Friday our office went to the picnic and it has been way better than the last year. This year I actually had some time to talk to others and enjoy food – thanks to my daughter not clinging to me all the time and becoming more independent. Very nice of her!

I also went for a date Friday night and it was awesome! Now I am waiting for Tuesday night to see this handsome sweet philosophical fisherman again. (Just kidding, fishing is his hobby, not occupation. The rest is true though.) Do you think I am grateful for my friend “referring” this guy to me? You bet I am!

Now I am in a hurry to eat, dress and get my princess to the fair. Hope this will give HER a reason to be grateful for something today. I am always excited to make others happy, so I am grateful for this particular opportunity

As always I am sending good thoughts to all the wonderful people who find time to read my ramblings!

Immediately after waking up I realized that the itching in my right eye got worse and started to feel like an eye infection. Somebody has broken into my old car and broke the window. At work fire alarm went on like four times, elevators and air conditioning stopped working. (As it turned out later, it was false alarm due to some dust – wth? – in the signalization system). Oh, well.

Now, GREAT things:
Despite being grumpy and in general not very happy, I tried to at least calm down. When that didn’t work, I tried to fix things as good as I could.
I got a doctor appointment this morning! And already started to take antibiotics for the eye infection. The eye feels better.
Since I couldn’t focus at work due to the fire alarm and chaos around and in my head, I went to work from home in the afternoon.
After sitting and worrying about how much would it cost to replace a window and how long would it take I decided to find out. About $40 less than I thought, apparently And most likely it will happen tomorrow! My father helped me to vacuum the broken glass in the car today.

To summarize – I felt MUCH better in the afternoon than in the morning, so I decided to write about it later rather than sooner

Now, the things to be grateful about:
1. People around me who help me to go through not-so-easy days. Starting from my parents who took care of shuttling my daughter to pre-K today and ending with my manager who let me just go home, work or fix problems that prevented me from focusing on work.
2. People around me who help me make good-enough days even better. I mean all the friends who support me, help me grow and look for men I could date Candidate #2 wrote to me today!!!!! (Yes, I’m excited enough to put five exclamation marks). Forgive me for not writing about it more – I am a very open person, but when it comes to others – there are some boundaries where I try to stop.
3. I am grateful for hard days like today that test how well I have mastered positive thinking and patience. Or is it simply the effect of full moon? Not sure. However, I appreciate the occasional reminders that I am not perfect. Means that I am still alive, sane and have not lost touch with reality

Oh, and the day ended great! We had a birthday party for my father, so now I am a little under influence and happy.

I am also grateful for having friends who care about me despite all my shortcomings. I have so many of them! Back when I was a child I was praying to have a friend – at least ONE! Many times I had none. Sometimes, one. Now I have MORE than one. And they are all great people! They help me see so many things in this life! I wonder if there is a “friends appreciation day”… If there is not, I’ll have to make one!

Oh, and surprise-surprise, I am also grateful for my daughter who is teaching me about patience and boundaries. Hopefully, I’ll learn something And I also hope to teach her about the same things in the process. More than everything I am grateful to her that she appeared in my life to set it on track. I don’t know if I ever would have had guts to leave my unhappy marriage. When my daughter came into my life though, many things became clear. That was a big part in my decision to leave the marriage for good (my and HER good).

And now, a little miracle. A few days ago in the gym I heard a nice song. I tried to read the name of it, but I was sitting too far to see it. I only could guess that the name of the band was ATC. Last night I spent more than an hour on youtube searching for it. I found it!!! Even more, I found a few other great songs of theirs. Here is the music video I was searching for: Why Oh Why
And here are a few others I enjoyed:
I’m In Heaven When You Kiss Me
Thinking Of You
My Heart Beats Like a Drum

I think I’ll train my brain to think more positively. That’s a great challenge, considering that right it is the opposite of that. Whoever knows me can confirm that I am a super-annoying whiner sometimes Yeah, I rock when it comes to finding problems and POTENTIAL problems. I don’t think it is something bad that I should get rid of entirely. As they say in programming world, “it’s not a bug, it’s a FEATURE”. Seriously, thinking about potential problems is a very useful talent for QAs and programmers who care about writing secure and robust programs. So, I am actually very proud of my ability to see what can go wrong

Now, as any talent, the tendency to see problems can be misused. And “Secret” explains this point very well. So, when it comes to LIVING ONE’S LIFE positive thinking is the way to go. But what if my poor baby-brain can’t do it? Well, what do I do? Teach it! And the movie suggests some ways to do it. Visualization of good outcomes, avoiding (unproductive) negative thoughts are some of them.

The easiest way, by far, is to focus on WHAT IS. Look, there are always things that can be improved in every life. Saying that my life is perfect is self-delusional. But my life IS great, nevertheless. In most cases there are always things to be happy about – we just tend to take them for granted. In the next 20 days I’m going to remind myself what things I am grateful for in my life. I’ll try to mention three different things each day

I went to the doctor yesterday and looks like I have to continue more of the same for about eight more months With some modification: soy, tomatoes, potatoes, citrus, bell peppers and other foods that don’t cause serious allergic reaction for me can be eaten once every four days I celebrated it by enjoying sushi with soy sauce yesterday.

Dairy and garlic will be out of limits for a looooooooooooooong time. I’ll try to stay away from gluten, too, since not eating any bread helps to keep my weight down
That’s all for now, time to eat and back to work.

Thank you for reading, everybody!

Surprisingly, I was able to get something dairy/garlic/gluten-free from pizzeria. My green salad had several thin slices of tomatoes, though. Since I didn’t have a habit of picking out something from my meal (yet), I ate it. Now I realize that maybe it’s OK to pick out tomatoes or bell peppers if I can’t have them…
Also, I can’t let go of my other habit that if I bought some food, I can’t throw it away. Hence still eating the hummus with corn starch…