A Little Inspiration

Sarah
Sarah is one of my dear friends who I worked with at my previous job.  We had seen a lot together and had some hilarious and downright ridiculous moments. While I was in the midst of changing my career late last year, Sarah was doing the same. But while I chose to head back into the corporate world, Sarah decided to volunteer in an African orphanage. It's one of those things we all kind of wish we could do in our lifetime, or at least I do, but never seem to find the courage to do it. Except Sarah did and she's now in Kenya, painting murals at an orphanage, eating corn paste for dinner every single night and laughing at the fact that she has ringworm on her face. She inspires me.

Follow her story: Eat, Pray, Love, with Jesus. I particularly love the post called Options and Opportunities, sort of a What I Ate (in Kenya every single day) Wednesday.


Help from a stranger.
On Monday, it took me 40 minutes to get through the road construction mess near my office at 7pm. I spent 20 minutes standing in line at Target with screaming children behind me and another 15 minutes to find a gas station while my car drifted on fumes. I had at least three loads of laundry to do from traveling, an empty fridge at home and a husband who typically doesn't leave his office until 9pm. I was done. Fed up. Over it.

As I sat at yet another long stoplight, fumbling through the radio stations (seriously, Adele, again?!) and cursing my luck, the car next to me stalls. An older man gets out and examines the car engine. He puts it in neutral and tries to push it out of the middle lane, but cannot. He stands in the traffic, horns honking around him and wipes his brow. I feel horrible for him and my frustration with my own petty little day diminishes by the second. A young man from another car gets out and helps him push his car out of the way. It was a simple gesture, one that happens all the time, but had a profound effect on me in that moment. Almost as if God was giving me a little reminder about what really matters.

I said a little prayer that the man's car would get fixed and that that stranger would receive the type of kindness in his life that he showed that man. That stranger inspires me.


What is inspiring you today?

Tuesday Confessions

1. I am now the proud owner of purple jeans.

2. Sometimes I have to dust my stovetop. And when I don't, it's because I made scrambled eggs every other night for dinner.

3. There are certain clothes in my closet that I don't wear simply because I don't want to take the time to iron them. This is highly embarrassing, especially after hearing that my friend spends 2.5 hours a week ironing her 9 month's old clothes. Basically her baby's clothes look better than mine. To alleviate this first world problem I purchased a fancy clothing steamer. Brandon suggests we chuck the iron off the balcony.

4. Speaking of balconies, my neighbor smokes on his and the smells comes into our place when our windows are open. I am not sure if I can even confess here what I'd like to say to him.

5. Because I have the bad habit of checking my email at stoplights, I have vowed to keep my phone completely out of reach while driving. It is sad that I have to do this (i.e., I have no willpower), but I encourage you all to do the same if you have this problem.

Progress

Five weeks of bootcamp finished! I took a little break this week as I neither had the time nor energy to workout, but I was happy with the extra rest days. I'm still trying to get in the groove of my new work schedule and might attempt to workout in the mornings this week. Don't hold me to that.

Today I completed the mid-bootcamp fit test and was excited to see that despite (or perhaps because of) my few days off, I improved in each category.



I wouldn't say I improved leaps and bounds, but progress is progress.  I'm really happy that I finished that mile with energy to spare as opposed to the first fit test where I thought my lungs were going to burst. I started off a bit conservative as I haven't been running much lately and didn't know what to expect. We won't talk about how this used to be my 5K pace. Ha!

Biggest improvement: push ups. I did the same number overall as last time, but 5 more from my toes!

What I need to work on: planks. I hate any sort of ab work (almost as much as I hate to run sometimes), so to be honest, I skipped a lot of the core stuff in bootcamp. After all, abs are made in the kitchen  right?

...

P.S. I heard Tina is opening another bootcamp (new and improved with added features) starting June 17th. Who's with me?