Falling into place
It's funny how everything that you work so hard for comes to you much easier when you stop trying so hard. In the past I've had the tendency to be a bit of a worrier, and looked to what might go wrong with a situation vs. what the positive outcome may be by giving it a chance.

Good things that have happened today by taking a step of faith and letting go of the outcome: I lost 1 lb on WW when I stepped on the scale this morning, I figured out how to access my stock options to sell, I got a postcard in the mail that tells how I can finance getting that Holistic Care Practitioner certification for as low as $10 a month while I'm studying, and Brian said hi to me this afternoon going down the hall and it didn't sound forced. Doesn't take much to make me happy, eh? :)

Momma stopped over this evening to get some more water since their well isn't working properly right now. We visited for a little bit and it's always nice to talk with her. I'll probably go over to visit them on Saturday since I'm going to help Amy get her wedding reception CD put together on Saturday.

Tomorrow is looking like a good day for me, a little busy, but that's good. Finally getting that oil change for my car after work and it looks like I'll just have time to make it to my meditation group. Hopefully some of the other regulars will be there tomorrow. The group was kinda small last week, and I think that the meditations are actually more effective with more people there. I might need to record American Idol, just in case I run late:)

Time to go for the evening. I need to get everything ready for work tomorrow morning since I have a challenging time getting up to do it!

Better than expected
Today I refinanced my car loan through my local credit union and thought that I'd be paying $10 more a month for lower interest. The end result was that I'm paying around $35 less a month and lower interest! YAY!

I got my information packet from Blue Heron Healing Arts Academy today in the mail. I think I found a certificate program I'd like to study. It's a Holistic Health Practitioner certification program. It's a little pricey, but most of these kind of programs are. I think I will investigate it further even if I'm not sure how I'd pay for it just yet. I know that my CU won't give me another loan for a while, at least until I build some equity into my car.

I also got my car license plate tags and my CU checking statement in the mail today. They were both things I was thinking about today as well. That means if I think about receiving an abundance of wealth, I'll get that as well, right? Well, according to my spiritual practices, that's the way it goes anyhow. Won't hurt by any means to think those kind of thoughts, and see what works out. In fact, maybe that's why things worked out so well for my car refinancing. I was thinking a few days ago that if I were to study holistic health I would need to find a way to pay for it. If I can find a way to do that, I'll go.

Good Day
So I didn't do everything that I expected to today, but a lot of it. Did some chores, have the music turned up loud now, and will light some candles later this evening.

I've changed a lot. I used to focus on how lonely I felt during the weekends when I'm by myself for the day. Today was nice, I ended up running errands all over town and just enjoyed the day by myself. I didn't fret that I was alone and didn't obsess (too much) about wishing for a significant other. The spiritual work really pays off. You can't attract what you want until you're content with yourself as you are right now.

The weather cleared up and I headed over to Spirit Dreams to pick out a fairy figurine for my Mom for Mother's day. I'm sure that Mom is going to love the one I got her, though I hope she doesn't worry that I may have paid too much. I knew it was the right gift as soon as I got it. Also, the owners of the store are so nice. I go in there frequently (about every 2 weeks or so) and don't always have money to buy something, but I try to when I can.

Turns out tomorrow we're going to have a home cooked roast beef dinner for Mommas Day. Since Braddy was buying the goods, I was fine with him picking out the dinner. Besides, the weather was supposed to be stormy most of the day. Actually, it was supposed to be bad today and ended up just sprinkling a little in the afternoon and then clearing up. I made a cake (mix of course) and bought some cherry Moose Trax ice cream to go with it. Figured out the entire day meal wise and since I saved the large majority of my flex points for tomorrow, I can eat everything as long as I don't get extra large servings!

Well, that's it for today. May we all have good dreams tonight:)

A New Day-Thoughts on Weight Watchers online
It's funny. If this were Monday thru Friday at 8:15 in the morning, I'd be dead tired. But it's Saturday so I'm up and ready to go. Well, at least up:) I have a bit to do yet before I'm presentable to the world. Just got done reading the Weight Watchers Online community pages. A lot of those posts are pretty inspiring. I found this board called "Newbies Get Acquainted" and it's a realistic board. These people have 30+ lbs to lose and their goal weight is not super skinny/anorexic either. It's a nice goal that gets them to a healthy BMI. On the "General Thread" board, I've found that a lot of those people are already at MY goal weight and are still trying to lose 20-25 lbs. Another reason I've decided to stop going to that board is because these people are losing strictly for vanity and if they consider themselves fat when they're at a healthy weight, they probably consider the rest of us major cows. That's definitely not a supportive environment to be in. I've been doing WW online for about 6 weeks. I had lost about 8 lbs (and one jeans size) in 2 weeks. Then TOM comes and you can expect to either gain or stay the same during that time because of water gain/bloating. But that's fine, that's just part of the game:) Then I found out my grandfather passed away and I don't know why I felt that gave me license to eat the most unhealthy things around. I do know I've haven't been around so much junk food as was at the after funeral reception in a long time. So I didn't weigh myself that week and this week I'm doing pretty good. But now it's TOM again (if someone's adding up weeks between TOM it's possible I didn't talk about a week in there) but I think that I'll be back to where I was before everything happened by the end of this WW week (Monday evening). Tuesday morning is my weekly weigh in time and I just use my home scale. It's about 4 lbs over what the doctors office uses so I adjust it accordingly.

Since it's Saturday and it's supposed to thunderstorm most of the day, I think this will be a designated a house cleaning-light the candles-play music loud day. The only exceptions to that will be going out to Spirit Dreams to get the fairy doll figurine for Mom's Mother's Day present and making a cake and maybe macaroni salad for a MD BBQ tomorrow. Do I know how to have an exciting day or what? :) But what may be a rather mediocre day for someone else can turn out to be a lot of fun for me...it just depends on your perspective. If I think of the mediocre as fun, imagine how much I enjoy things that are actually fun:)

Well, time to get started!

Party
I'm not quite sure what it is about being with a group of people you see every day at work and then seeing them at an informal gathering that makes me want to back into a corner and hide. But I did relatively well tonight...I'm not a big drinker anymore (not sure I every REALLY was) and so I spent time with the people who I knew the best from work and most of them aren't big drinkers either. There were a few moments where the conversation was a bit sketchy because when you don't know someone very well except for work interests, that's just how it is.

I ended up staying for only a couple hours but that's OK since I'm not a party animal and most of the people that I spend time with at work had to head out about that time anyhow. Not bad for the bosses (big bosses) party. Actually, we've never had a GM who has opened up their home to us before and celebrated a job well done. So that's cool.

You know, in the not so distant past I would've worried about the fact that there were other people there my age or older that were staying around and drinking and partying and I was tired from work so I went home around 8pm. I've come to accept that that's not the kind of person I am, at least not often. To be honest, I'm much happier with a small group of friends and family and talking and entertaining each other. I have the best conversations with my friend Amy and her fiance when I go over there to visit. And when the weather gets nice, like it's starting to now, my family (folks, brothers and kids) will get together for birthdays, holidays and bbq's at least every other weekend. But I think that's because we all like each other and we entertain each other. We all like to be silly and make each other laugh. So no, I'm not missing anything by not going to every party there is and staying late.

getting started
I guess I figured that this would be rather therapeutic for me. I try to journal when I'm stressed or working through something, but I usually end up with notebook paper all over the place and never read it again. This is likely to be just as effective with a lot less mess for me to pick up!