Love them. And nothing is fresher than back yard chicken eggs. Unless you’re laying them yourself. Honestly though, I’m still wondering who came first?

3) yard work!

Yes I like to do yard work. But I don’t like to make it my full time job. I have enough yard for one full time jobs worth. Who needs two jobs? Truth aside, after 8 days off in Southern California, every thing seems to grow 2 X faster (vegetables are huge) weeds are huge’er / bigger, and to think all that growth without much water. My yard work solution to mad growth, “round-up growth retardant” keeps weeds under control, and my mower on vacation.

4) first day back to work after time off.

Yep! I’m ready to get to work again. It because my job is creative, and so satisfying to be able to do it again. Besides vacations don’t pay for themselves–the next one is calling.

5) smiles

Because the best part, to give or get one, they’re free! Cost nothing! Yet can change your entire days attitude. Give a smile and if that person passes one along–that smile may go around the world by the time you are going home from work. That’s just cool! So many possibilities from a low cost act.

6) smart phones

Because without home internet connection working properly, I can still post a day six Gratitude challenge post. Granted its late. But it’s late because I can’t transfer a post from my PC, to phone, to blog. Well I could maybe, I am just not all that tech’y! I’m slow. And that’s better than being slow because of age. Not provoking the older people out there with that statement. Just pointing out a fact that with age you realize doing the un-necessary 3 X fast isn’t as good as doing it a bit slower but right the first time.

I could have summed up a lot of this list under the heading of being thankful for “humor”, but a proper Gratitude challenge celebrates the small things, because like children they may grow-up to become bigger things, bigger than you could have have ever imagined.

All the best.