Today I got up for my walk this morning, exercised for an hour and then got in a car for Orlando. We drove to the Millenia Mall which rocks, spent some time at Macy's and then headed for the Orlando Airport which was a wicked nightmare. My inlaws arrived today and they're still awake now although it's like 5am-ish in Germany right now. Boy are they going to be tired this weekend. Things are going well so far. I realized today that I need an attitude adjustment. I found myself thinking some very negative thoughts. Need to cut that out. I spend so much time encouraging my own students to only talk to themselves positively and such and then I turn around and berate myself in my head all the time. And think the worst about everything. (Many people think I'm an optimist, and I really try to be, but I'm a closet pessimist I guess.) Sometimes I wonder if I don't have some odd anxiety thing going on because things can be fine but then I'll entertain worst case scenarios about stuff. I get a feng shui newsletter (I love Karen Rauch Carter's Move Your Stuff Change Your LIfe feng shui book) and this month's issue said that one should go outside and look at something in nature and to spend five minutes just contemplating that one thing. So my rose bush, which I love- if I were to contemplate the purple rose that is on there for five minutes, study each beautiful part that makes it whole- it's like a form of meditation of sorts, an exercise to make you appreciate and notice the details of the beautiful things that nature has provided for our enjoyment. Even though five minutes may seem like an eternity to look at a flower, I think that this type of exercise would benefit me much more as a whole than thinking what could possibly go wrong in the next three weeks. Which believe me, I've totally been tormenting myself in my head about what could possibly go wrong in the next three weeks. (Those of you who know me well are probably not surprised to hear that I'm obsessing and excessively worrying about something.)

This morning before I left I found some pictures in my inbox from one of the friends I saw at the reunion dinner we had among 5 of us. I thought, cool, that's nice to see. Then I checked the second email that I received and it was from the same person, except this time, he had emailed those same pictures to everyone from our high school class whose e-mail he had, which was a lot. Three of those pictures had me in it and I looked really stupid- he photographed me when I was looking kinda silly and my face was all red because that's what happens when I drink, and I have to admit that it really bothered me that he sent those pictures of us to the rest of the people. I felt like writing him an e-mail and saying, gee, thanks alot. But I didn't. You see, aside from a small handful of people I had no friendships at all with any of the other people in my graduating class and I really have minimal interest in sharing anything about me with them. It would have been fine with me if they had never thought of me again. Like I was telling my friends at the dinner the other night, this whole time that I've lived in Florida, which has been since 1986, the only time I felt really accepted and like I fit in was when I went to Stetson and was part of the Music School there. That was it. I felt comfortable there and it was the first time in a really long time that I had felt that way. I'm not saying I had a miserable time in high school, but as far as the people in my graduating class, I could care less. About the pictures he sent though, I'm kind of surprised he sent them along because both Tara and I didn't want to go to the reunion, so I wonder why he thought we'd want him to send our images on to all those other people? I have no idea. Whatever.

Again, wouldn't it be a better idea to think about the flower??

Martha at 11:35 PM