These past few months I’ve been talking to a lot of medical professionals. Each time they ask me, do you exercise? I have to answer with an embarrassed no.

As it turns out, there’s nothing terribly wrong with me. My primary care physician decided to be thorough, just in case, since I hadn’t had a checkup in AGES. I have fantastically low blood pressure, and my BMI looks just fine, as always. I did learn that I have a benign growth on my gallbladder, which I wasn’t even sure was a vital organ until I looked it up. I also needed a prescription for a terribly annoying but non-life-threatening problem, which is now no longer a problem. The rest is just lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, and — in my opinion — stress.

Surprisingly, I’ve been learning to resolve my problems with stress through my graduate coursework on organizational leadership, which itself adds a lot of stress. By default I guess the two cancel each other out, but I’ve also been given a lot of new tools to use to analyze the world around me, which has been very exciting.

I’ll go into further detail about that later. Meanwhile, here are a few ways I’m adding exercise into my life:

• Take the Stairs Tuesdays at work: there’s a big sign at the bottom of the escalator telling me I’m a loser if I don’t take the stairs. You think I’m going to ignore it?
• Pushing the jogging stroller around Disneyland: everytime I do this I start jogging. Seriously.
• Buying the big kids new bicycles at Toys R Us: self explanatory.
• Tuning to our local indie radio station and hearing polka music…

Categories: health
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The beauty of looking for reasons to feel happy is that you start to find them all over the place. After a month of looking for reasons to smile, I can say with complete honesty that even on my worst days, I have a really good life.

Today, for example, I plotted with Ana and came up with all kinds of schemes for our new girly bathroom. We went to Target and took tons of pictures in the bathroom accessories aisle. We’ll be working on it this summer. I’ll bet you can’t wait to see pictures.

She and I also baked a ton of cookies using her Easy Bake Oven. She’s a girl after my own heart.

Alex and Angie were completely mesmerized by a movie we saw tonight: The Spy Next Door. They related to the characters of Ian and Nora, respectively. Alex started doing karate and Angie started dancing around like a pretty pretty princess. If I had my wits about me I would have recorded it for all eternity.

I made dinner. My son likes Brussels sprouts. Enough said.

I read a lovely book called The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World. I am a tortoise, and I’m just about ready to admit it to the world.

I’ll continue sharing moments that make me smile. I hope you will too

Categories: happiness-project
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We’ve been experimenting with a borrowed Apple iPad in our household the last few days, and I’m suitably impressed. This is the first Apple product that I have ever considered getting. In looks I would describe it as the steroid infused big brother of the Apple iTouch, and it has many more features that make it a possible replacement for a normal laptop. The kids are much better at using it than I am, being more agile with touchscreens from all the time they spend on their Nintendo DS’s. Nevertheless, I did catch on quickly. The best part is it’s well under a thousand dollars.

Now, to find a justification to buy it…

Categories: toys
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For some time now I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog at http://www.happiness-project.com. I’ve finally committed to starting my own Happiness Project.

It’s simple: everyday, I will identify one thing that made me smile.

I welcome you to join me on this journey

Categories: happiness-project
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I’ve been avoiding Facebook. I get sad when I read status updates of friends I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s not just me who is too busy though; it seems like we are all too busy.

On a happier note, Kevin and I took some time off this month to take the kids to Disneyland on their spring break. We stayed at the Paradise Pier Hotel, where we had a similar custom-built bed to the one we experienced at the Grand Californian. We exhausted ourselves playing everyday and got fantastic sleep every night. I love these beds so much I asked Santa for the Disney Resort Encore Pillowtop Bed Set for Christmas. Now, to be good for the next 8 months…

Categories: Disneyland, Facebook
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