The silver lining

My belated New Year's resolution is to complain less and contemplate the positive more. So in this exercise I will attempt to find the positives of a few key events I'd rather complain about.

the complaint: I dumped chocolate carnation instant breakfast in my car this week.
the positive: My sunglasses taste like chocolate now.

the complaint: My husband has had a lot of late night emergencies with work this week.
the positive: I don't have to watch Fox news!

the complaint: Our 16-month old isn't walking yet.
the positive: Sewing knee patches on the worn-out knees on her pants updates her wardrobe inexpensively.

the complaint: I have huge feet and so I can't find a decent pair of metallic pumps.
the positive: Because the selection is so small, I can afford to buy pretty much every cute pair of shoes in my size on zappos.

Hoping for a "snow day"

Watching the winter storm warnings is making nostalgic for my childhood in the Midwest. I remember many nights going to bed hoping that the next day we wouldn't have to go to school. We would be thrilled when the phone would ring the next morning at 6 AM. (My parents were both teachers and therefore on the phone chain.)

But we had to patiently wait for morning to find out our fate. We couldn't monitor the school closings at 2 AM on the Internet! And I definitely didn't have a cell phone that I could obsess about keeping charged or enrolling correctly in the "emergency text" program through the college.

Thank goodness I have the technology to allow me to waste more time.

Appreciating the small things

It's weird, in a good way, how different things are from a year ago, when I was going back to work with a newborn at home. I'm caught up with all my shows on the TiVo. I actually woke up BEFORE my alarm a couple mornings last week. Breakfast is no longer a protein bar and a diet coke in the car; it feels like a luxury to have a bowl of cereal in the morning. I read an entire book last week. That felt downright deconent. I even strummed my bass guitar a little tonight. I don't exactly have an excess of time to spare, but at least I have some time to myself now.

Impulse Resolutions

I wonder how many other people, like me, signed up for te 5K in Greenville on New Year's Eve? Well at least unlike the other times I've impulsively signed up for 5K races, I've actually been running recently. I can run about 2 miles now. So maybe I will make the 3.1 miles in 25 days?

New Years Eve I went to the gym, and of course it's packed with everyone starting their resolutions early. I bet it's packed tomorrow when I go, too. I feel so unoriginal.

I guess if I want to be original then I'd resolve to eat chocolate every day. And spend too much money on shoes. And collect at least a 3-foot-high stack of unfiled papers in my office. (And another 3-foot pile in my home office.) Hey, well at least they'd be resolutions I could keep.