Wild Turkeys

It's been a very long time since I posted.  I have moved twice and started a new job since April so I've been a bit busy.  Today I wanted to share a quick post about a flock of while turkeys I've fallen in love with.

My new home is near a park in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  Each day on my way to work part of my commute takes me along the boarder of the park and some mornings there is a flock of wild turkeys on a hillside that I drive past.  I smile every time I see them and and think they are so beautiful!

The first morning I saw them they were quite close to the road.  I thought perhaps I needed to put my life on hold for a few hours and call someone who might persuade them to waddle back into the woods.  There are about 15 birds in the flock and I desperately wanted to pull over and take a photo of them because I assumed this was a one time occurrence.  I drove on to work instead and told everyone I could about the turkeys.

Lucky for me that hillside seems to be their happy home and I see the turkeys quite regularly!  Every morning when I see them I can't help but smile.  I can't really explain why but it feels like such a blessing that these turkeys are living a wild and free life so close to a major city. 

I'm always driving up a steep hill when I see them so I can't really stop and take a picture.  I trust you can understand why I had to borrow the image above from the internet :-)  

Power of Music

This past weekend I wound up on a road trip so I bought some new cd's in preparation.  Yep.  Compact Discs!  The cigarette lighter doesn't work in my car anymore so I don't have a good way to listen to music on any sort of mp3 player.

ANYWAY...

One of the albums I bought was What we Saw from the Cheap Seats by Regina Spektor.  One of my favorite songs in the universe is on this album, it's called "Don't Leave Me (Ne me quitte pas)."  I was first introduced to this song when I realized I hadn't listened to her music in a while, did a quick YouTube search, and stumbled upon the music video.  It's delightful!  I'll share it at the end of this post for your viewing pleasure :-)

I'm writing about this song because when it came on in my car for the first time (I listened to it about 25 times during the road trip because I love it so much...) it made me cry.  It made me cry because it's such a wonderful beautiful song and it made me cry because I'm so heartbroken about all the people who can't listen to it.  The victims of the Boston bombings, the young victims of Newtown who will never get to appreciate music at all as angst-ridden teenagers discovering their favorite bands, and the victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas.

I'm just writing to say I'm happy to be alive right now because everything from listening to a song, to snuggling a kitten, to fighting with your mom can't happen when you're dead and that makes those things special; the good and the bad.  From now on I'll never be able to listen to "Don't Leave Me" without thinking these thoughts and I think it's good to have a way to remind yourself, at random, that life is awesome.

Enjoy:

Zuri

I think that somewhere along the line I kinda sorta mentioned that I'm a vegetarian.  I don't have much to say on the subject that you haven't already heard but I do want to share one thing with you:  Zuri.

I follow Farm Sanctuary on facebook and back in January they posted a picture of this adorable baby lamb jumping around in pajamas.  Her name is Zuri and she is one of my biggest inspirations for sticking to this diet.  I hope you enjoy this picture as much as I do (I look at it all the time, honestly I'm just posting it here so it's easier for me to find it again tomorrow when I need a smile)!

Please click here to learn more about Zuri.

 All the credit for this tiny post about baby lambs goes to Farm Sanctuary.

Exercising with Cats

Yesterday it was freezing rain and sadness outside so I decided taking out the trash was more than enough cardio and I could skip the gym if I just followed the exercise apps on my phone.  I planned out a schedule for my evening to be sure I could fit in a half hour of exercise and waited until my cats fell asleep.

I went into the spare room which has lots of room for flailing around on the floor.  I did my warm up stretches and got my phone all set up for a 5 minute ab workout extravaganza!  I got through my regular crunches, right and left oblique crunches, bicycle crunches...and then Harold wandered in.

I have three black cats and Harold is the biggest and most obnoxious.  He's basically a dog who licks you constantly, chews through wires, and spends 40% of his time sitting in the sink with one paw down the garbage disposal fishing for food bits to play with.

He's also one of my best friends in the whole wide world.

So, in comes Harold and he walks all around me, nuzzling my feet, chewing on my hair, and generally getting in the way kind of sort of.  I do some reverse crunches and he sits down next to my head.  Then it's time for extended leg crunches which is apparently the same thing as Harold-sits-on-your-stomach-while-you-do-crunches.  It was mildly uncomfortable but also adorable.  He got very confused as a crunched back and forth.

Anyway, the point is, after all that he got off and snuggled next to my head and licked my ear because he loves me and so I forgive him for jumping on my back in the middle of doing a plank.

Harold & Me

Breakfast for One

Breakfast for one.  My significant other is presently living in another city and as I am jobless at the moment I've decided to start taking breakfast time a bit more seriously.  When I was working I typically just took a banana to work or something and on weekends my boyfriend, Ryan, and I would eat breakfast together... in front of the television.

I'm not sure why exactly but I've always felt like breakfast time should be calm and slow.  So, recently I've been sleeping in, making a nice warm breakfast with some tea, and sitting at the cute little table by our kitchen window and watching the birds while I eat.  This morning while I was enjoying my meal I stopped and wondered if maybe this was a bad idea and I was just wasting time.  I should stop procrastinating and apply for all the jobs!

But, nope.  Hopefully I will never have to just up and quit a job again without having a new one ready to go, but in the mean time I think it's okay to spend some time just quietly enjoying being alive :-)

I like to pretend this is my breakfast table. My real table is inside because it's snowing and there are no flowers because my cats will eat them...

Intro Post

I've started this blog for a few reasons.  

1) My friend Hannah started a blog "H.M.Pittman" and encouraged me to do the same.  She has assured me I have lots of good things to say and that people on the internet will read those things.

2) My life feels kind of messy right now and I want to start enjoying it more.  I tend to be a pessimistic individual and while I'm not sure if I can change that I'd like to try!  I'm hoping that maintaining this blog will help me to keep my heart sweet and to be an all around better me :-)

3) I firmly believe in positive reinforcement.  I am much more motivated to eat healthy food and exercise, for example, when I see and think about those things being fun instead of a burden.  I'm much better at sticking to my vegetarian diet when I look at images of happy beautiful animals living on a farm sanctuary than I am when I see pictures of animals suffering (it just makes me feel sad and helpless, not motivated).  I recognize that this works for me so I'm hoping this blog will allow me to create a little environment of happy things that make me want to live a beautiful life every day! 

4) I really enjoy writing.  I've started many blogs in the past and never stuck with them because I felt I didn't know what  to talk about, or, I worried myself silly wondering what others would think of me when they read my posts.  No more!  I want to simply enjoy this process for what it is and if some other people read  my blog that will be even sweeter <3

There is no particular theme to this blog, the only rule is that each post be about doing or thinking about something in an extra beautiful way.

<3Lauren