a love story Part I

yesterday my dad and my step mom celebrated 18 years of marriage and i found myself thinking about their wedding and their courtship and how they found each other.

and then i found myself being very, very, grateful that they found each other.

she had been on her own for 12 years after her marriage stopped being a marriage. writing rent checks all those years, she had finally taken the plunge and got her "own" mortgage on her "own" place. she had come to terms with her life. . . fair or not, it was still her life and now she could live that life in something she owned.

and he, well, he had just become an unwilling widower after 36 years of weddedness (i'm pretty sure that is not a word but "wedded bliss" is a cliche with a lot less truth than use. . . ).

my sister and i knew what we had to do when mom died - we took dad out to breakfast and laid down the law. our mother had been pretty emphatic that if anything happened to her, dad was to remarry. she knew him best and we kids wanted to honor her by giving him our blessing.

(side road here - giving a blessing to the remaining parent to remarry while still knee-deep in the grief process is not easy or painless. . . it is an act of will. it is self-less and takes courage - courage on a daily basis. it takes a fierce love and a tremendous amount of trust. my sister, Kris and i had none of that in our heads or hearts that morning in Denney's - let's be honest, we were afraid of mom. if anyone could make it back from the other side, it would be her. . . and she would not have been pleased if we had been stingy with that blessing.)

seriously, all Kris and i knew is that we loved our dad and wanted him to be happy. we had just lost our mom to cancer and we didn't want to lose our dad to a broken heart.

you would think that all it would take at this stage of the game is a chance meeting at church, the grocery store, a favorite restaurant or mutual friends. but you see, he was in Phoenix and she was in Denver. chance meeting at any location was not in the cards.

so how did these two people destined to find love again actually find love again???

well, it all started with a Christmas brunch, a forgotten camera and my mother. . .

Tractor Square Dancing - Go Figure. . .

Amazing Fire Illusion! How'd they do that???????

lessons learned in the gym

ok, i am not a gym rat. . . not even close. . . i'm not even a gym rat wanna-be. although i do own two pairs of gym shoes. . . that's gotta count for something, right??

anyways, i ended up joining a small group (read three women) with a personal trainer (more about her later) for 5 sessions, yep 5 count them. . . what was i thinking??????

obviously i wasn't but i have learned a couple of things. . .

lesson #1
a gym membership is worth nothing unless you actually haul yourself over there AND actually exercise. sweating while sitting in your car in the gym's parking lot on a hot day trying to muster up enough courage to go on in is NOT the same as working up a sweat while exercising inside said gym.

lesson #2
there is no such thing as flattering gym wear when you are overweight and outta of shape (read have too much shape in the wrong places). sooooooooooo stop the "as soon as i find something flattering, i'll go" self talk. . . it ain't happenin' sister.

lesson #3
your personal trainer is NOT your friend. . . let me say that again - your personal trainer is NOT your friend. she is the paid enemy of fat and flab. she is not there to boost your self esteem or help you attain your true center of peace. she is there to help you come to terms with the fact that you are now wearing a first grader around your waist and you're an idiot for not noticing and doing something about it sooner. (and may i remind you - YOU ARE PAYING her to help you come to terms with the fact that you are now wearing a first grader around your waist!!!)


lesson #4
"coming to terms with the fact that you are now wearing a first grader around your waist" involves PAIN. yes, it does. so i have become a big fan of ben gay, icy hot, aleve liquid gels, ice packs, and bags of frozen vegetables (frozen peas preferably - when i have used up all the instant and re-usable ice packs). i'm not a big fan of pain but i'm a realist and if a small amount of pain due to locating and using muscles i didn't even know i owned will have some health benefits, well then, i will continue to make numerous trips to walgreen's in search of more and better pain reducing products. besides, all my purchases - however small, but numerous - have to be helping to jump start the economy, right???

anyways, the good news - i'm afraid of my personal trainer and that fear has motivated me to stick to my diet and exercise more. (it has also given me nightmares and tension headaches. but taking the aleve liquid gels for the muscle inflammation seems to be helping with the tension headaches).

i'll let you know how it goes. . . two sessions down, three to go. . .

7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls

FOXNews.com - 7,500 Online Shoppers Unknowingly Sold Their Souls

it's make you wonder who else has claims to our immortal souls. . .


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