Lenten Update, Week 2...(Yes, It's A Little Late)

I think this Lenten exercise in positivity is slowly but surely helping.

This past week, I've tried to focus on the whole silver linings concept, as in even unpleasant or disappointment happenings have some thread of goodness or advantage buried in them somewhere.  Sometimes really, really deep, but it's in there somewhere.  Nothing dreadful happened this week, but, for example, my email got hacked.  Well, all those failure notices make it easy to weed out the email addresses that are no longer current.  Then my son spilled milk all over the kitchen floor, which I really needed to mop anyway.  And my oldest had a 7:00 a.m. orthodontist appointment yesterday.  My sweet husband took him since he was already awake, and next time those braces are coming off!

It's also really helps to be giving back.  Whenever I order a Bountiful Basket, I always show up an hour early to help sort the food, and this past Saturday it was just me and the site coordinator for the first fifteen minutes or so.  I was glad I got out of bed early so he wasn't on his own.  I volunteer at my sons' school every week for a couple hours, alternating between their two classrooms.  (It's gratifying that my kids aren't yet to the stage where I'm embarrassing; they're actually excited when I show up at school.)  This past week I helped a half-dozen of my oldest son's classmates get a good start on a persuasive essay.  The kids were appreciative, the teacher was grateful, and I even got a mini Snickers from the basket in the workroom.  As I mentioned in my last Friday Four post, I volunteered at the food bank for a couple of hours this past week, too.  It's seems to trite and so obvious, but getting out and doing something for others really lifts my mood.

Laughing hysterically is beneficial, too.  Gene likes to daydream about putting an addition on our house and the other night was drawing out his latest idea.  As he started explaining it to me, he said "So, my current thoughts are to..." And I exclaimed, "D2!"  He sat very still, staring at the paper for about ten seconds, until the light clicked on and he smirked.  And I started laughing hysterically.  Falling-out-of-my-chair, tears-streaming-down-my-face, completely-unable-to-stop laughing.  (It sounds really lame when I type it out, but I promise, it was hilarious when it happened.)  My oldest actually came upstairs to tell us to be quiet because he couldn't sleep with all that racket.  It felt so incredibly good to laugh that hard!  I really need to do that more often.