Posts from — October 2009

My friend Michele is a champion of creating the life she wants.  A little over a year ago, she created a project to help her focus on the joy in life.  ISpyJoy.com is a beautiful website where people share pictures of the joy they see in their everyday lives.

As I said, Michele is a champion.  Just about a year after creating the website, she got an email from Toni Childs, a famous recording artist who has put together the Cause: You’re Beautiful project that focuses on the beauty within all women.  She wanted Michele to contribute to the project as a featured author, telling her story of beauty.  Let me say that again:  one year after developing a project to help her through a rough time, Michele was calling a famous recording artist on her cell phone to talk about collaborating.  How wonderful!

Take a look.  Here’s Michele’s page.  Right now it tells the inspiring story of how she walked through a very challenging part of her life to find joy.  It will be updated monthly, and I can’t wait to see what she and the other authors have to share.

I love these projects.  It’s wonderful to know that there are people in the world following their dreams, and finding their joy.  It helps me remember that everyday is a gift, and every step I take a choice.  I can choose to live in joy and in beauty, and when I do, I’m in wonderful company.

My little sister is having a baby.  That makes me a zia!

She and my brother-in-law are going to be great parents.  They’re super-cute, researching, reading, learning, preparing.  They’ll have the best gadgets and gizmos.  They’ll have the best aunt ever (except, of course, for my aunt).  What they are still in need of is a name.

So, as my first, self-appointed duty, I’m embarking on a search to find good name suggestions for them.  Here’s what I’m looking for:

Cool
Old-Fashioned
Interesting
Meaningful

They’re not finding out the gender, so we need names for both.

Ready…….GO!!!

My parents are really excellent.  Yesterday my dad spent a couple of hours helping me figure out what I’m going to do about car and health insurance while I’m traveling.  He’s so super supportive, that he’s become aggressive about making sure I know how supportive he is.  It’s really endearing, even if it goes over the top once in a while.

My dad is a great businessman.  He ran his own successful companies, and even started his own award-winning winery, because it was something he’d always wanted to do.  He built a cabin on a river – actually helped build the thing  – and created an off-the-grid power system for it. It’s pretty amazing to go from worrying what my parents will think about me quitting my job, selling my house and traveling, to trying to curb my dad’s enthusiasm in helping me prepare for the trip.

Last night, I helped my mom set up a website for an organization that she co-coordinates.  Take a look!  It’s called Souper Supper Dining Room.  As you can probably tell from the name, it’s a soup kitchen of sorts.  It provides meals to hungry folks twice a week.  The organization has absolutely no costs.  Everything they do comes from donations and volunteers.  Let me tell you something:  this is amazing.  Food and money donations allow the organization to provide quality meals to those who need them.  Community organizations come together and provide volunteers that staff the dinners.

It’s what community organizing and community service are really about.  I learned community and political organizing by watching my mom.  She was chair of the school board, has run school bond campaigns (sound familiar?), and has volunteered her time and skills tirelessly.

It’s pretty wonderful to have parents that I love, and it’s even more wonderful to have parents that I like.  I’m very proud of them.