the wanderluster: March 2014

Monday, March 31, 2014

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Photo Dump: Puerto Vallarta

ready

gah, I love me some organization and I love me some packing

Morning one: I caught the sunrise. (And a magnificent moon setting.)

Our family can typically be found at La Palapa for brunch.

You know its a party when the Egyptian robes are out.

Birthdays!

Love this pic with Marita in the background.
(Obviously, we didn't need to do the selfies.)

I really could watch the sun set on water everyday.

Full moon. Tiki torches. And dinner by candlelight.

Setting sail

Such a posse

I found my favorite tree!!

Dinner at Casa Isabelle.

I'm sorry. I can't stop!

Last night sparklers

I will miss these guys. And my family.

And this guy.

And this place.

Coffee. Cheese. Red Wine. If you know me, you know these are on my list of favorite things... right up there with puppies, cabins, and Neil Diamond. Unfortunately, I'm saying goodbye (actually, hopefully, see-you-later) to a few of my favorite things...

Right before I left for Mexico (pics to come!), I felt the ole pelvic pangs again. Even though I wanted to ignore it, I completely knew the symptoms were the same I experienced last year. So, rather sweeping it under the rug, I decided to see if there were other options rather than trekking back into a doctor's office and an operating table.

What I found was shocking, Endometriosis (which I still have to spellcheck, by the way), is a relatively elusive disease to treat. There still is no cure. Most women end up having multiple surgeries and stay in pain for years. And since that all sounds les mis to me, I'm going to see if, like many others, changing my diet will affect the pain.

So there we go, with one decision (because let's face it, there's weren't a lot of options), I feel like my life is changing. Perhaps that is a tad dramatic, but truthfully food is so meaningful in my life. Its a source of exploration, joy, socialization, and comfort (sometimes perhaps not in a good way). Removing meat (not such a big thing for me), dairy (huge thing for me), caffeine, and alcohol is like taking away the very last of my vices. And while I feel like I'll still enjoy these things from time-to-time, I have to admit, I'm curious about how this will affect my day-to-day life. Already, I'm much more conscious of what is going into my body... so I guess it ain't such a bad thing. We shall see...

So, send your positive thoughts my way... and as my friend Erin is doing... imagine me singing this to cheese.

xo

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Luck Be a Lady

Most of the time, I feel pretty lucky. Luckily, being lucky is an actively passive state. It’s an attitude and the ability to see fortune in many a' situations. Opportunities hide themselves in everyday, like clovers in a field of grass... Unless you look for the individual pieces, all you will see is green.

The book The Luck Factor studies what it means to be lucky. After 10 years of research, the author found that to a large extent, people make their own good and bad fortune—and that it is possible to enhance the amount of luck that you encounter in life. He identifies four principles that characterize “lucky people.”

1. They maximize chance opportunities. Their ability to recognize and act upon opportunities also makes them masters of creating chance opportunities.

2. They listen to their intuition. They are hypersensitive to gut-reactions and do work to boost those abilities, including meditation.

3. They expect luck. They have a mind-set that expects luck to happen which creates a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy.

4. They turn it around. They can see the positives in situations that are less than ideal.

While we cannot control the things that happen, we can dictate the reactions in those moments. So the next time I hop on the wrong train or the next time Erin misses her plane, we need to realize we were never meant to get to that destination in the first place; we were meant to see something else at that moment.

When life begins happening with you and not to you, consider yourself lucky.
xo