I gotta pee!!

This wraps up my week of committing to an increase in my water intake. I do like the feeling of enhanced physical wellness resulting from the toxins being released from my being. I also enjoy the mental visual of those nasty little buggers making an exit from my body.

But I gotta say, this running to the bathroom every 20 minutes is rough! I've been conscious about making sure I pee before heading out. Even so, I've had to stop at a few gas stations and restaurants for a little pee break during public outings. It's way easier (and more comfortable) than trying to hold it until I get home.

I'm going to try to be conscious about making sure I'm drinking enough water...it's a good thing all around. But on the downside...well, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1zPKUe6PTc

Week 11: Drink lots of water

This week my experiment is to increase my water intake. Here a link that provides a knowledge based perspective on the benefits of drinking water:

http://www.totallydrinkable.com/health-benefits-of-drinking-water.html

More to come...

Warm Wishes...Peggy

A few months ago I discovered this fantastic website - www.postcrossing.com . In an attempt to pair down my postcard collection, I wondered if there was somewhere ~ or someone ~ I could send my postcards to. PostCrossing came up in my Google search, and has provided me with a really cool opportunity to connect with individuals from around the world.

It's really simple. You sign up to send and receive postcards through the website. When you are moved to send a postcard, you simply send an online request, and you are provided with the name and address of someone who might be from your continent OR half way around the world. Once you send a postcard, you're entitled to get one back, and you won't know from whom until that happy day when it shows up in your mailbox.

I've sent and received postcards from Europe, Asia, and the USA. It's almost like putting a big hunk of good karma into an envelope (without the envelope) and mailing it off. I know my experiment this week is focused on written correspondence with friends and family, but I feel like the people I send and receive postcards with are my friends - even though we will likely only share that one single interaction in the course of our whole lives. We share information about ourselves, the places we are from, the weather, interesting or funny facts about our country and well wishes for one another. Cue the "I'd like to teach the world to sing..." Coca~Cola commercial.

I sometimes wonder about the journey my postcards take before they land in the mailbox of their recipient. Where do these written greetings go after I drop them into the post office box that's a mere 30 feet from my house? I picture planes, trains and postal carriers as part of the journey.

Here's a funny postcard I received from Josephine in Germany. Can you interpret what it says? I bet the guy in the processing line at the post office got a chuckle.

The Write Stuff

"Letter writing can strengthen your immune response, reduce the symptoms of depression and reduce the need to visit a doctor." Yup, that's according to Claudia Kalb, a medical writer for Newsweek. That's what my experiment addresses (literally) this week - Written Correspondence to Friends and Family.

I am a big advocate of written communication. I've been practicing it my whole life. With my mom's family being from Manitoba, my childhood was filled with letters to Grandma letting her know what I'd gotten for Christmas (I still remember one response from her: "Your Christmas gift sounds very nice. What is a ghetto blaster?").

After my friend Dana moved to Ontario in elementary school, our relationship essentially existed through the mail. We'd send long letters written on perfume scented stationary embellished with rainbow and unicorn graphics.

My mother encouraged my sister and I to write thank you notes. Heck, I even named my business after the idea of written correspondence (RED ENVELOPE Marketing & Communications..."Just like finding a red envelope in your mailbox, as a business operator, I have the skills to package an organization's promotional activities so that they stand out from the rest"). Ahem, this blog post sponsored by…

These days, I'm a busy woman. I just don't have time to write long, thoughtful letters. So this week I started by sending a couple of notecards to friends with just a short line or two in each. Not to sound hokey, but I do think it's the thought that counts. I believe my friends will appreciate receiving my short notes in the mail. Just like the notecard I received recently from a childhood friend who I ran into briefly at Christmas. It was a nice acknowledgement that even though we are both "all grown up", we can still give a nod to having a presence in each other's lives.

One letter I haven't written yet - but which I am going to commit to doing in the coming days - is writing to my penpal Carrie. Carrie (from Edmonton) and I were matched up as penfriends in the 4th grade. And although our letter exchange is no longer regular, we are still in touch (although severely overdue for some communication). I saved all of the letters and postcard received from Carrie over the years, and it's so funny to see how writings about her involvement in Ukrainian dancing as a girl turned in to trips to Cancun as a young adult, then announcements of wedding plans. Carrie, if you're reading, I'll be in touch soon!

If you don't send written correspondence to friends or family, is there anything that keeps you from doing this? There are SUCH cute packages of notecards available right now. If that doesn't sway you, maybe thinking about the warm fuzzes of sending and receiving a handwritten note will.

Say cheeeeeeeese!

So now that my hard copy photos are somewhat under control, I've moved on to dealing with the digital photos that are on my computer. How to organize them - that is the question.

I decided that the best method would be to organize them by year, month and event. So for example, 'My Pictures' contains files that look something like this...

2011-01 January (Mustang Convertible)
2011-01 January (Robbie Burns Party)
2011-02 February (Miscellaneous)
2011-03 March (St. Patrick's Day...I've already made this file in anticipation of the upcoming holiday)

This way the files appear in chronological order, and as long as I know when an activity happened, it should be easy to go back and find it. Now if I had a photo named, for example, "Leprechaun Peggy" and had just saved it as a random photo instead of under 2011-03 March (St. Patrick's Day), it might be difficult to find it a few years from now.

It's not a perfect system. For example, if I want to go back and find photos of myself, they could be scattered throughout various files by date and I'd have to hunt for them...unless I had a separate file named "Pictures of Peggy". But hey, what system is perfect?

Organizing my photos this week has been cleansing and it feels nice to have an organization process in place.

This link contains some good tips for organizing digital photos:

http://www.digitalphotos101.com/organizing-your-digital-photos.htm

I found this going through my digital photos. I took it a few years back on a trip to Halifax. Hee hee.

Take a picture, it lasts longer.

It's Week 9: Organize my Photos.

I started by sorting through stacks of photographs (you know, the kind that were produced from an actual film that would get dropped off at the drug store to be developed...). I have a big plastic tote jammed with photos...it's so full that a person could put their back out trying to lift it. The photos are organized mind you. Oh yes, about 10 years ago I started categorizing my photos by grouping them together in big manila envelopes.

The envelopes are labeled in marker with things like, London/Paris Trip 1993 or University Friends or Petey (our poodle growing up). The photos in these envelopes are very sentimental. But then there are others labeled Enrichment Camp 1988 or Vegetable Monuments, which included a photo of what I think is a giant smiling potato somewhere in the middle of New Brunswick.

My new measure for deciding whether or not I keep a photo is to ask myself, "Will you want to look at this in a scrapbook someday?" and if the answer is no, the photo goes to the garbage (the entire Vegetable Monuments envelope did not make the cut I'm afraid).

I've been tossing friends' wedding pictures, photos of other people's children, and grainy images taken in the 80's and 90's. I've accepted that relationships change, and that some of those photos just aren't important anymore. (I've also noticed that my personal weight has changed, and I really don't need some of those less flattering pictures kicking around).

I feel the same way as I felt in my first week experiment pertaining to clutter - free of this material stuff that has being weighing down my life. I'm not going to apologize for throwing out the photo of my second cousin's first Christmas...I gotta make room for my own life, which all things considered is pretty picture perfect.

I'll keep you posted on the Enrichment Camp envelope.

I'm back!

So I took a little blogging hiatus last week, but it's time to get back into the swing of things. So here's my plan for the rest of this month related to my 50 Week Experiment:

Week 9: Organize my photos

Week 10: Written correspondence with family and friends

Week 11: Drink lots of water

Week 12: Take time to grieve my dad


Stay tuned!