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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Gratitude: It Can Change Your Life

I'm not going to complain too much in this post (though it is one of my favorite things). All I want to say, is I hate how every year we jump from Halloween straight to Christmas and completely skip Thanksgiving. Let's, just for a moment, focus on the things in our lives that we are grateful for.

Expressing gratitude has legitmate health, well being and physical benefits. See below in this lovely infographic, thingy!!!

I am grateful for a lot of things in my life. I have a wonderful family!!! Including loving parents, grandparents, two brothers and a sister-in-law (and a whole lot of almost in-laws), a gorgeous niece, a great fiance, a few quality friends, a nice home with a Kitty and a good job. I'm far better off than many people in this world and I spend far too little time expressing my gratitude. I'm going to try to do better, we all should!
So, what should we do? I usually just tell you all the funny things that happen in my life, but this time I actually have some action items: 1) focus on the things you are grateful for, write them down and consciously acknowledge them, then 2) tell someone THANK YOU. Call them up or better yet, send a hand-written card.  Let everyone know what they mean to you. 

Sunday, November 8, 2015

And, then I found $20

"I'm VERY particular about who holds my stuff!"
Zach always tells me that my stories are bad. Other people, like Kent and Emily, have seconded this opinion. Emily likes to remind me, "You're not funny." And Kent insists listening to me is torture. Once, after hearing a story from me, he said, "I hated that more than I've ever hated anything." Since my stories are so bad, Zach told me that I need to add, "And then I found $20!" at the end of each tale, so at least people will know when the story is over with.

These people are all jerks.

This Saturday Emily and I went to the Farmer's Market in Salt Lake City. We got there around 9:30, which seemed like perfect timing. Except, that no one seemed to have their crap together yet. Each vendor was still setting up and didn't seem ready. We chalked it up to it being the first pop-up market of the year, and started exploring and helping ourselves to samples.

Some people gave us weird looks, but I wasn't really paying attention, since we were trying to entertain Emily's toddler, Jess, who at the moment was upset because she wanted me, not her mom, to hold her milk for her.

We're sooo sneaky!
We were making our way to the front of the market, when I heard someone say, "Are we open yet?" We looked out the front doors and noticed a whole crowd of people standing outside waiting for the market to open. We'd sneaked in the back way and didn't even notice that NO ONE ELSE was in shopping yet.

We hurried and went outside, to wait with everyone else for the last 15 minutes until the market was actually up and running. Surprisingly, when we went back inside all of the vendors were set up and ready to go! I guess waiting until the legitimate opening time actually makes a difference.

Here's where the story gets good, because guess what!? I actually found $20! When I first found it, I wanted to be a good person. I was going to take it to the front desk, in case anyone asked about it. But, unfortunately, I am a bad person.

I didn't intend to spend it, but the first stall I stopped at only accepted cash and it was the only cash I had! Even worse ... the stall was the Salt Lake County Jail's Garden Program. The program is designed to help non-violent inmates receive education and vocational training; with the garden program they grow produce and work at the markets on the weekends.
It is a really cool program and I love to buy something from them every time I go to the market, except this time ... I gave the prisoners stolen money. I find this kind of funny and kind of wrong. Well, maybe super wrong.

Luckily once we left the market with all of our goodies, nothing else happened. We went to Even Stevens for lunch, a sandwich shop that donates meals to the homeless, and I didn't even use stolen money to buy my soup! ... because Emily bought it for me.