This Week

Things I'm grateful for this week:

1. My sister -- I'm SO glad she moved back and is close by and I can talk to her and see her regular and talk her ear off about all the details of my me-centric life. She humors me and loves me all at the same time. And she compliments me a lot. I like that too. And she's just awesome. She's not crazy or mean like some sisters can be. She's sensible and nice and caring and has AMAZING perspective. She's awesome.

2. Good friends -- I don't talk with as many people on a regular basis as I used to. My life has changed a bit in that regard in comparison to my early twenties. And I am grateful for all my friends. But I have some very close friends who I love having around, hearing about their lives, getting advice from them when I get to my wits end(which can happen pretty often), going on vacations with, double dating with, planning game nights with, doing choreographed lip sync routines to ridiculous song compilations, hot tubbing with, book clubbing with, going to the gym with.... the list goes on. What would I do without you?

3. Jefita -- I wouldn't be going into business without him. I wouldn't have had as many fun and crazy stories from college without him. I would not have a lot of things without him. He's a great cheerleader, a great friend, a great supporter, a hard worker, a great talent and, overall, a good person to have around. Everybody should have their own Jefita.

4. An ability to budget -- I am not a frugal person. I would say, in general, I am a terrible waster of money and very bad at saving. I am not thrifty when it comes to my wardrobe budget. Especially my shoe budget. I take vacations. I buy new cd's. I like to buy people nice presents. I just bought a new car. I buy expensive cheeses and shop at Wild Oats for most of my groceries. See? Not frugal. But I was going over all my financial obligations and necessary expenses in my head yesterday and going over my income and then the state of my bank account. (I really like doing that. Really. It's fun for me. It's like a weird, twisted, fun past-time I have to look over money and account balances and see where it all goes. I know. Weird.) Well, after all was analyzed, my conclusion is: Wow. I saved all that? With all those bills? On my little nonprofit salary? I am an amazing budgeter! I'm like Houdini! It's like the loaves and the fishes all over again! An LDS individual such as myself might also accredit and sing praises to the blessings of tithing. And I think it's true in this case. But I still like to think of myself as an amazing budgeter. It strokes my ego. But the best part is knowing I don't overspend, as it brings great peace and relief to my soul.

5. Male -- he's a boy with ill-timed napping tendencies, yes. But a good friend pointed out that as far as faults go, it could be a lot worse. On the plus side, he's really nice to me. And he calls me all the time and he likes to see me and he always opens my doors and he always tells me what he thinks as opposed to what I would like to hear (even when it would be a REALLY good idea for him to tell me what I want to hear. But at least I always know he's honest). And he's kinda cute. And I have to admit, I'm a lot more of a stable and settled kind of person since he stepped in than I was pre-Male. Much less neurotic. I know, I know. I'm still neurotic. I'm telling you -- I was REALLY neurotic before. Seriously. It wasn't healthy.

6. Music -- Given the right afternoon and a bit of free time and the right mood, the perfect cd in my car while I'm on a drive just makes me soar. Does life get better than that?

7. Airplanes -- I love love love to travel and I can't wait for my next trip. Vegas. Yeah, baby! After that, I have no idea when or where it will be to. But I know I will like it. I actually just got "roped in" to another business trip in July. I say roped in because I've decided I'll be much cooler if I act like I'm "put off" by the "inconvenience" of having to tear myself away from my life to travel for business. We'll pretend I'm cool like that. Ok, maybe not. I'm not fooling anyone. I love traveling, be it for business, pleasure or otherwise. Love it. And when I'm not doing it, I'm probably day dreaming about it. I love airplanes. They're my portal to everywhere I want to be.

8. Good coworkers -- I love good coworkers. And at my current place of employment, I have a few really CRAZY coworkers. These crazy coworkers magnify the fabulousness of the other good coworkers I have by A LOT. I like and appreciate the good ones twenty times more than I did before because of the crazy ones. Funny how that works? Thank heavens for working with people who are fun and helpful to work with.

9. My curly hair -- I don't always wear my hair curly, but I have been a lot lately and I've decided I really like my curly hair. I hate it sometimes when I have a bad hairday. I have very thick hair so as opposed to a person with a thinner head of hair, my bad hair day tends to be a lot BIGGER bunch of bad than they're smaller bunch of bad (im my humble opinion.) But despite these traumatic, large-headed days, I like my hair a lot lately. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and growing to like myself better than I used to. For whatever the reason, I'll take it.

10. My appreciation for basketball -- I actually like to watch basketball. I don't really do it of my own accord very often because I like shopping better, but when persuaded to watch a game, I really enjoy it. Male loves watching basketball and has asked me to watch many games with him over the past few months. I think our relationship would be less fun for me if I didn't actually like watching with him. Or maybe it would be less fun for him because I wouldn't be willing to do it. Either way, I like that it's a non-issue.

I didn't have too many big events or details about this week, but lots of things have struck me that I have been very grateful for, so I wanted to list them. I also updated the Sartorial Freshman as a lot has been happening with the business, so that might be why not a lot of other stuff has happened.

It just so happens that sometimes, rather than having been to a place physically, I feel like I have gone to a very profound spot, worthy of note, inside. Just those little moments where something true rings very loudly and makes you stop and notice for a moment.