Sacred Life Sunday: Peaceful Day

Today I felt surrounded by a strange and pleasant peace for apparently no reason. It was a very ordinary day.

It was sunny for most of the day, an unusual event here.

My chicken Isadora is sick and may die; I can't go out and see her because it upsets me too much. LoveHubbie is taking care of her. We only keep three chickens at a time and they don't live very long but each death is still traumatic for me.

The fire was good and strong today, and the wood was dry and split into large pieces. So I was mostly warm, not cold in the house.

I went for a walk with my knees both in braces, very carefully and very slowly, using my Nordic Ski Walking poles to help cushion the impact; a passerby yelled at me, "Hey, there's no snow!"

I turned the bathtub water on to fill it and forgot about it for...a few hours...we have an overflow...

I watched another episode of the PBS special The War with LoveHubbie to continue his birthday celebration (his birthday was yesterday) of fun with pizza and television.

I had a long and luxurious quiet time reading this morning.

Nothing special, just an ordinary Sunday, but I felt so good. I kept thinking about what made it a Sacred Sunday that I could blog about and my answer was...everything. That's all.

~Picture by LoveHubbie Mark

Transformational Weight Loss Update #6

I've been having an interesting thing happening with this process. The foundation of Transformational Weight Loss (TWL) for me is trusting my body. This is important to me in far more than just weight loss. I'm learning to listen to my body when it tells me it's tired, when it needs a break, when I'm having an emotional reaction of some type, and much, much more. For most people, this type of experience is pretty basic and obvious, but not for me. Until very recently I ran my life via my mind and my will, and so missed out on much of life. So there is so very much to learn.

I'd been having a problem with TWL and food, though. Unfailingly, I'd see what my body wanted to eat. It would be clear and certain. I really loved having this clarity. For example, tonight I knew I wanted a piece of pizza. Of course, me being me, it was a healthy whole wheat pizza with organic ingredients :) The pieces were small, so I thought two pieces would be perfect. And then I wanted some fiber "filler" (since I was really, really hungry, having exercised...walking very slowly with two knee braces on a level path and my Nordic Ski Walking poles to buffer the impact...but still, it was exercise!) so I had a large salad of lettuce, sprouts and tuna salad. Perfect! I saw it in my mind's eye. Then I prepared it. Then I ate it. For me, this was a resounding success.

In the past month or so, I would have done the exact same thing, up until after I saw it in my mind's eye. Instead of having the food my body wanted, I would choose something else and eat that and feel how it felt to overeat. Again and again and again. Like a broken record. I finally realized that I couldn't make the connection between what my body wanted and what I actually did to make it happen. I felt the lack of empowerment of my behavior and my choices. I just couldn't make it happen. This was a really good thing. It made me realize how I needed the big life changes that I made this past week. I'm going to write about those in an upcoming post, as soon as they've gelled enough for me to do so. But suffice it to say that I've been able to make the connection and I'm connecting with my body.

Later I'll write about the missing piece that enabled me to make the connection.

~Picture by LoveHubbie Mark

Flexing Our Muscles

As much as "use it or lose it" applies to our physical muscles, it also applies to our "BE BRAVE" muscles. We need to use our BE BRAVE muscles so that they don't constrict around what will end up being a tiny and fearful life.

~Picture by LoveHubbie Mark

You Make My Day Award

Jessie just sent me a "You Make My Day Award"! She makes my day, too :) Thank you, Jessie, for passing the award to me.

Here are the rules:

Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

So, now it's my turn to pass this award on to those bloggers who make my day, but I can only choose 10 people. Thus, I'm picking:

Kelly
Carmen
Kate
Kate I
Lori-Lyn
Sylvain
Annie
Rick
Patti
Angela

You 10 make my day! But if I didn't mention you, you do, too!

Love and blessings to all, Olivia

~Picture by LoveHubbie Mark

Good Things Bad Things

"Everything is a gift if you're simply willing to look at it that way. Everything, in my opinion, is a gift from God, if you're just willing to unwrap it...and see the present..." ---Suze Orman on Oprah today, 18 Jan 2007

~Picture by LoveHubbie Mark

Eee-OUCH!

Time: 1:47

Creating a Life

Today my video is in two parts. Part one is 2:51 and part two is 31 seconds. Enjoy!

Top 7 for '07 from happyluau

This list is for "Small is Beautiful Saturday" and are my top seven posts for 2007:

27 Ways to Survive Your Young Husband’s First (Unexpected) Heart Attack

Maui 2007 Photos of LoveHubbie & Me

My Sacred Life Day 18

My Sacred Life Day 13

Gratitude for Hubbie Mark

A Walk On My Driveway In Pictures

Creative Collage



~Pictures by LoveHubbie Mark

Sacred Sunday Renewal

Today was Monday, but I'm getting back into the groove of a schedule and didn't want to miss the sacredness of the day. I'm enjoying my solitude so very much. Today I spent much of the day reading and writing in a coffee shop, but since I was with "my people"---other readers and writers for the most part, and no one interrupted me, I felt as replenished as if I'd been alone.

There has been a lively discussion going with respect to Creating a Complaint-Free World. Both Rick and Kelly have terrific posts about it.

I decided to take a vacation from being Complaint Free, not because I want to gossip, whine, complain and criticize, but because I want to focus on just one thing spiritually right now: being present and breathing---that's all. In addition, I have some conflicting feelings about my needs to set boundaries and to express some of my darker emotions, like frustration, irritation, and anger. I've discovered that I've used the Complaint Free Challenge to squelch those darker emotions instead of to express them in positive ways. I expect to go back after I explore this area of my life some more. So far, I haven't made it a whole day yet with GWCC, but I've been defining GWCC rather strictly and I think, erroneously. I want to take a break and regroup, and then come back with a more healthy approach.

Here is a video that is me saying hello and then a meditation on a candle and an amaryllis that has bloomed in my reading nook with what will eventually be seven blooms. It is only 59 seconds long :)

LoveHubbie's Hat

This is an experiment for me using YouTube's new music feature. This video is 29 seconds long and perfect for the happyluau:



It's Saturday night after all :)

Nice Version or Raw Uncut Uncensored Version

Here are two videos. One is 1:51 about how I'm doing. I realized that it was my nicey-nicey version of how I'm really doing. I've been being nicey-nicey lately all the time. So I remade the version into a more authentic and succint version of how I'm really doing, which is only 51 seconds. Here they are:

Nicey-nicey "How I'm Doing" (1:51):



Versus Authentic and Succinct "How I'm Doing" (51 seconds)---or as they say, Raw, Uncut, and Uncensored Version:



I think I like the raw version. It's more real. How about you?

What I'm Reading January 2008

This video is 3:43:

Winter Squash, Phat Girlz, The Now Habit & More

I've found myself still recovering from the holiday malaise. Today is the first day I've really felt like myself---with ideas, feelings of creativity, inspiration, etc.---waking up at 4am this morning ready to begin the day. I've sort of felt like a winter squash before this. I don't know how else to explain it. Here in the Pacific Northwest it's been raining every day for countless days on end. And it's been cold, too. This all contributed to my holiday malaise and lethargy, lingering and melding with feelings of depression and SAD (seasonal affective disorder).

I felt a little better on Saturday, perky enough to shop for food all over the South Sound, from Costco to Trader Joe's to our local supermarket. When you can eat anything you want (with TWL) it really helps to have a selection of good things to eat! Then yesterday, I vlogged at last (and although my vlog seemed tired and strained to me---at least I did it). I missed communicating with all of you. Also yesterday, LoveHubbie returned from a trip with Lovely Stepdaughter. I find myself coming out of my reading and arting shell of hibernation and retreat, to my delight.

I've been loving TWL (Transformational Weight Loss)...however, it is quite a challenge to learn self-acceptance at a much higher weight than I'm used to. It's good for me, though, and all a part of this process. Last night I watched the movie Phat Girlz, which is a manifesto for plus-sized women and ambitiously portrays the struggle we larger women go through for self-acceptance in our American culture that tolerates and even encourages prejudice based on size. I wish I could convey in words the usefulness and the beneficial difficulty of this TWL journey. I keep trying to remember to breathe...just breathe...just breathe.... For some reason, lately I keep forgetting, and get spun up into the drama and form of the day's events...I hope to be more grounded. I'm blaming it on my hormones for now...because it's a convenient way of avoiding responsibility, I suppose...the mature woman's PMS.

This weekend I read a book recommended by someone here (I can't remember who) called "The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play" by Neil Fiore, which I SO needed. I haven't been a procrastinator in the past, but since NaNoWriMo's success, I've been procrastinating with my novel...all December long, which didn't help the holiday malaise much. This book gave me a useful strategy for beginning to write again and for overcoming my fears. It is useful for dealing with resistance and for bringing joy back into tasks that have become onerous. I'm most excited about this for the new year!

This week I expect to be filled with pattern-breaking fun of spending time with Lovely Stepdaughter and with LoveHubbie coming home from work early---a great combination.



Today I'm grateful for the ordinariness of my life. I so much prefer this to the chaos and drama that I seemed to attract so much in the past. Today I am wishing those of you dealing with difficult and turbulent challenges peace and the hope of an ordinary and mundane and peaceful and happy extraordinary life---soon. Blessings to each one of you today, and ordinary miracles!

Sacred Life Sunday: Ordinary Miracles

New Year's Day 2008

What better way of saying "Happy New Year" here at happyluau than in Hawaiian"?

Ha'ouli Makahiki Hou
to each and every
one of you!

~Picture by LoveHubbie Mark