David and Rachel

I think perhaps my attitude towards this blog reflects my attitude about life in general right now: I keep waiting for something exciting to happen to post about. I keep waiting for something wonderful and fantastic to fall from the sky and land on my head Newtonian-style and give my life meaning. I fear that I've fallen into the "My life will be great when {fill in the blank}" trap. I think this could be one of the unintended consequences of goals: we focus so much on reaching the end that we miss the middle entirely. And I have lofty goals - goals for me, goals for David, and goals for us as a family. But I don't want David to be so focused on graduation that he misses the wonderful experiences of college, and I don't want to be so focused on attaining my personal goals that I underappreciate the relative simplicity and ease of my current life. I want to be happy now, right now, without any conditions or stipulations; I don't want to wait to be happy. So, I am determined to notice the little things that give my life meaning and make me happy now - the minutia, the seemingly inconsequential occurrences and accomplishments that actually create my life more that the grand but rare events.

Here is a brief list of said recent occurrences and accomplishments:

• David got a raise at his job
• I might get a raise at my job
• This past week, we planted the seeds in little plastic cups that will (hopefully) eventually populate our nascent garden
• On Saturday, we leveled off the garden, turned over all the dirt (sidenote: next year, I think I'll save my body and rent a Roto-tiller or some such contraption), mixed in compost, and installed four out of the seven 8'-tall posts that will support the perimeter of our garden. Whew!
• I found satin leopard-print flats at DSW that were 70% off - total damage, $11.98.
• David and I saw "Sherlock Holmes" at the dollar theater on Friday. My favorite part? Rachel McAdams' makeup; within 24 hours, I was at home attempting to recreate her smokey purple eye. :)
• I dyed my hair warm, dark brown this past week and, as I noted on my fashion blog, I already feel distinctly sassier. It did take two boxes of dye, as the first one turned out disastrously, but I managed to fix it and it's all good now.

There. I feel better already. Any suggestions about how to, to use a cliched phrase, appreciate the "journey" and not just the "destination?"