1. Sam threw my iPad into his water table and now it doesn't work.
2. I woke up one morning last week with random pain in my sternum (breastbone), which got worse the next day and ached on and off for days. I don't know how it happened. So once again I had to take a break from my new-found exercise habit.
3. Now that my sternum seems to be almost healed, I have a head-cold.
4. I'm suffering from hair despair. Sometimes I hate my thin hair and how it won't cooperate with my vision for it. :-(
5. No matter how hard I try I just can't seem to get and stay organized with my life the way that I want to. I know I have perfectionist standards when it comes to these things, but that just makes it all the more frustrating.
So it hasn't been the best week for me. However, there have been some good things that have happened, and to balance out the negative with the positive, in the spirit of gratitude and counting your blessings, I will now list five of those good things. (Exclamation marks mandatory-!)
1. I have an iPad "1" and if it can't be fixed I'll get to upgrade to a newer version of the iPad!
2. My mother is visiting from Massachusetts for a week!
3. We spent the day in beautiful Nauvoo, Illinois last Friday. That place is amazing! Especially if you're a member of the LDS Church who loves history like me. :-)
4. I read a good book last week--Jane by April Lindner. It was a modern-day retelling of my favorite book, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I really enjoyed it! And then on Saturday night I finally watched the movie version of Jane Eyre that came out last year. That was good too. Hooray for Jane Eyre!
5. Peter and I went out on an actual date Saturday evening and had dinner at one of the best restaurants in Iowa City. It had a really nice vibe like the restaurants we used to go to in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Hartford. And it had a perfectly delicious filet mignon too, I might add!
So the moral of the story is that I've found that for every negative in life there's at least one positive to counteract it, and often more. It doesn't change the fact that I'd like this cold to go away ASAP, and that I'd love for my hair to grow thicker and longer ASAP, and that I'd like my iPad to work again, and that I want my life to get organized just right and stay that way. But those things all pale in comparison to the many daily blessings in my life. It may sound a little trite, but it's true. And that makes all the difference in living a happy, optimistic life instead of a negative, pessimistic one. Choose to be positive! (Wow, who knew that this blog post would end up being a motivational pep talk? I didn't!)
