Water Bottle Overflowing.

Thinking of five things I'm grateful for within a week is never very difficult, but lately, I'm finding that my cup (or, more accurately, my water bottle) is overflowing.

So here are five things I'm thankful for right now:

1. Modern medicine. Allergies and headaches and other day-to-day messes stink, but where would we be without Excedrin? And Zyrtec?   ::shudder::

2. Challenges.  I started a new job Monday, and am being challenged in wonderfully intellectual new ways! I'm so excited about this, and pray I'll be able to keep up and meet the expectations I and others are setting for me. It's so amazingly refreshing to have my brain stimulated!

3. Baton Rouge water. I know I say this a lot, but have you TASTED it? Right out of the tap. Delish.

4. Family and friends. That might seem like kind of a broad group, but I truly have the best of both worlds. Really. I do not take this blessing for granted at all.

5. Coffee. 'Nuff said.

This Day.

Today an old Point of Grace favorite, "This Day," came to mind.

I couldn't find it sung by POG on YouTube, but I did come across this performance by a church group, which I thought was very well done:



Lyrics are:

This day is fragile - soon it will end


And once it has vanished, it will not come again

So let us love with a love pure and strong

Before this day is gone

This day is fleeting when it slips away

Not all our money can buy back this day

So let us pray that we might be a friend

Before this day is gone



This day is fleeting

When it slips away

Not all our money can buy back this day

So let us pray that we might be a friend

Before this day is spent



This day we're given is golden

Let us show love

This day is ours for one moment

Let us sow love



This day is frail - it will pass by

So before it's too late to recapture the time

Let us share love, let us share god

Before this day is gone

Before this day is gone

Curly Girl.

Ever since I started using hair products -- because yes, my friends, there were many verrrrrrry scarrrrrrrry teenage eons before I ever knew they existed -- my favorite and old standby has been Matrix Sculpting Glaze, now known (and in sale at regular stores) as Biolage Gelee'.

This has worked great for my hair in its all-one-length-ringlet days as well as during times of layers, and I can't imagine not always having a bottle in my bathroom cabinet, just in case.

I have tried other products over the years, and recently found one that really works for me. I'm not sure it works as well as Biolage (the results aren't the same, but I don't want them to be, right?), so it's hard to gauge. I do, however, love the combo, and have received many curly compliments on it.

My hairdresser's niece (who also does hair) turned me on to it last time I was in Jackson at Social Agenda: Aquage Sea Salt Texturizing Spray. It gives the hair a great beachy, tousled waves look, and I'm really enjoying the variety! I do have to use some sort of smoothing/silk gel with it (CHI or another brand works for me), and it doesn't have the lasting effect of Biolage for my hair (as in lasting past one day and overnight -- it's easier for my hair to get tangled with this, much like at the beach), but it's fun!

So if you're a curly girl, and are looking for options, maybe it could work for you.

Also, if you have curls, and solutions, please share them! I'm always looking for new ideas. :-)

Weight a Minute....

I've been wanting and needing to lose weight, and last week (conveniently during my week off!), kicked off some healthier eating & exercise-inclusive habits.

My goal has been to lose 2 lbs per week, as doctors recommend. (Having grown up watching my Nan constantly on a cabbage soup diet or some worse fad of the week, I am determined to stick to dietary regulations.)

So, from last Monday night to last night, I lost not 2, but 4 pounds!

I am not sure how well I'll keep it up with Thanksgiving and such, but it's a start, and a fun new challenge. :-)

p.s. As much as I wish I could attribute this to some new, easy, healthy pill that's on the market, my "trick" has been -- shocker -- eating better & exercising. (Sorry, fellow Glamour impulse buy fans.)

Five Things I'm Thankful For.

Five things I'm sincerely grateful for this week are:

1. Blissful time of R&R and clearing my mind.

2. Not having to waste energy on a birthday present for someone who will not appreciate one millisecond of the effort, thought or time that went into it, and who will demonstrate that by returning the gift to the store.

3. New opportunities.

4. Genuine excitement about #3. :-)

5. The peacefulness that comes with knowing people I love are safely home.

Watering the Weeds.

Ever since I've moved into my new place, I haven't had a lot of time to tackle the flowerbeds or yard. (This is all much to the chagrin of my neighbor Foxy, of course, who has to look at the jungles a lot more often than I do.) Because there were some plants worth keeping in the existing beds, I just kept watering them in hopes they'd still be thriving when I finally got the opportunity to take care of them and their nasty intruders.

And might I say, it's been a jungle out there. When I mentioned to Foxy that I had plans to tackle the outside once I had the time to get the inside a little more organized, she heartily answered, "That is GREAT!" Clearly, it was on her mind -- and in her line of vision -- a lot. (She then informed me I could do it that day, if I wanted. I explained to her it was kind of hot -- this was at the end of August/beginning of September...in South Lousiana, at that -- and that I wanted to do it all in one day, when I had the time. She, in typical Foxy style, persisted, "But even if you just got out there and did a THIRD of it, it would make all the difference in the world!")

This has become a running joke with some friends, as many Foxy quotes have. ;-)

As much as I've laughed over that, I didn't realize how right she was till I tackled the job on Monday. Good GRIEF. The beds were so infested with weeds that they now look naked!

I noticed a few (admittedly elementary) things while I was tearing out those weeds:

• While I'm glad I watered the good plants all this time, watering the weeds just made them grow more, too.
• I've heard of weeds "choking" things, but some of them were literally wrapped around some really tall elephant ears, and it took some careful manipulation to salvage the big, pretty, healthy elephant ears.
• Weeds are tricky. Some look a lot like good plants, but they're not.
• The longer you let something go, the more time and effort it takes to get it back to right.

Again, I know these points are not potential breaking news headlines. They were just right in front of (and in, and even on) my face a couple of days ago, so they stood out. Literally. :-)

All this time I've been watering those weeds, I've been aware of times I've watered the many nasty weeds of Rebekah's flowerbed of life, and how unhealthy that is. And I've worked hard to not do that lately.

So, after I watered the weeds, then cleaned out the weedbed, Foxy came to her door and commented on what a good job I was doing:

Foxy: Look at you, out there in the yard!!! (beaming)

Me: Yes! I finally got to the flowerbed.

Foxy: Good for you for cleaning it out!

Me: It looks kind of...naked...now.

Foxy: So whatcha gonna put in there?

Me: I was thinking pansies.

Foxy: That's real nice. What about that orange thing? You gonna keep that out all year? It's for OCTOBER, isn't it?

Me: The fall arrangement? I thought I'd leave it there till after Thanksgiving....

Foxy: Oh.

Foxy: Well, run along and be a good little girl, doin' that yardwork.

And, in addition to the laughter that conversation sparked, it brought a few other things to mind:

• When we let the flowerbeds of our lives get overgrown, other people notice.
• They also notice when we clear out the weedbeds of ourselves.
• Weeds take up a lot of space, and we (and others) get used to seeing a lot of things in that space. So when it's cleared out, it looks empty, even if that does equal healthy.
• Replacing the bad with more good is healthy, and the smart next step.
• Even Foxy is rushing through Thanksgiving. Sigh.

Bye Week, Part Two.

I almost included this in my last post, but decided to wait.

In many ways, this was a bye week for me aside from football.

I am changing jobs -- and could not be more excited! -- but to get to point B from point A took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. (Well, maybe not blood. Unless you count paper cuts and scrapes from hauling coolers across Lafayette Square in New Orleans.)

Today was my last day at my current job. I was excited to go there three years ago, and to tackle Community Relations, and to have the opportunity to work with communications there. But the latter never happened, and it didn't look like it was going to, and I was starting to shrivel from lack of creativity (and from too much non-creativity, which I'm very, very bad at, anyway).

So this was a bye week for me with my current job, and my current coworkers, and the physical location I've worked at since I moved to Baton Rouge.

Kind of odd. But exciting.

And I've been realizing I have not been living up to my potential in a lot of ways -- not just with work.

So that's something I'm going to work on.  And to blog about another day.

Bye Week.

This past weekend was LSU's bye week.

I wasn't thinking in terms of that when I made the decision to chill for the weekend, but as it turned out, I took a bye week of my own.

I stayed home. I rested. A lot. It was bliss.

Let's just hope I'm geared up for the Crimson Tide-like challenges that are already hitting me this week! And Geaux Tigers. :-)