Prayer for Haiti

Dear Lord, look out for all your children in Haiti.  Bring those who have died safely back to your home.  Help the living to live- let the rescue efforts succeed beyond our wildest dreams.  Bring the help that they need- do not let disease and pestilence cause any further loss of life.  May the aid that comes their way lead to a rebuilding of a healthier and more sustainable country- bringing light into the darkness.  We ask this is Jesus' name. Amen.

Garden in Process

I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of doing a video blog- and of fitting one more thing into a life too full already.  Will not make any promises about when we can get going again.  I love writing this blog- think I will love the video or multi-media blog too- but do not want to put something out that is not worthy of my time and your attention.  Hope to be back soon!

Day 2: Flying Today

Had a hard time taking care of myself this AM- and did not do my after-work routine at all.  However, I am programming my brain to get up in the morning and get to work.  Have all the music for my choir practice organized (and all the music lying around is in the proper place).  Also decided that we needed a semi-nutritious snack for my son to eat when he didn't feel like cooking- so made a loaf of peanut butter bread.  Off to pack up my lunch and do a load of dishes! 

First Day Back on Track- Seeing Progress

Followed my routine yesterday- had a productive day at work and when I got home made my son a nice supper and conquered most of the dishes- more than I had accomplished in an entire day during my vacation.  This morning, after exercising made my bed, after my bath swished and swiped the tub, did two loads of laundry- put them away- started to tackle my first box of Christmas ornament storage- the chores were my 15 minutes of exercise (more like 45).  Was inspired to use the Daily Prayer at Creighton University as my morning prayer/inspiration time and still got here to the blog.  Did not do as well at taking care of myself in the evening- watched the Bachelor and fell asleep until after midnight- so tonight will deal with that aspect of self-care.  Now have got to go and make my bean relish mix for my salads for the week.  More tomorrow! 

Just Do It Doesn't Work Without Flying Today

One of the basic underpinnings of the Discipline of Self-Esteem is that unless you have the discipline to  take care of yourself, you won't have the discipline to take care of any other responsibilities properly.  It will always be robbing Peter to pay Paul and resenting every second of the work that you do.  I was off work all last week, telling myself constantly that I was going to start doing all the house work that needs to be done any second- then didn't.  Donald Trump tells us to "Just Do It"- but when I told myself to just do it- I resented it.  You need to start with taking care of yourself first.  I often don't start with me first.  I have this great list of things to do every day and I just don't do them- and when I just don't do them, everything else becomes harder.  But when I found myself thnking that I needed to just do this list- it felt good!  No resentment.  This morning I decided to start out with my Flying Today list.  It is now 2.5 hours later and I wonder where all the time went- but I do know that I feel better.  Right now I am writing this instead of reading something inspirational for 5 minutes, so the process is almost done.  Will let you know if this helped tomorrow.

Sand Castles

When I was a little girl, back in the late 1950's, we occasionally went to the beach at Hammonasset.  The last time that we were there, I met a young boy who changed my life.  He was part of a large family and they made the largest, most elaborate sand castle that I ever saw in my life!  It had towers and turrets and moats filled with water and even a drawbridge.  I saw it and immediately I wanted to build one just like it, so I took my bucket, filled it up and dumped it out on the sand- and it just collapsed.  I did it over and over again- tried again and again- and every time that I tried- it still just collapsed. Finally, one of the boys in the family came over and showed me how to get the sand to mound- all that it took was a little water.  He stayed with me and we eventually got a fairly nice but small castle built with a little moat and a bridge before he had to go.  I don't know who he was but I remember that he came from New York City- from a part on Long Island.  If you recognize yourself here, just always know that I never forgot how to make sand stick together and I taught almost everyone that I ever played with.  Thank you.  You never know how something little that you do will affect someone, but I've always been grateful to that little boy who showed me how to build sand castles.

Here is a picture of me and my family on the beach at Hammonasset. Might have even been the same day! No point to this point- just following an inspiration...