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... and all through the neighborhood, not gift had been bought, but it was all good.

After a failed attempt at hanging a string of lights on my patio [only to find that one of the sets doesn't light up and the other isn't long enough to make any kind of festive impression], I started looking through old holiday pictures. Only, I couldn't find any. At least none from recent years. Except for this one, taken on the day of my college graduation a few years back.


There have been so many beautiful Nelson Mandela posts floating around the web since his passing that I had trouble choosing just one to post here. So I decided to post three. I seriously thank God for the figures that have come before my generation and helped make all my opportunities a reality.


I'm famous for sneaking food into the movies, and once I tried to slip my iced coffee into a matinee, just to find a huge spill at the bottom of my purse. Over a year later, the inside of that handbag still smells like a caramel latte. It triggers a Starbucks craving every time I wear it. So I imagine that craving would be for cabernet if I had tried to smuggle an open glass of vino into the movie that day. Now I'll never have to worry about that. Aren't I classy?



If you are what you drink, I must've had a few glasses of cough-up-your-lungs this weekend, because that's all I did on Sunday night. It was one of those restless evenings where all you want to do is sleep, but that's near impossible when that tickle in your throat refuses to settle down. My body finally knocked out from exhaustion around 3am on Monday morning, and I woke up at 7ish feeling like I had fell off the back of a truck. Everything ached. My core muscles were spent, and I was in pain just getting out of bed to brush my teeth. I'm the stubborn type who hates taking any kind of medicine because it never really helps anyway. Claritin, Zyrtec and all those other allergy pills do absolutely nothing for my uncontrollable sneezing during allergy season, and Robitussin hasn't calmed a cough for me since kindergarten. I just suffer through the icky-ness and let my immune system do it's job. So that's what my Monday was spent doing: suffering, and sitting on my sofa, looking out on the patio at the view above. To make things worse, I caught the worst headache later that afternoon [caffeine withdrawal] [how am I supposed to run to Starbucks when I can barely get up to pee?], and even after I caved and popped some ibuprofen the dang thing just would not go away. Around 9:30pm I crept under my covers and closed my eyes for the night.

I woke up the next morning feeling a good 70% better than the night before. I jumped on my computer, caught up on work and started to get back in my usual routine. By the end of the day, a deep hunger hit me, and I met up with a friend for dinner at Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro. Pasta with Grilled Chicken as the main & Bread Pudding for desert... it's after meals like these that I remember why they call it comfort food. I'm already looking forward to my leftovers for lunch.







I'll keep this short.


Yesterday, I had 3 different people make comments on how clean & tidy I keep my home. The term OCD was tossed around a few times, and as they backed up their conclusions with semi-solid evidence. I decided that maybe I could be just a teeny tiny bit anal when it comes to keeping my living space in order. Truthfully, I just dislike chaos. In a world that's so disheveled and erratic, my home is the one place where I can and should be completely in control of how things look/feel.

It's nice to have some order in your life, which is why I like outlines and lists. Some disarray is nice and often necessary, but for the most part, I need structure. In college, all my academic essays had to be outlined before I could start writing, and love numbered lists. That's why when I read Tania's update for the day, I had to follow suit. [BTW, the photography on her blog is well worth the click] [seriously, WELL WORTH IT]

You know how men are always saying that we women don't know what we want? No man has ever, ever been able to say that about me. When I want something, I make it clear and find a way to make it happen (within reason). I struggle with whether this is a good or bad personality trait, because it's times like this weekend when I had to get difficult with two different Sprint store managers that I wonder how far is too far.

Still. I walked out with the exact phone I wanted, and it didn't cost me a dime. I even had a credit on my bill by the end of the day.



































© the active spirit. +