It will rain

I love the rain ... from indoors. I can't remember playing in the rain as a kid. I think I had too healthy a fear of my mother's disapproval to be an all out dancing in the rain kind of kid, but I know I loved jumping in puddles. I didn't get to play in the rainfall, but I sure benefited from the aftermath!

Dancing in the rain is on my bucket list. I don't know why it's taking me forever to do it. There's always rain this time of year. I guess it's not something I really want to do before I die, but an experience that I would enjoy (and I'd possibly catch a cold...there goes my mother again).

My sophomore English teacher taught me that rain is used in movies and novels to denote change. I didn't have much fun during our Shakespeare unit, but the one useful piece of information I came away with is rain = change. It might be a realization, death, windfall, etc. We can't always have sunny days and sometimes the adversity of rain and dark, gloomy days is the kick in the butt we need in order to level up.

It's raining lightly outside :)

The other thing on my mind is planning. Many of us plan our lives. The details aren't always clear, but we have a general idea of where we want to go. When I was a teenager I wrote a letter to myself to be opened in 10 years. I think I ended up reading it at year four or five. I had a whole plan of things I wanted to accomplish and where I wanted to be at...at marriage and baby in a baby carriage, the whole nine. Fast forward 10-15 years and my plan is not coming to pass on my timeline.

It's interesting how many of us make plans without counseling with the Great Planner himself, our Heavenly Father. I hope I can truthfully say that I'm better at including Him in my plans now. I know for sure I didn't plan to be unemployed for this long, but somehow we're making it. I'm grateful for my family's support and non-judgmental stares when I tell them I'm tired after staying home or only working a few hours at my part time job. I'm trying.

He will guide us through the storms of our lives when we let Him. King Benjamin told his people to turn their tents toward the Temple. This is my trying to turn myself in the same direction.

Love & Blessings.

Epiphany:  Guys are so much more attractive well dressed as opposed to half naked. The same is probably true about women, but popular culture doesn't want us to believe that.

I have a few business casual tops, mostly purchased in order to comply with company dress codes. These tops double as church attire and "dress up" options, so they get a lot of wear. I enjoy going through the Women's Fashion boards on Pinterest and liking/repinning outfits and shoes. Today I went through some other categories and landed in Men's Fashion. I love those knit sweaters that remind me of Oxford professors, I don't know what they're called. I don't pin those things because there's no need for future reference, but in admiring how the outfits, and by extension the people wearing them, are put together I was struck with my epiphany. The shirtless pins on Men's Fashion weren't as awesome as a well-dressed, debonair photo. (Disclaimer:  Okay, so there was a picture of a guy with suspenders that caught my eye.)

Anyway, this is me saying I might be ready to put myself together, style-wise. I'm getting older and it feels like my go-to outfit, a t-shirt and basketball shorts, is ready for an upgrade.

Sleep. Work.