Audience Participation Required

Remember how I went to my college for three and a half years and in the last semester realized that there’s basically a Blockbuster in the basement of the library? Yeah, major fail on my part. There are so many movies I want to see that I never have but it’s hard to think of them on command. What do you think I should add to my movie-watching list? (Infinite choices, 2 months.)

I don’t know how anyone can workout without music. Unless I’m doing a workout DVD, I need headphones in my ears and a fantastic song playing on my iPod to help me through my workout. I just got a bunch of Demi Lovato songs that I adore and are perfect for working out. Bouncy, upbeat and energetic. Still, I can always use more songs for the perfect work out mix. What songs can you suggest for my workout playlist?

I love to cook and I try to eat healthily but it’s not an easy task when you’re a broke college kid with a tiny dorm kitchen. Fancy ingredients aren’t practical to buy especially if they can’t be used often. So if I find a great recipe that calls for spices that I’ll only use once, I just can’t do it. Does anyone have a great suggestion for some reasonable recipes? Or easy to keep on hand healthy snacks? I can’t keep around a lot of things that go bad quickly because I just don’t get around to using them soon enough. Right now my must haves for healthy snacking are yogurt (although my grocery doesn’t carry Greek yogurt which makes me sad!), nuts, string cheese, and rice crackers. What else should I add to my cabinet or refrigerator?

Today, I’m trying to focus on all the blessings and good things in my life. While taking a shower, I remembered how my roommates and I had to suffer through five months with the worst stream of water because of our faulty shower head. Now we have a new shower head and it’s amazing. I am grateful for little things like this. I am feeling overjoyed with the good things going on in my friends’ lives; I have a best friend who just got into Omicron Delta Kappa (a big deal Honors Society), a friend who is enjoying the fun flirty stage of a burgeoning crush, and my sister and my mom are together catching up and I assume having fun. I am grateful for little texts from good friends that make me smile, for all the friends I've made near and far, and for Kindred Spirits (you know who you are).

And one blessing that I should focus on daily but too often forget to appreciate, is my healed back. I had back surgery for my herniated disc almost a year ago, and after five years of constant pain, I now wake up in the morning and go about my day almost entirely pain-free. Sometimes, I catch myself and stop what I’m doing and just start crying because I am so thankful to be living a normal life where I can get up and walk to class without limping, where I can feel my right leg and foot all the time instead of feeling constant numbness and pin-pricks and where I don’t have to take some sort of pain medication daily just to get through. I am blessed in a multitude of big and small ways and I want to spend more time focusing on that, instead of the little negative or bad moments I have. What blessings are you grateful for today?

Have a lovely weekend!

P.S.: You may have noticed my display name changed from "Katie" to "Kate". Yep, it's still me. There's a long story behind this, but to keep it short, I miss going by Katie, I wish people still called me that, but in reality most people call me Kate so it just made more sense to change it. But you can call me whatever you want--Kate, Katie, Mrs. Sterling Knight, etc. It's your call.