7 Quick-Takes Friday

For 7 Quick-Takes’ home-base, check out Jen’s blog here!

1.  This has been one of those weeks when I’ve been so stressed out and anxious that I forget my own name.  I’m one of those people who, even if there is very little to worry about, will go searching for things to worry about.  Horrible, right? It kinda goes like this: have you ever seen the movie “Office Space?” Remember the “Jump to Conclusions Map?”

Yeah.  I roll mine out pretty much every chance I get.  Let’s say something happens – it could be good, but it could be bad.  Either way, doesn’t matter.  I get all over it, basically looking for ways for it not to work for me.  I play out endless scenarios in my head,  start obsessing over it, and it’s all my poor husband can do to help keep me sane, all the while wondering what he ever did to deserve such a crazy wife.  I pray about it – well, mostly just pray to God to help me get out of these obsessive situations – until I’m physically and mentally exhausted and am too tired to care anymore.

Thaaaaaaaaaat was my week.  I basically got through the anxiety by praying St. Michael’s prayer a lot, listening to Nickelback (I know, I know) and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and finally getting myself back to yoga class (more on that later).

What are your favorite ways to relax and just get over being so crazy?

2.  But I did have a very serious thing happen, for real — my mom was diagnosed with a glandular tumor along her jawline. She’s had what she’s believed was Bell’s Palsy, which affected her facial movements, but had an MRI done two weeks ago that was confirmed yesterday that it’s not BP, but the tumor that’s resting on the facial muscles and causing her face, eye, and mouth to droop.  She’ll need to have surgery to remove the tumor, and it’ll be tested for malignancy.  It’s not the best situation, but it’s comforting to know what the real root cause of her problems have been so they can be treated.  We pray it’s not cancer, but if it is malignant, the doctor says it won’t spread much farther than the area it was already in, so that is a good thing.

3.  Back to yoga – I know there are folks out there who don’t believe Christians should do yoga because it’s of the Devil (or, at the very least, participating in another religion), but it’s not like that for me.  (I find that, as a Catholic, we’re a lot more forgiving of things like that, anyway, haha.)  It’s basically a physical thing, a way for my body to work through its anxiety issues and learn how to not breathe so shallowly and panic-like.

When I got to class this week, though, it was interesting: my instructor, a wonderful lady, told us that in certain poses, we have to “push down to go up,” so we can get grounded.  So if we’re going from a crouching position to a fully-standing one, we have to push through our feet in order to gain length.  And I just totally took that as a metaphor for my relationship with God: we have to go down to go up — humble ourselves in order to reach higher (where only He can take us).  I thought it was a neat analogy!  Plus, my body felt so good afterward…if you haven’t yet been to a hot yoga class, go — it feels amazing.

4.  My husband and I got engaged on a Friday during Lent (4 years ago, woah!), so we went to dinner at a seafood restaurant instead of the steakhouse he had originally planned to ask me to marry him in.  Today I’m making a vegetarian paella for dinner (recipe here) and hopefully having a couple of friends over.  What are your plans for dinner tonight?

(A quick aside: do you call dinner “dinner,” or do you call it “supper?”  I want to start calling “soda” “pop,” since that’s what Pittsburghers call it.  It sounds weird.  But if the “pop” thing works out, I’m totally down to start on “supper.”)

5.  Do you like punk/metal/alternative music from the 80s and 90s? If so, my friend Jay has probably photographed them in action, before they became famous.  He’s an excellent photographer, and we actually just recently got two photos (one of a pre-famous Kurt Cobain and of White Zombie) that I’m so excited to frame.  You can check out his photos here, if you’re interested in ordering a few!

6.  Time to play “Don’t Judge Me!” I may or may not have spent my evenings last week watching “Touched By an Angel” on the Hallmark Channel, only to switch over after that to HBO’s reruns of “Oz.”  I mean, you can’t have Heaven without the Hell…right? Because you can’t get more diametrically opposed than those two.

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7.  Have an awesome week, guys!