Texas girl in the middle of Kiwiana

Amy Boatman

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Getting Up Off My Ass

I usually prefer to sit. I like to sit and watch TV, sit and read, sit and play on my computer, sit and play computer games. Sitting is my preferred position. This is followed a close second to laying down. Upright and mobile are not in my favourite categories. I also don't much care to leave the house. I have everything I need right here. Why go anywhere else?

Well, for only one of many reasons, staying at home too long makes me a bit squirrely. My mental health is much better served by my getting out and going somewhere, anywhere. Today, I actually wanted to! 

Shan has been off work on vacation for the holidays and has stayed home with me for most of them. She's a bit stir crazy too. Today we went to Waiatarua Reserve. It's quite a nice park. It was once a lake but was drained leaving behind wetlands which have an active pukeko population. I didn't see any babies today but maybe next time. 

I tried to bag a couple of geocaches but between my sling, my inaccurate gps, and Shan's impatience when I don't find it right away I was not successful. We decided to come back another day when she would walk on her own and I could geocache to my heart's content. 

My goal is to journal about a positive experience every day and today it was seeing this lovely park and spending time with my wife.

How to Be More Positive

Something passed across my consciousness on Facebook the other day about how to bring more positive energy into your life. I feel like I've had far more negativity in my internal mental space than positive so I thought "Why not give it a try?" It consists of doing five things every day.

1. Perform one random act of kindness everyday.

2. Be grateful for at least three things.

3. Meditate for at least three minutes.

4. Exercise for at least 15 minutes.

5. Journal about one positive experience from the previous 24 hours.

Today, I decided to begin this journey. I posted on Facebook about three things for which I'm grateful. They are a wonderful wife who made my favourite dinner, two lovely kitty souls who adore us, a family that I love but don't get to see as much as I'd like. Shannon and I went for a walk in Waiatarua Reserve for over an hour. I tried to bag a couple of geocaches but I just couldn't find them. I found a cool app for my phone called Calm that gives you a guided meditation every day. I did that for three minutes. I'm going to journal about something positive as soon as I get done with this. That just leaves a random act of kindness. I'm kinda stumped on that one. I'll have to think about what I can do in the next two hours before the day is over.

Snappy Comebacks and a Brilliant Spouse

You know how we all have those situations in which the witty, snappy comeback alludes us? Hours later, when we least expect it, the perfect line comes to us. It’s so damned annoying. Well today we went over to Barnes & Noble to spend a $25 gift card. I got two books and the total came to $24.98. The cashier asked me if I planned it that way but of course, I’m just not that good with numbers. She gave me my $.02 and said “I don’t know what you’re gonna do with it though.” I said, “I’ll give somebody my $.02 worth.” I could hear the drum and rim shot in the distance.

We attempted to do some geocaching today but struck out once again. We are now something like 0 for 12. I’m not sure what it is but we just can’t seem to find anything here. It was rainy and windy today so, honestly, we didn’t try that hard. We ended up on Alki Beach looking for this one cache. We didn’t look long due to the aforementioned rain and wind but over just about 50 feet from where we were standing, the water was washing up on the wall. There was this couple standing there and every time the water came up, they cheered. They looked like they were having so much fun. It was awesome!

Afterwards, we went over to Starbucks (go figure, huh) for some coffee. R was looking out the window at the water and I was looking at the sale circulars. I saw that Radio Shack had GPS units on sale. Now, a little background on this. Last weekend, we were going…somewhere and I was supposed to be navigating. I couldn’t tell how to get on the highway so I told R I usually just “feel” my way around in these situations. Well, she got a bit upset. Turns out she has a thing about being lost, not knowing exactly how to get somewhere. I hadn’t been aware of this before. I love it when I learn new things about her just when I think I know it all. So, anyway, knowing she has this fear, I saw these GPS units for sale. I told her we needed to go over to Radio Shack and look at them. So, off we went on a mission.

Do you know what a bad idea it is to go to one of the shopping centers two days before Christmas? Well it’s right up there with yelling fire in the theater and watching The Pirate Movie. We spoke with the young man in the store at length and asked him questions he had no answer to but at least he had Google. (What did we ever do before Google?) We ended up leaving with a brand new shiny Garmin Nuvi 200 complete with maps of the whole US, driving directions to every Starbucks and yarn store in town, and this bland female voice that tells us which way to turn. The funny thing though is it tells us to turn as we pass the turn, lol. We played with it all the way home and had a blast.

So, we get home and decide we want to figure out how to use our nifty little gadget for geocaching. I hooked it up to my computer and transferred over a gps coordinate file. We turned it on expecting to see all kinds of pretty geocaches light up on the screen. What we saw instead was…black screen. And then more black screen. It turned out I overrode the internal file or some such. We both dinked around with it for a bit but couldn’t figure out. I gave up and suggested we take it back to Radio Shack in the morning. Then I sat my ass on the couch and watched the Amazing Race. R continued to play with it. Periodically I would glance over at her seeing her wrinkle her forehead and stare intently at the computer screen. Occasionally, she would tap the GPS and it would beep. I would glance over at her hopefully but she’d shake her head and frown deeper.

Hours later, I hear a shout of triumph. She had gone from site to site, forum post to forum post, odd bit here and odd bit there. Somehow, against all the odds I had placed on it happening, she managed to restore the whole damn thing. I am incredibly impressed with her. She rocks!! Now she’s figured out how to do all kinds of impressive things with it. She is a rock star!