Dance Naked!!

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Happy Monday to everyone! How was your weekend? There is sun here in Portland which is making me a bit giddy, maybe because my iPhone says rain for the rest of the week. I had a full weekend. We spent much of Saturday running errands around town and Sunday cleaning. Yes, cleaning again. Due to the rain and slightly warmer temperatures, our house became the home of ants in many of our rooms. We are used to it, we have lived here a few years, and they always come out in armies this time of year. It always gets old chasing them down. Ants are ants, I do not mind them, what I do mind is when they are crawling on my counters, or get anywhere near my bed. So after chasing them around the house, we usually always clean a ton, in hopes that they will not come back, and maybe just to clear our head of all the ants we have seen.

In honor of giddiness, sun, and that it is now April, I wanted to encourage you to: DANCE NAKED this week!

framed print on our wall

I love this print. I purchased it at the Lake Oswego Art Festival a few years back and framed it. For a long time it was over my desk and I would look at it while I worked. Now it is in our hallway. It reminds me to not work so hard, to get up and dance to music, to play, be free and have fun!  On occasion, I get right to the point and dance naked!

Go enjoy your day, be playful, and if you feel so inspired – then DANCE NAKED!

Are you a waker?

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Gosh, I feel like I know what it must have been like on Noah’s Ark. It will not stop raining in Portland! Yes, I have lived here a long time and I am used to it, but usually it rains, then is gloomy the next day, then it rains, you get the picture. These last few weeks it has been raining non-stop, and my iPhone shows rain for the next week straight. I am starting to think that this year the saying should be March showers bring…sun and flip flops in April? For those of you that have sunshine send some my way!

Yesterday I read the book: “Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination” by Hugh MacLeod. It is a quick read, with short, quick chapters and even has cartoons throughout that break it up a bit. I read it all during yesterday’s run, so you will only need about an hour. I definitely recommend it if you are wanting to get out of your current job and you are needing inspiration and a little kick in the butt to do so, OR if you left your job and are breaking out on your own and need a reminder for why you broke free. Hugh starts the book with this idea:

“Sigmund Freud once said that in order to be truly happy in life, a human being needed to acquire two things: the capacity to work, and the capacity to love.” [His premise of an “Evil Plan” is to be able to do both at the same time]. page 2

He also has a cartoon that says: “the best way to get approval is not to need it.” I love that idea. (I apologize I forgot to note the page number). At the very end of the book he has a chapter called: “Are you a Waker?”

“A waker is someone who is very good at waking other people up from their metaphorical slumber, temporary or otherwise. Some people just have the gift. Being around them or their work just makes you feel more alive, more inspired, more motivated, more awake. The best wakers will make you do crazy-ass things, like quit your boring job and start your own business, write that song, move to Thailand, forgive that someone who once hurt you, or finally tell that girl that you love her. A waker reminds you on a constant basis just how alive you really are. Just how much human potential you really have inside of you. And there’s something about their influence that makes you utterly unable to go back to “sleep” ever again, despite your best efforts.”  page 168

I love this idea of being a waker and wanted to share it with you! I want to help others feel more alive and more awake! Just as I want others to help me in that endeavor. What if we all attempted to do that for each other?

You can learn more about Hugh MacLeod on his website/blog.

Happy Friday!  Stay dry or enjoy the sunshine…be a waker this weekend for someone else!

TOW…oh no!! and a random act of kindness

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So yesterday I was in Portland with the hat of jewelry representative. After venturing to a few boutiques I stopped to see my sister to pick up a book from her. I did not realize it when I was parking (I read the arrows on the sign wrong) and I ended up parking in a “no parking 4-6 PM” area. Ugh. I get back to my car as the tow truck is starting to put my front wheels on the tow truck.

I was flabbergasted. I thought I had read the signs correctly. I run to the tow truck and ask the driver why he is towing my car! He yells at me: “Look at the signs, you are not to park here between 4-6 PM.” I am obviously confused. I know how to read. I know how to look at arrows, but like we all do (or maybe it is just me) I read it wrong. Bummer. I must have had the most confused look on my face.

He yells at me, “Here is your ticket…get the @#$@#$!%$ in your car and drive away now, and I will not charge you for the tow.” Wow. That was the random act of kindness for me yesterday. Thank you, Mr. Tow Truck Driver. I appreciate your rather gruff affection and your walking away from taking more money out of my bank account.

Blindness, or misreading a sign = $90 for a parking ticket. Bummer. Gratefully, I only walked away with a $90 ticket instead of a $90 ticket AND towing fees. Yowsers.

the tow notice on my windshield

Happy day to all,

Paying more attention in Portland.

You are not a Wuss…

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As a child, when I fell down or hurt myself my dad always told me to get up and buck up, that I was strong, and to brush it off.

I remember one time that I will never forget (and yes this story might sound strange). We were shucking dozens and dozens of ears of corn. I grew up in Indiana and yes the vegetable of Indiana is corn. Lots of it, everywhere. So the one fresh vegetable we always had in abundance was corn. We had a freezer in the garage that housed frozen corn and Icee pops (remember those)! Corn was at the time my favorite vegetable, considering that I disliked all vegetables with a vengeance. Now, things have changed and I rarely eat corn. I kind of think it just goes through you and does not do much for nutritional value. I like the darker, green, leafy vegetables at this stage in my life.

I digress. My sister and I were sitting on the front porch shucking corn ears. We had been through dozens of ears, when I felt a sharp pain in my thumb. There was a piece of glass in the ear of corn. How it got in the corn under the husk, I will never know or understand. I ran inside to put my bleeding thumb under the kitchen sink to clean it. I then passed out and was on the floor of the kitchen.

My dad comes into the kitchen where my sister has let him know I have passed out. When I came to I was completely freaking out about my thumb. It hurt a lot and was still bleeding and there was still a piece of glass in it. Once my dad gets the glass out, he sort of yells at me to stop being a baby. I think I always felt like he was yelling at me, and maybe he was, but now I wonder if he just wanted me to be strong. Compared to his capacity for pain as a contractor (nails in fingers, fiberglass, etc) this was nothing. To me it was such a big deal. To this day I dislike shucking corn.

So dad, while I did not appreciate it then, I appreciate your constant urging to be strong and to not cry over spilled milk or some blood. Although still to this day I pass out if I see too much blood. Some things never change, but some things do make us stronger.

me and my dad at my high school graduation

40th Anniversary of Women allowed to run the Boston Marathon

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I subscribe to Runner’s World, and I find some of the articles interesting, some helpful, and some I just skim. I recently read an article on running “Heros.” The one that intrigued me the most was Kathrine Switzer. As a newer runner and a woman, I should probably already know about Kathrine Switzer, however, I had not heard of her. So I wanted to share her story with you. It is Woman’s History month, and Kathrine has definitely made history for all women.

In 1967, “Switzer became the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon. She registered using her then-standard signature, K.V. Switzer. But near mile two, race official Jock Semple–irate that a woman was in his race–grabbed her and tried to yank off her number. Images of the scuffle helped launched Switzer as a potent symbol for equality. She went on to promote women’s running and equality in sports; it became her life’s work. She created a running series that held events in 27 countries for over a million women and fought for the inclusion of the women’s marathon in the Olympic Games.” Runners World, January 2012 issue. Full excerpt here.

In 1972, women were finally allowed to run in the Boston Marathon, thus this year marks the 40th Anniversary. The first Olympic Women’s Marathon, however, did not occur until the Olympics were in Los Angeles in 1984. How is it possible that it took until 1984 for women to be able to run an Olympic marathon?

In October 2011, Kathrine was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Syracuse, New York. You can learn more about Kathrine Switzer on her website here. If you scroll down on her homepage, you will see she is traveling all over the place this year for different races and speaking engagements. In 2013, a PBS documentary will be released called, “Makers: Women Who Make America.” Kathrine will be interviewed in this documentary. You can watch a short preview here. You can also view the list of AMAZING women that will be interviewed in this documentary here.

I cannot wait for this documentary to be released next year. In addition to Kathrine, the other women in this documentary are courageous, funny, fierce, sassy, and inspirational!