Today was relaxing.  Not real eventful, but sometimes you need a weekend day like that.  I went out to coffee w/ my friend Becky this morning and had a good conversation w/ her.  Then went to Target and bought a rice cooker and vegetable steamer combined into one.  I was inpired because of a Japanese cooking book I saw in Barnes and Noble yesterday afternoon  (I really wanted to buy the book but luckily refrained because I’ve bought way too many books lately, and it needs to stop.  Seriously, it’s out of control.  I need to just go to the library for most books).  So didn’t buy the book, but I think the Japanese diet is probably one of the healthiest diets out there, and have been motivated to do more Japanese cooking.  After that I went to Lee Lee’s (an asian supermarket) and bought Japanese sweet rice and black chocolate w/ extra cacoa (It’s a kind of “dark chocolate”.  I loooove dark chocolate in general- but this stuff tastes better than even the chocolate you get in Switzerland.  Or okay, maybe just as good.).   At any rate, the rice cooker even came with a little cookbook.  ^_^  I’m so excited to use the new steamer!  I think I’m going to eat Japanese for the entire week! 

 

Ps  Some pictures came back from the marathon I did recently (from a photo company taking random pictures at people).  Look at this one- doesn’t it look like I just merely ran around the block- without a glimmer of sweat, all cool, confident, and energized (ha haaaa!!)   Looks can be deceptive is all I’ll say!  Te he! That’s pretty cool that how I felt on the inside didn’t even show in that photo!

 

Here is another one  to show you to be fair (taken probably half way through), I look like I’m feeling it more there huh?  Lol.   Believe me I felt it! 

 

Pss.  I want to change the look of my blog…I feel it is time for a new look…but not quite sure what I want to do w/ it yet, so for now I’ll probably just keep making a few alterations here and there.  Just to mix it up a bit.  Let me know if you have ideas/suggestions of how to change it dramatically though- that I could actually do!

Some signs….

Have a great weekend!!

 

       Was just thinking about my relationship w/ my parents.  Which I sometimes think is pretty good, because we never fight that much.  But after I moved out and became 100% independent a few years ago, I started to notice some things, that have always happened that are negative, but I never really realized it until I moved out.  Now sometimes I feel resentful, which I don’t want.  Sometimes I can think it’s no big deal, then other times it really annoys me, I get into “victim mode thinking” and I feel horrible.  But I’m still glad I’m recognizing these things that are wrong  – because that in and of itself- alone – recognizing something isn’t being done right- gives me the power to change- and give it less power over me.  And then I struggle with (but feel good when I achieve it), forgiving, offering them grace, and loving them anyhow, in light of patterns that they keep doing (and see nothing wrong with), that have effected me in a hugely negative way, and would continue to do so had I not recognized it as not right.  But it’s important for all of us to be good to our parents even if we feel thay are totally messed up at times (which is bound to happen, even if you have great parents).  I figure, we need to offer our parents grace, because if they knew what they did wrong had a huge negetive impact and really messed you up, they probably wouldn’t want it for you.  But they aren’t able to see it’s full impact, and they don’t and probably won’t ever totally grasp the whole picture of it’s affect.  Plus, another reason to offer grace, I figure, we’re honestly all going to mess up on parenting our kids some day a bit.  Really we are.  Maybe not in the same areas as our parents- perhaps we’ll be more aware of the consequences of their pitfalls, but we’ll have our own little set that we’re blind too- and we’ll be hoping any damage we do to our kids they’ll be forgiving of-  so we really should show mercy on our parents if that’s what we’re going to expect to need in the future.  Paying it forward in a sense.  Okay, I’m tired so don’t know if that makes any sense. 

Hope you all are having a good evening!

The weekend was so nice.  Now it’s Monday again.  Egghh.  It was actually a pretty good day today though.  Reviewed labs w/ patients most of the day- which usually makes the day go by so fast.  But today I was soooooo tired.   And it’s important to be able to think well on these type of days, because you really have to individualize what you change in their diets based on the labs, and have the energy to think through what’s going to motivate them.   I went to a comedy play at the new Mesa Arts Center last night called “Around the World in a Bad Mood”- about the airline industry (which was good), so I got to bed late for Monday, but I don’t think that’s what caused the tiredness (after all it’s after midnight now and I’m still up- and that happens a lot), but it might have been the glass of wine I had last night.  That does tend to affect me, even though it wasn’t much alcohol at all.  It’s kinda weird actually.  Even one drink (and that all I ever usually have) affects me quite a lot the next day.  In fact, any time I drink anything, I feel overly relaxed and tired the next day.  Not hangover-ish, not sick or bad, just overly relaxed and like my brain can’t think quite as fast as usual.  I seriously think alcohol effects me more than most people, which is why I never drink hardly anything.  Because I simply don’t trust myself and sometimes can’t afford to not have a fast working brain the next day.  So anyhow, this morning I ended up hitting the snooze button twice as much.  And at work, instead of asking, for instance, the patient with high phosphorous, what he’s been eating, doing a 24 hr recall of his diet and finding substitutes, some of my responses were more brief.  I really just wanted to say “yeah your phosphorous is high, here you go, here’s the report. Okay bye.”  I didn’t really make it quite that brief, but it just seemed to drag on, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t do quite as good of a job as I normally could.  So I don’t think I could ever be an alcoholic because I can’t even handle a glass of wine.^_-  I’m such a wimp.  But, I made it though the day.  Not much exciting happened today.  Hope you made it through yours.

I want to go to the Sundance Film Festival this weekend!  I keep hearing about these small but interesting sounding (well, to me lol) films that I’ve never heard of on the news and on NPR lately, but the only place I know their showing is there :(.  It’s in Park City, Utah though.  And I’m in AZ so that might put a damper on me going. 😉  

I am going to a play this weekend though at the Mesa Arts Center, but I don’t know what else I’m doing yet!

Hope you all have a great weekend! 🙂

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ “You’ve got to believe, it’ll be alright in the end.” -Duran Duran.  ~

 

Painting and Life are the Same

By Karen_Lynn

Alright.

Gotta plan.

Gotta vision.

Know what I want

Know what I’m going for.

I think I can do this.

Can pull it off.

Make it beautiful.

Make it how I want.

Oops.

A blob there and didn’t want that.

Hold on.

There we go.

Fixed it.

Whew. It’s not ruined.

See? No big deal.

I can do this.

Uh oh.

Another splotch.

Okay, gotta work around that.

I can still manage to make it good though.

Won’t look quite how I thought it would, but I can turn it into something.

Wow, look at that I kinda fixed it!

Didn’t think I could do that, although not exactly how I imagined, it’s okay again.

Uhh…what the heck.

What did I do now?

Eugggh.

I shouldn’t have put that there, and should have made that part a little wider.

Shouldn’t have put so much weight on the brush.

Doesn’t look good at all anymore.

Sheesh…how am I going to fix that.

That’s impossible to work with.

Might as well just start over.

It’s unfixable.

I invested so much into this too.

Maybe try to make it into something, although it belongs in the trash.

Don’t even want to work on this still though.

But can’t start a new project now.

Maybe just finish it, I’ve invested in this.

There.  That looks a little better although nothing great.

It’s nothing like I wanted it to look, but I think the strokes I’m making are helping it blend in.

The colors are so much different than what I wanted.

But got to do these colors to help those mistakes work out.

Hey…actually..now that I look at it, those colors look and blend together a little better than I expected.

I like that better than what I was planning actually.

Hey this is actually turning out a little cool after all.

There we go.

Just a little more and I’ll be done.

Wow.

That looks nothing like I wanted it too.

But it’s beautiful.

I never thought I’d come up with that.

Never originally wanted that

Or thought to make it like that but I like that.

It’s kinda beautiful.

Yes.

I like it.

Nothing like I expected.

But definitely beautiful.

Dear know if this will make it up here- my internet is doing weird things again >_< –  What can I say?  My cable connection has a personality of it’s own! :S  And it was working so well for a while too!

It been a good day for the most part though.  I ended up having only one of the interns (not two, which was nice because one is a little less overwhelming) – will have her working with me again tomorrow.  Anyhow, she did just fine, I did just fine, and it went smoothly!  I think my confidence in the whole teaching thing has strengthened ^_^  It’s going to be a crazy rest of the week w/ a bunch of new labs coming in and the intern, but things will get done, and will be fine. That’s the self talk I’m giving my self at least 😉  Naw- everything will get done eventually.  I got a $25 gift card from my boss today- she does that randomly to employees if you do a good job on something etc (so that put me in a good mood this morning).  Also, I went to change this “Renal Recipe of the Week” I have set up for patients in the lobby – an idea I started a while ago but it wasn’t catching on, at all.  I had a theory that the patients just needed to get used to the idea.  Today I went to change it and only 2 sheets out of 25 were left in the folder!  Why does make my day, dear knows!  It doesn’t take much huh?  Maybe it’s knowing that the idea worked! (well, for the one time at least ^_-)  Anyhow, all that stuff is so small, and mostly tied in with work, so I’m not sure exactly what it was, but today was good.

Hope your evening is going well!

Karen

Good afternoon!  Hope you all are doing well!  The marathon went well- I got the time I wanted (which I was kind of uncertain that I could actually get/ defiantly wasn’t that confident about it) so that was nice.  Also I didn’t get hurt, so that is good too!  You see a lot of knee braces out there, and people that pull a muscle and have to walk the rest of the way to avoid hurting themselves more.  It could happen to anyone!  So I’m thankful I feel fine!  Additionally, the weather ended up being perfect for it- another blessing.  Because I’ve been to some where I’m freezing my butt off in the beginning.  It’s always nice not to deal w/ that.

Other than the marathon, it was a pretty blah/ calm weekend for me.  It’s hard even for the day before the marathon (which was Saturday) to be normal.  Because you have to eat what you do best on, get enough rest, and your kind of more anxious than normal.  Oh, but I did see that movie Munich on Saturday.  It was alright. It kinda had a history component to it (it wasn’t not entirely based on real events; the backdrop of the story was real, but story made up).  It was good, but it was very graphic and violent.  It left me w/ a heavy mind.  It good to be aware events that violent acts like that really do happen (similar to violence involved w/ the mob/mafia etc), but probably good not to keep absorbing a lot of that, you know?  It’s good to not be ignorant that it exists I think, but not good keep absorbing it.  I’m glad I saw it though.

One thing that was kinda crasy, was there was a man behind us in the movie who literally feel asleep when it first started!  And it’s not a movie most people would fall asleep in!  My friend Nick thought he might have had narcolepsy (that or else that man was excruciatingly tired) and taking someone else to the movies (there was a woman in a wheelchair that he was with- maybe his wife or mother- maybe she really wanted to see the movie).  Some people were getting really annoyed, I thought it was hilarious though- because the snore sounded so fake!  It was a real snore, but I had to keep looking back to see if he really was a sleep or just making the noises to be funny, because, it sounded like when you fake being asleep when you’re a kid (it sounded exactly the same!) or else a snore off of a cartoon!  Ha ha!  Poor guy though, I don’t think he was consciously aware of what he was doing, and probably wouldn’t want to annoy anyone, and I thought he might get himself kicked out or something (people tried to wake him up, but it didn’t last).  Anyhow, that was interesting.  I also rented the movie Million Dollar Baby this weekend, but haven’t watched it.  My mind needed a break from violence, even though that movie is probably a lot less violent than Munich.  I hear that movie is really good though.

At any rate, enough about movies.  I have today off!!  Which was soooo nice!  Particularly after the marathon, my legs weren’t too anxious for me to get out of bed this morning. 😉 And wonderful to be able to sleep in.  I’m a bit nervous about tomarrow though- at work I volunteered to take the dietetic intern students for the day (there are 2 of them- they are doing a rotation through our company).  I wanted to do it, but haven’t ever taken any interns before, and aren’t used to doing a lot of teaching ever, so I hope I explain things to them in an alright manner (sometimes when your not used to explaining things to students, you don’t know how to explain things in a way to make it click the best).  They are shadowing me for the day, so hopefully they will feel comfortable, enjoy themselves, and learn what they’re supposed to from it/ or atleast get something out of it.  Wish me luck!  Feel free to pray for me if you pray! 😉

Have a good day/ evening!

Karen

I have the marathon this weekend.  Will let ya know how it goes!  Just pray that I don’t break a leg. 😉 

Hope you have a great weekend!

 

“What our culture lacks are honest messages about what it really means to be a healthy human being…  Just because people gravitate to something doesn’t make it good or right.  I want more messages about how healthy humans are created, and as much as I want them, others need them.”- Dr Drew Pinsky