Right now

"The present moment is all you ever have" ~ Eckhart Tolle

Appreciate today

My best friend, Toni, was in Tokyo, Japan when the earthquakes/tsunami occurred.  Can you imagine?  I can't at all!  I knew she was on her way to China, traveling with St. Joseph University MBA students.  But I did not realize she was also hitting Japan until the day of the tsunami.

The week before I was modeling a lesson for my students, making a connection for them about change in my life.  Change- how I used to talk to and see my best friend all of the time, now I rarely speak to her or see her.  She lives in State College, PA.  The distance really is an excuse.  My students looked at me in awe, asking, "You haven't talked to her since Christmas?!  You haven't seen her since...September?!"

Wow, I had thought to myself.  Yes to both.  It's pretty pathetic.  The phone makes things simple.  All it takes is to press some numbers on my cell.  And yes, we have occasionally played phone tag.  But eventually someone, or both, give up.

As cliche as it is, appreciate today.  You do not know who will be here tomorrow.

So glad Toni is safe.

Check out her return home video.

Rainbow...

farts.  Ha.  This is what Tim, my husband, calls the rainbows I see often in the sky and get excited about.  Rainbow farts!  I saw one today and took it as a sign.  I stayed after work late to work on report cards and narratives.  A fellow teacher entered my classroom, and we started a discussion that really has no end:  the units of study that Lucy Calkins invented.  Argh is all I have to say.

Anyway, the discussion that has no end, eventually ended as I was packing up my things because I had to get going.  Slow flow yoga was 30 minutes away.  And I so needed it today.

I was about five minutes behind schedule, behind the time I intended to leave.  Needless to say, a few events occurred that had me thinking, of course this is happening as I am running late.  For instance, the bridge was closed, so I had to take a longer route.

Thinking to myself whether I should just stop at my dad's house, which is on the way to yoga class, or bust in late, once I started hitting all green lights on Atlantic Avenue, I thought I had a shot of not being too late.  Btw-Making all the lights on Atlantic Ave was a first!

Then, I looked up at the horizon, and saw the rainbow!  In the middle of everything, it was beautiful.  I felt at that moment that I would make it to class.

So I went.  And it was a relaxing 89 minutes,  as I was only 1 minute late.

Here is a picture of the rainbow "farts" that I usually see.

This is the best picture I can find.  Tim calls them rainbow farts because I always see 1/4 of a rainbow in the sky.  He tells me they are not rainbows!  Ha.  I really do get excited when I see them too.

Co-inky-dink

Coincidences occur in all of our lives.  I have had some enter my life lately.  One being meeting a lady at the gym that has worked in my school district.  She allowed me to sign up for the gym at the resident rate, even though I let her know the truth (I cannot lie anymore; it's all I did in my teen years) about living outside the city.  The odd thing was that she said she has worked at the gym for 15 years.  I have not noticed her one single time there.  But on the morning of signing myself and my husband up for the gym, I struck up the conversation with her, asking her if she worked at my school, which lead to this major discount that I appreciate a lot.

It's funny how being more aware can allow aspects of your daily life to fall in your favor.

Guardians of Being

After yoga on Friday, I ventured into the library.  I found this book Guardians of Being by Eckhart Tolle with illustrations by Patrick McDonnell (creator of Mutts, my favorite comic!).  Love it.

Winter Weather

For the last month, I've written down 10 things I'm grateful for each morning.  Today I glanced outside my dining room windows and noticed dense fog, a saturated ground, and water droplets from the "Nor'easter" that dispersed our area the night before.  I decided in that moment that I was grateful for the fog, and the rain.  Often I dismiss rainy days as dreary and miserable, but today I was able to find beauty in the mist and water that surrounded the nature outside my windows.

Amazingly, while the rest of the northeast dealt with 20 inches of snow, which I also would have welcomed, around 3:00 pm the sun peaked out behind the clouds and it was gorgeous!  The weather temperature read 53 degrees and I grabbed my dog, Star, and took her for a beautiful walk.  She was actually panting at the end of it.

I am grateful for fog, and the rain.  I am especially grateful when the sun peaks out.