Top 10 Tuesday

Top Ten Songs I'm Always in the Mood For:

10.  Dreams, The Cranberries - Always makes me think of You've Got Mail, and I love it.


9.  Crazy, Gnarles Barkley - Just crazy fun, never ever get tired of it.


8.  Always Coca-Cola, Joey Diggs  - weird choice, but it's definitely on my most played songs list and always makes me happy!


7.  I Won't Let Go, Rascall Flatts - Yeah, I really want my future husband to do the Say Anything move with this song. lol  I dwell on ridiculous things sometimes.


6.  Karma Chameleon, Culture Club - again, no explaining that one, I just love it! lol


5.  I'm Scared, Duffy - I think I need her whole CD, bc I really like each of the 3 songs I've downloaded.


4.  Vienna, Billy Joel - Mmmmm, so good.


3.  Just Dance, Lady Gaga - So much fun!


2.  Some Nights, Glee cast version - (aka my theme song for 2013) - Love love love it!!


1.  COLDER WEATHER, Zac Brown Band - by far my most played song on iTunes - haunting, melancholy perfection!

Turning Points

Ted:  "It's funny looking back on it now -- I was so sure Stella was the one, and when she left me, I was sooo devastated.  But you guys got me through it.  Now the painful part's over, and I've come out the other side a little bit stronger!  You know, I hardly even think about her anymore... that's what time does, I guess."

Lily:  "Ted..... the wedding was yesterday."

Ted Mosby, Architect :)

It's funny, but I think about that scene a lot.  It's so me... writing about all I've "learned" & hoping if I know the right things to say, it will allow me to totally fast forward through the difficult parts of really learning the lesson.  (Which always come anyway, then I just look stupid for having been too positive and preachy in the beginning.)

I still roll my eyes when I read some of the stuff I wrote in '07, but I know I was absolutely sincere at the time.  I can think of several smaller things where I've done that - (including weight loss revelations and my breakdown at the beginning of this year, taking a blog break for all of 9 days, then genuinely thinking the worst was over and I'd moved on and was stronger for it. Not so much.)  I'm so aware in the big moments that my reaction matters -- it's this "fork-in-the-road" idea that my whole future will be affected by how I handle it, and I sincerely want to be a person who takes the right path and learns from the hard things.  And let's be honest, I want to avoid the pain associated with real growth and change.  So I feel pressure to 'claim' what I believe is God's path before my heart is really there.  And it usually makes me look and feel silly.  And worse, I think it cheapens and discredits what I have to say when the testimony is real later on - when I have fully come through something and truly learned from it.  And I hate that.

So instead of forcing an emotional, positive, inspiring, Scripture-filled epiphany post... I'm going to pause and be honest with myself that I'm not there yet, probably not even close.  And God does not pressure or expect me to be!

And what I'm feeling will probably get worse before it gets better.  But it will get better someday.  So that's enough for now.

“I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door... and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.”  

"Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away and disappear. I know that's wrong because it's my responsibility, and I know that things get worse before they get better because that's what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big... It’s much easier not to know things sometimes... because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn’t stop for anybody." 

“I think that if I ever have kids and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that, because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have, good or bad.  ...It's okay to feel things.  And be who you are about them."   

~Stephen Chbosky, Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perfect Date

A few random pics from my iphone...

Kristen sent me this today - made me pretty happy! :)

A small taste of the cuteness happening over at Crescent Park, where Laura and I go walking every week. :)  Little kids and cute puppies and ducks and happy spring colors and a perfect little half-mile loop track where you can always keep an eye on your car.

If only they stayed this color.

Best sign ever - I love it!!

Sleeping ducks = cuteness!  

(I'm meeting Kristin and Laura at CP later this afternoon,

and just as Cheryl Frasier said, the weather is pretty perfect!  Yay!)

"You are invisible. Go visible."  I know it's for the gmail-chat and it's there every time I open my email, but it caught my eye as I was pondering whether it'd be worth the hassle to switch jobs sometime soon, so it really made me laugh. :)

Challenge accepted, Gmail.

"My heart wants to sing every song it hears;

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees..."

True story. lolol

Malori sent me this meme a while back, and it is so me today - (most days, really) - in my happy little musical dreamworld, wishing the plea transcripts would magically put themselves together! lol

Anyway, back to it.  Only a couple more hours.
Hope you get to go outside and enjoy 'the perfect date' today! =)

Photo Friday!

This top one is just for Malori. lol

(Surprisingly, I have another friend who is into French Bulldogs, and she follows "Sir Charles Barkley" on FB.  This puppy pic of him is definitely ridiculously cute!  I think it's that his head is way too big for his body that really gets me, much like Pomeranians...)

Speaking of Pomeranians, next is another picture of the little Boo puppy, feeling guilty about tracking in mud.  Aaaah, love it!!

This one is from the National Geographic photos blog, taken at a pool in France in 1988.  I just really like the picture because I'd totally be the girl off by herself doing a handstand in the water. lol  I'm thinking of doing a little fiction writing every morning, using these pictures as story prompts to generate ideas... so many interesting photos on this site - I love it!

And finally, an awesome tree-bridge picture of Springtime!  This picture has obviously been edited to make everything superbright, but I'm gonna pretend I don't know that.  Happy Spring!  Happy Friday, and have a lovely weekend!! =)

Words of Wisdom Wednesday ~ Perfectionism

"Perfectionism doesn't believe in practice shots. It doesn't believe in improvement. Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth doing badly - and that if we allow ourselves to do something badly we might, in time, become quite good at it. Perfectionism measures our beginner's work against the finished work of masters. Perfectionism thrives on comparison and competition. It doesn't know how to say, "Good try," or "Job well done." The critic does not believe in creative glee - or any glee at all, for that matter.  No, perfectionism is a serious matter... Often it is tenacity, not talent, that rules the day.”  ~Julia Cameron

“When you feel yourself to be in critical condition, 
you must treat yourself as gently as you would a sick friend.”  ~Julia Cameron

“90 percent perfect and shared with the world always changes more lives than 100 percent perfect and stuck in your head.”  ~Jon Acuff

"Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest."  ~Ecclesiastes 11:4

Memory Monday ~ T&C Birthdays

This past weekend, I got to attend my nephews' birthday party!  Triston turned 6 and Carter is turning 5 this month.  =)  Their party was at JumpZone, a place with several moonbounce things to climb through and fun slides and tire swings and such - they had so much fun!  (I was really excited to get to go this time because I missed their party last year due to a stupid tornado warning!  I got them each water guns, water balloons, and a soccer ball - they seemed most excited about the water guns!)  =)

Anyway, here are a few pictures...

Today, in just a few minutes, we are starting a jury trial (for the first time in quite a while).  It's gonna be a long two weeks and I'm not super excited about it, but this might be my last jury term, so that part is nice to think about.  Happy Monday, friends!

Photo Friday ~ BFF

Happy Friday!

Here's a fun collage of Malori and I through the last six years... yay! :)

LOVE her and love all these memories (and so many more)! :)

Immensely thankful to have a "BFF."

That's it for today (I think).  With either transcripts or school work, I'm going to attempt to have a productive afternoon.  Wish me luck. lol

I am the 1%...

Short post, but I randomly took the Myers-Briggs assessment tonight and discovered that I am an INFJ, which is apparently the rarest personality type, so that's interesting/fun. :)  It makes no sense at all to me that they say Oprah has that same personality, but I'll take it. lol  And I had to laugh at the section on work/career... so many jobs that I've strongly considered! :)

Anyway, in a quick "Thankful Thursday" shift, I'm thankful for natural new friendships (hooray for Drivers), for God's grace and strength, for the Spring daisies brightening my house up ("the friendliest flower"), for Milano cookies and Red Robin after a long day at work... and I'm super thankful that tomorrow is Friday!! 

Tomorrow I head to OKC after work for dinner and Jurassic Park with Malori (yay), then Saturday is Triston and Carter's joint birthday party... (5 and 6)

Get excited! :)

Just one more thing...

First off, Happy "National Siblings Day!"  Kind of random, and I wouldn't have known that if it wasn't for Facebook, but as soon as I realized it, I stopped scoping plea transcripts to make this happy collage... and I'm pretty okay with that decision. lol

Love you, Rachael LaJo! :)

Tonight was the first meeting for a new women's group that my friend, Lindsay, is starting.  It's a group for older women to come in and speak to women in my age range, and we're going to focus on a different topic every month, (including practical things like career, health, etc).  I'm excited about it, and tonight was really good.  Lindsay's mom spoke to us about self-worth, and one thing she said about the strategies of Satan was a well-timed reminder:

• Surrounded by blissful perfection and a million wonderful things God had created for her, Satan drew Eve's focus toward the one thing she didn't/couldn't have, quickly convincing her that she couldn't possibly be happy and fulfilled without it.

So true, and exactly how he works in all of our lives.  To convince us that no matter how much God has blessed us with, we should zero in and dwell on what is missing and how miserable we are without it and how we can go about getting it for ourselves!!  

That might not hit anyone else as profoundly as it did me, but I thought it was worth sharing. There will always be something more, something we feel we are missing, but we can choose to focus on God's presence and His blessings, then reap joy instead of misery.  It all comes back to the choose life theme again.

Anyway, happy Wednesday, and good night!

Top 10 Tuesday

My Top 10 Favorite Quotes from Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:

1. “If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation... in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed.... If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet.”
2. "People get stuck thinking they are one kind of person... The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were in February.” 
3. “I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.” 
4. "We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.” 
5. “Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited  about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.” 
6. "It’s an odd feeling to be awakened from a life of fantasy. You stand there looking at a bare mantel and the house gets an eerie feel, as though it were haunted by a kind of nothingness, an absence of something that could have been, an absence of people who could have been living here, interacting with me, forcing me out of my daydreams. I stood for a while and heard the voices of children who didn’t exist and felt the tender touch of a wife who wanted me to listen to her. I felt, at once, the absent glory of a life that could have been.” 
7. "Once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.” 
8. "Growing up in church, we were taught that Jesus was the answer to all our problems. We were taught that there was a circle-shaped hole in our heart and that we had tried to fill it with the square peg of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; but only the circle peg of Jesus could fill our hole. I became a Christian based, in part, on this promise, but the hole never really went away. To be sure, I like Jesus, and I still follow him, but the idea that Jesus will make everything better is a lie. I think Jesus can make things better, but I don’t think he is going to make things perfect. Not here, and not now. What I love about the true gospel of Jesus, though, is that it offers hope. Paul has hope our souls will be made complete. It will happen in heaven, where there will be a wedding and a feast. I wonder if that’s why so many happy stories end in weddings and feasts..."
9. "Humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.” 
10. “She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while.”

Saturday Song

First off, congrats to Lauralai for finishing the Aquarium Run Half-Marathon this morning in record time! ...Winning! :)

 I must say, it was nice to go to a race and not be running for once!  Taking pictures and making this sign was fun too.  I'm excited to cheer her on in OKC at the end of this month!

Her sister, Leah, who is living in Japan right now, will also be running a Half later today!  (Just to explain why her name is on the sign.)  I told the lady at Walgreens that the posterboard was to make a sign for my friend who was running a race, and she said, "Oh, I hope she wins!!" lol

Yes, she did! :) 

Song of the Week (inspired by Leah) = Defying Gravity from the Wicked Soundtrack

"Something has changed within me, something is not the same.

I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game.

Too late for second-guessing; too late to go back to sleep.

It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes, and leap!

...I'm through accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so.

Some things I cannot change, but till I try, I'll never know.

Too long I've been afraid of losing love - I guess I've lost.

Well, if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost...

And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free...

And nobody in all of Oz, no Wizard that there is or was,

Is ever gonna bring me down!"

Love it!

T.G.I.F. =)

(TRUST - GRATITUDE - INSPIRATION - FAITH)

And yes, thank God it's Friday!

Today, I'm trusting God to catch me when I am falling and to love me when I am failing.

I am grateful for a well-timed jolt of hope!

(Reading these 3 updates in a row yesterday was encouraging - God sees me and knows my heart and His mercy is new every morning.)

I am inspired by (and trusting in and grateful for) my two closest friends, who radiate awesomeness and confidence and healthy stability and humor and beauty and love! :)

And finally, I am practicing faith by believing that I'm going to make it through the next 2 months of school and get my degree!! lol  (I'm excited that we're almost done, but very ready for it to get here faster.)

Little Women Quotes

Quotes I love from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
(Mostly from the book, but the last one is from the 1933 movie.)

"I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day. I think I shall write books and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream."  :)  Amen to that!

"My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength."

“Jo's eyes sparkled, for it's always pleasant to be believed in; and a friend's praise is always sweeter than a dozen newspaper puffs.” 

"Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.” 

“If life is often so hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get through it…”

“Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort that is.” 

"So they were all in all to each other... the strong sister and the feeble one, always together, as if they felt instinctively that a long separation was not far away. They did feel it, yet neither spoke of it, for often between ourselves and those nearest and dearest to us there exists a reserve which it is very hard to overcome. Jo felt as if a veil had fallen between her heart and Beth's, but when she put out her hand to lift it up, there seemed something sacred in the silence..."

“Beth lay a minute thinking, and then said in her quiet way, 'I don't know how to express myself, and shouldn't try to anyone but you... I only meant to say that I have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long. I'm not like the rest of you... I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.” 

“She did not rebuke Jo with saintly speeches, only loved her better for her passionate affection, and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself.” 

"She began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty, and to feel that her friend Friedrich Bhaer was not only good, but great.

This belief strengthened daily. She valued his esteem, she coveted his respect, she wanted to be worthy of his friendship..."

“Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.” 

"If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that’s all that you really are. Time erodes all such beauty, but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind: Your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage. These are the things I cherish so in you." ❤