The other day, I realized that I can “take notes” and highlight passages when reading books in iBooks. Not only that, but iBooks keeps a list of them that both shows the passage and contains a link to the page where I made the note or highlighted text.

Really, this has made more than one of my days!

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I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the beta testing at www.bia-sport.com, a woman-centric workout and activity tracking site. One of the best things about this site is that it is goal oriented. So I entered in my goal of 12 miles (20,000 yards to be precise, which is just over 12 miles), and every time I logged a workout, it added it to my monthly total. It was as gratifying to see the total yardage needed to reach my goal shrink every time I swam as it was to see my total for the month grow. Talk about an easy way to stay motivated!

And this morning, after I logged in my workout this morning, got to see “Goal Completed – Congratulations” printed under my goal instead of my running yardage count.

Satisfaction, indeed.

And now I have a week to decide what February’s goal is going to be.

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Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan. The story of 3 generations of women and a beach house in Maine. This is the second of Sullivan’s books that I’ve read, and I really hope she is working on a third now! She writes beautifully; I love how the present and past, the profound and the mundane are woven together as part of the same story, just as they are in our heads.

Commencement, by J. Courtney Sullivan – This was wonderful. Chronicles 4 Smithies 4 and 5 years after gradution. Many flashbacks, 4 points of view. I really enjoyed this book!

The Paris Wife Awesome book club read!

10th Anniversary by James Patterson. I like the Women’s Murder Club. Its good summer reading.

Promises Kept by Jane Green – I cried. This book made me want to throw it across the room because I knew what was going to happen. The happy woman who was succeeding in her marriage, parenting and friendships and genuininy happy? She was going to get really, really sick. Can’t say I was shocked.

Storied I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe – Are there any adult women who didn’t have a crush on Rob Lowe at some point?

Blue Bloods, by Melissa de la Cruz – Young Adult vampire fiction set in New York City. Does anything say summer more than that?

Bossypants, by Tina Fey – too much fun to count.

The Divorce Party, by Laura Dave – Two points of view, one very long and interesting day. I’m tempted to count this in the official list. Maybe I still will.

The First Husband, by Laura Dave – A different take on chick lit. I found this really enjoyable and thoroughly engaging. I’m looking forward to finding other books by Laura Dave (I think there are some).

Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster – too much fun to count. An unemployment memoir with the best subtitle ever: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office. Really. With a title like that, how could it not be fun? Also My Fair Lazy I didn’t love this one as much, although it was still wickedly funny. And I think I want to read some Edith Wharton now.

Still Alice, Lisa Genova – a book club selection. I love this book. It is both an amazingly and horrifyingly real account of a woman’s battle (and submission) to early onset Alzheimers Disease. I didn’t count it because I’d read it before.

Let Neglected, Lisa Genova – a book about Left Neglect syndrome, which is apparently a real thing where a traumatic brain injury makes a person incapable of understanding that there is a “left” side to things. Very interesting, but so foriegn it was difficult to really “get it.”

The Power of Half, Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen – another book club selection

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery. When I got this book out of the library, the librarian gushed over what a wonderful book it was and how much I was going to love it. She was wrong. I read half of it and put it down because I just couldn’t do it anymore. Deeply philosophical and very slow moving, I just couldn’t get into it. I might try it again.

Under the Boardwalk and Summer Lovin’ by Carly Philips. Brain Sorbet. Light reads that are just easy. Great for the beach, the bathtub or when you simply don’t want to be challenged.

Sizzling Sixteen & Smokin’ Seventeen by Janet Evanovich. My dad reads these, too.

Lift by Kelly Corrigan. I loved The Middle Place so much and was excited to read her new “book.” But at under 50 pages, it is hard to consider it an actual book.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. Lawyer fiction sort of like John Grisham.

Leave it to Cleavage by Wendy Wax. Meh, but she apparently lives in East Cobb, which is interesting.

Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner. So much better than the last couple Jennifer Weiner books. It was great to see her back up to form.

10th Anniversary and Now You See Her by James Patterson.

Something Borrowed and Something Blueby Emily Giffin. I picked up Something Borrowed because it is out in a movie, and realized halfway through that I had read it before. I didn’t really remember the ending, though, so it was fun. I knew I had read Something Blue already, but re-read it because I could’t remember the details and wanted to see what happened with Darcy after finishing the first one.

My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had seen this woman’s TED presentation and was fascinated. The book did not disappoint. Dr. Taylor did an amazing job of explaining what a stroke feels like, and how it feels to recover from one. In the midst of that, she also manages to explain some brain anatomy and functionality in an understandable way and use that to explain transcendence and connection. Pretty impressive for 224 pages.

The TED Presentation: http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/12/jill_bolte_tayl/

I feel like I’ve missed more, but I can’t remember what they are now. Besides. New year, new list.

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Since then, I’ve seen two “word of the year” posts where Karri and Alyson have picked a word as their theme for the year. (I’m sure there are many others who have also chosen a word of the year and blogged about it, but I know and like these people, so they count more as far as I am concerned.) Ironically, this was the general gist of my original New Years post, but I was not able to narrow it down to one word. And ONE word really seems to be the key for a truly guiding principle.

So my word. My word for the year is gratitude.

Generally, I am grateful for what I have. I realize just how lucky I am to have a home, a great husband, wonderful kids, awesome friends and on and on. On the “big” level, gratitude is not a problem. But the little things. Oh! The little things. I’ve sent myself into annoying little spirals of ick by focusing on the little things that bug me. And once I let one or two of these petty annoyances rub me the wrong way, a whole host of others show up for the party and I get more grumpy and keep seeing more things that make it oh so clear that my life is simply not all it is cracked up to be. (yes, all this health, happiness and awesomeness around me? TOTAL BURDEN) The spirals make me crazy and miserable, and I would really like to be done with them.

I’ve tried making myself stop, but that doesn’t really work. Not thinking about the things that have gotten under my skin just ends up making me nuttier. So, I’m going to try focusing on the gratitude in the small things along with the big. I know I’ll still have my moments. I also have a plan to both head them off and pull myself out of them. My hope is that it will become second nature to focus on the positive and see what I can do to make the situation (whatever it may be) better. I want this to be an active gratitude, where being thankful is readily translated into doing.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” John F Kennedy.

So, this year has a theme. It is a huge word, and I look forward to seeing how I am able to apply it in my life and my attitude this year. What fun!

[Photos from aboutmyrecovery.com and alimb Thank you!]

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Ginger and Merry Anne, as they told us their names are started off by bringing us an inflatable snow globe. Of course, since they are elves and a little mischievous, they blew it up in our kitchen.

Next, they hung from the fan and helped make the girls breakfast.

They made snow angels in powdered sugar on the counter, which really was a mess to clean up. Last night, they took over a game of scrabble Katie and I had been playing while I cooked dinner and played the game themselves. It is hard to see in the picture, but all the words played on the board have to do with Christmas (Christmas, angel, merry, wonder, Jesus, jolly and star)

I resisted the elves at first. They have been visiting some of the girls’ friends for years, and we’ve always wondered if we would have come to our home, too. I was not entirely thrilled when they came that first morning, but they have become a welcome addition. The girls have resisted getting out of bed much less since Ginger and Merry Anne started visiting, since they want to get downstairs to see what they did overnight. There is still fighting and whining, but I think it might be just a little bit less because they know that Ginger and Merry Anne are telling Santa what they see and hear in the house.

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One other thing that had been holding me back was that I didn’t know what to do. I swam in high school, but there was a coach telling me what to swim, how long to swim, how hard to swim, how much I could rest and everything else. After a little searching, I found a site that gave me steps to go from 0-1 mile in a week. OK– actually 700 – 1 mile in 6 weeks. I wasn’t sure if I could swim 28 laps right of the bat, but the structure helped boost my confidence to try.

Not only was I able to do the 700, but I threw in another 300 just to make it an even 1,000 yards. The next day, I bumped it up a little more and added a few laps of kicking, too. This week, I noticed that my shoulder was a little sore, so I cut my workout short after the prescribed 900 yards for week 2. Of course, I tossed in another hundred of kicking. All the way home from the pool, I wished I was still swimming. Man, I loved that.

Also? This means I get to cross off #14 of my list.

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But then life intervened (as it has a tendency to do) and I realized I needed to wait until mid August to do it. Meanwhile, the garage started filling with garage sale-able items to the point that I had to park my van in the driveway. Finally Stagg made me pick a weekend, and we started purging in earnest. There were a few days where I swayed violently between the desire to purge it all (sofa & loveseat we use ever day? lets sell ‘em!) and the feeling that the only way to justify having held on to some things for as long as we had (baby clothes, mementos) was to keep holding onto them. In the end, we landed somewhere in the middle. We still have a few special baby outfits, but we still have living room furniture as well.

Gearing up for the sale was exhausting and nerve-wracking. The signs I put out the night before were ruined by dew, so I found myself painting new, wood signs at 7am Friday morning (Garage sales in the south are Friday-Saturday events. I do not know why.). Apparently, those signs were as awesome as I thought, because someone stole one.

Looking at all the things we had to sell was a little nauseating. It was hard to believe that 5 tables worth of stuff and a whole bunch of furniture and other toys that could go on the ground came out of our house without really making much of a dent. And we aren’t hoarders… not really. But since there were places to stick things, we did. And then we forgot about them. I considered taking a picture of the amount of stuff sprawled across our driveway, but was just too embarrassed by it. Stagg estimates that we sold about 600 cubic feet worth of stuff from out house.

It was interesting explaining to the girls why things at garage sales are so cheap and why we were willing to let go of things (like the 60″ TV) for so little monty (very happily sold it for $40). I explained that these are things we no longer need and don’t really want anymore. And that other people might want them or need them and garage sales are all about the bargains. She sort of got it when I used a Justin Bieber poster as an example. She’d be more than willing to get rid of that for $1 even though it might cost $10 a the store. So glad to learn he is good for something after all!

This sale was the first time I have been reprimanded by a stranger for my choice in news channel. While Stagg was trying to remember just how old our TV was to someone who came by, he mentioned that he thought it was 2001, because he could remember a friend and I watching the CNN coverage. I knew he was talking about 9/11, but I thought the stranger in my garage might not when he asked why I was watching CNN. I explained, and he said, “NO. WHY WEREN’T YOU WATCHING FOX?” He went on to detail why FOX is the ONLY channel people should watch. He did mention that he forgives his friends who work at CNN, which seems awfully big of him. He left without buying anything.

Later, a young man walked into the garage, and Stagg thought he looked familiar. Live in the neighborhood? No. School? No. They went around a couple more times, with the poor boy looking so uncomfortable. Finally Stagg realized what it was: Are you on TV? No, but my dad is… he is the son of the guy from Auction Kings, which is one of Stagg’s favorite shows on Discovery (well, all of Stagg’s favorites are on Discovery).

So, now its over. We hauled a truck load of leftovers to Goodwill and rearranged some other things. And now? I’m about to pull my van into the garage for the first time in a month. Ahhhh….

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Bringing her suitcase to the trailers with Stagg

Getting her horseback riding evaluation

Katie, however, had issues with the drop off. She suddenly decided that she REALLY wanted to stay at camp. She had answers for everything: no clothes? no problem. She’d just wear what she had on for a week. She didn’t have to change her underwear or brush her teeth. No bathing suit? The pool would just be her shower and washing machine. And she would just go sleep with Maggie since she didn’t have a sleeping bag.

I, of course, was the big party-pooper, pointing out that she had never had a single sleep over when Maggie wasn’t with her, and that some of the sleep overs she had tried ended with me picking her up early. No camping for Katie until next year.

Katie's reaction to my no camping edict

Check in went smoothly, and the girls were thrilled to find their assigned bunks in their cabin. They made their beds, stored their clothes and were ready for us to leave.

Happy Girls

I think it will be a good week!

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Maggie diving in

 
The parents, coaches and coordinators have taken the loss in stride, too. We’re disappointed for the kids because they swam their hearts out, but no one is disappointed in them.

Our team has been very focused on the idea that this is summer league, and the goal here is to have fun. Fun for the kids, fun for the parents. A secondary focus is the swimming. The winning isn’t a focus at all. We are honest and fair. Swimmers are taught to do their best both in swimming and sportsmanship. They are taught to work together, support each other and be a team. The coaches make practices really fun with games and laughter and more games.

We had won for a long time. I understand that means some people wanted to make us into villains who needed to be knocked off our “high horse.” I get that we had been “the team to beat” for a long time, and that every team we swim against wanted to be the one to end our streak. And all streaks come to an end. And, now, so has ours.

Katie breastroking

The score of last night’s meet says we lost. Being part of this team?
BIG TIME WIN.

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I couldn’t help it. I laughed.  It wasn’t an unkind laugh, but it just struck me as funny to hear this (almost) man talking about a celebrity crush this way.  Later, I mentioned that Coach Mitch wanted to marry Taylor to Katie, who has been spending hours on YouTube watching every Taylor Swift video she can find and singing songs I didn’t know she’d ever heard as a result.  She thought about it for a minute and decided it was ok:  As long as she came to the meets.  And maybe a practice or two.

A week or more later, Katie asked me if the wedding had happened yet.  I said it hadn’t, and she asked question after question until she finally got exasperated and demanded to know if Mitch even knew Taylor Swift.  When I admitted that he didn’t, she was sorely disappointed.

Mitch must have mentioned Taylor during some other practices, because all the kids started talking about how Mitch and Taylor were going to get married.  They talked how perfect they would be together, how happy they would be, they wondered if they would get to go to the wedding.  They imagined Taylor Swift at the swim meets, cheering them on.  They talked about the blonde haired, blue eyed babies they would have.  In short, it spiraled out of control pretty quickly.

Then, one of the swimmers came to practice with a typed letter to Taylor Swift explaining that she should come to practice one day so she could meet Coach Mitch.  After all, she reasoned, it makes sense to meet the man you are going to marry before actually marrying him, and swim practice would be the best place to meet (most likely because for these kids, I don’t think Mitch exists outside the pool deck).

Once the first letter popped up, someone found some paper and pens, and a letter writing campaign began.  They thought about the letters they would write while they were swimming, and came out of the pool to the table where the pens and paper were to plead their case to the pop icon.

I think any time you have 50+ letters saying the same thing, it starts to sound a little creepy.  But when you have so many young kids writing fan mail to someone they like so much about someone who is a living, breathing hero in their daily lives, things get really creepy really fast.  The letters are filled with drawings of the two of them together, descriptions of posters on Mitch’s walls (which may or may not exist), excited, pre-teen gushing about how much Mitch looooves Taylor… all underpinned with the firm conviction that they are destined to marry.

Of course we are sending the letters.  Another adult and I are adding our own to them in an effort to make them seem a little less unsettling.

As one of the adults around the pool while the kids are writing you letters about Coach Mitch, I feel obligated to let you know he is not a creepy stalker, despite how some of these letters may sound.

This whole thing started because a couple of the younger kids overheard Mitch joking that he was going to marry you someday. To these 7 year olds, this statement seemed completely plausible, because, in their minds, Mitch is one of the most wonderful people in the world. So of course, they wanted to share the news, and as word of your impending nuptials spread, more and more of the team believed it to be true. It wasn’t until days later, when the children started asking for specifics that they started to realize that there was not actually a wedding planned. It was very funny to watch as they realized that not only were you not planning to marry their Coach, but that the two of you had never actually met.

As the head coach of our neighborhood swim team for the past 4 years (and assistant coach and swimmer before that), Mitch has essentially become synonymous with summer vacation to the 120 kids on the team. He has taught many of them to swim, encouraged them, led them, cheered for them when they won, consoled them when they didn’t swim as well as they wanted, and generally been there for them as a wonderful coach. I think their letter campaign is an effort to give something back to someone who has done so much for them. Mitch is their own personal rock star who they get to see every morning for just over a month a year.

So, if you do end up reading the letters, please take the exuberance with a grain of salt.

Who knows? Maybe we will see Taylor Swift at a practice. Maybe our coach will be slapped with a TRO. Either way, it is keeping things interesting.

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