30 Day Challenge – Day 8

Today’s Topic: a photo that makes you angry/sad

This photo makes me sad… its the last photo taken of me with my grandma before she lost her battle with breast cancer.  She passed away literally a few days after this was taken after fighting for over 4 years.  It was June 1998. 

She was an amazing woman.  She raised 5 children and loved beyond words her 11 grandchildren. She showed amazing grace and kindness to everyone.  She loved to laugh but most of all, she loved to see her family laughing.  My [future] kids will never know her and I fear that my memories can never do her justice.

When we lost her, a piece of me was lost too… BUT…

Because I lost her, I signed up to walk in my very first “breast cancer walk” that fall… and have signed up for one or more every year thereafter.  The names of the events have varied -  Making Strides, Race for the Cure, Relay for Life, The 3 Day – but the reason for doing them remains the same.  Losing her made me become a fighter, to stand up for everyone who has to deal with this disease and to keep fighting for a cure until one is found.  I thank her for being there to make me who I am today.

I miss her every single day.

30 Day Challenge – Day 7

Today’s Topic: A photo that makes you happy

This photo was taken in the Smokey Mountain National Park 6 years ago.  This area is probably my most favorite area in the US – at least out of the places I have been to so far.  I think its completely beautiful there and oh so peaceful.  I love this photo in particular because of the woods, the rocks, the water… the fact that it was a completely accidental find in the middle of the woods.  It takes me back to that place every time I look at it and I almost feel like I'm on vacation all over again.  Maybe its time to plan another trip?

30 Day Challenge – Day 6

Today’s Topic: 20 of my favorite things

Ooooh I feel like this is going to be an easy one!  Here we go:

1. Fall
2. Mexican food
3. books
4. popcorn
5. music
6. family
7. Indian food
8. new sheets on the bed
9. mountains
10. the sound of water
11. apple orchards – the smell mostly
12. flowers
13. scarves
14. sweaters
15. my kitties
16. rainy days
17. sunshine
18. movies
19. hugs
20. coffee

30 Day Challenge – Day 5

Today’s Topic: Favorite Quote

“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” – Mother Teresa

This has been my favorite quote for a while now. If you have been following along with my journey since – oh – about May 2009, you can probably figure out why.  I have been through an enormous amount this last year.   Every time something else came up I would think it was more than I could take, but it wasn’t.  If you talk to most other 30-somethings out there they haven’t had to face their mortality.  We are a lucky few who were picked to go through things that no one would wish on their worst enemy.  When you get to the other side, you are changed no matter how hard you tried to remain “normal.”

To sum up my life these last 15 months: I wouldn’t want to go through any of it again but I am stronger having gone through it.

30 Day Challenge – Day 4

Status: I feel like crawling under a rock and dying… ugh I hate being sick!
Today’s Topic: Your Favorite Book

Ahhhh books… I simply adore books!  The real kind.  I will never, never, ever be a “nook” or “e-book” reader.  I know some of you are probably writing that down and will quote it back to me later.. but seriously, I hate reading anything book length in electronic form.  AND I already spend waaaay too many hours reading electronic documents for my job and the various web browsing I do for fun.  I appreciate the look, the feel, and yes even the smell, of paper books. 

And then there is the recent declaration I made to a friend [after margaritas and sangrias mind you]… ‘I will have my personal collection of books long after books no longer exist in the paper form.  And since I will have one of the very few collections of these things called ‘books,’ I have a duty to collect many different genres and to collect books that other people probably wouldn’t.  I mean really, do you see serious book collectors having shelves full of “chick-lit?” I think not!  Therefore, I will have a most valuable collection that people will be clamoring to see… but of course they could not touch because the paper might crumble… so we will have glass cases surrounding them…’

Did I mention the margaritas?

So, out of the few hundred or so books lying around my house [no, I'm not exaggerating] which one book would i call my favorite?  I can only think of one book that I have read multiple times and would still want to pick it up again today.  It isn’t anything in the Twilight series or the Harry Potter series… it isn’t one of the “classics” in my library… it is Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind.

Now, this book has been ridiculed as being completely off base from the original Gone With The Wind [which I have also read and didn’t enjoy nearly as much as the sequel] and the author has been called sub-par, but I just love this book.  Ok, maybe it goes back to the point I made Day 2 about being a sucker for a good love story and it just didn’t seem right for Scarlett and Rhett’s love story to be over… or maybe it’s because it appeals to my love of travel and the cultures of other places and people… and ok maybe it has a lot to do with my love of a good love story!  If you haven’t read it, love the story of Gone With The Wind, and aren’t someone who gets caught up in the tiny details but can let yourself get swept away into the story… then check it out, its a good read.