An Unexpected Honour!

Wow, so I was nominated for this award by someone I really admire, and it's an exciting moment!
The rules of this game are that I must now answer the question: "What are 7 things you love?"
Well...

1. Life, in me, in all things... existence! All of it.

2. Dancing and singing with joyful abandon

3. The circle of good folks who brighten my days:)

4. Laughing for real.

5. All the wise teachers, all who share their learning so generously, the being curious enough to discover them

6. Ripe, juicy mangoes.... figs, blackberries, peaches, cherries....

7. Finding the exactly right word or phrase for what I want to say

Now I must nominate 7 others for this award... It seems redundant now to nominate blogs that have already received it, and I don't think I actually follow enough to avoid doing that, so I'm going to nominate less than seven. They are good though!

Liz at Elizabeth Vs. the Universe
The Vegan Vagabond
Wilde Family at The Wilde Ones Blog
Via811

Day 40

Yay! 30 days and going strong... this blog has been an incredible help so far, even when I don't write very much. I think I will keep going, though perhaps not every day for the next while.
I'm planning some big life changes this year, so there may be times again when I need the extra encouragement.. I would say though, that even the minor challenges I've been dealing with these past weeks have seemed easier to handle than ever before. If I had to guess what makes the difference, the new diet would be high on the list, along with a daily meditation practice. Although my lifestyle seems more "extreme" than ever (to a typical person looking in I'm imagining), I feel the most relaxed and easy about it now. This really does feel normal, like something I always have known, but forgot about for a while.
I think my singing voice has improved too! Just as a side bonus, because it's not my career or even a major focus of my life, but I do enjoy singing around the house, and lately I've noticed the higher notes are much easier to reach. :)

Day 39

Happy Valentine's day! I had a pink smoothie for dinner and watched Monsoon Wedding. There were a few scenes showing fruit stalls in the markets of Delhi, which I noticed longingly... The tropical rains and warm sunshine too. Ooh, it all looked so nice!
I'm hoping to do some gentle stretching tommorrow, to make up for all the erratic running around at work. I'm looking very forward to a rest day...

Day 38

Tonight I went to a Kirtan, which is a devotional singing gathering. Most of the songs were from an eastern tradition, and so much fun to sing! I loved just losing myself in a sea of voices...

Work has been so busy, and by the end of the day I'm feeling pretty tired :) Tommorrow is Valentine's day, so the busiest day at the chocolate shop. I hope I'm up to it...
Mostly what I do for food when I'm working is take a smoothie or orange juice in a large mason jar and just sip at it when I have the time. Today I had a mango-banana in one jar, and a pineapple-blueberry-blackberry in another. So beautiful, and so good!

35, 36, 37

I have not kept up with my blogging too well these days! It's been kind of a whirlwind at work, and with some other exciting things happening in life. I hope to keep writing more as I settle into the new swing of things, but probably not so much today...
I had a great salad though that is worthy of mention, with spinach, lemon, avocado and orange. I reeally liked the taste of the lemon and spinach together, wow. I must have needed something in that combination of foods...

Day 34

Today's post will be short again because I'm sooo sleepy... I worked about 9 hours on my feet, then a friend gave me the most amazing backrub afterwards... it felt so good!

I went for quite a few hours without eating at work this afternoon, being busy and distracted by other things, and noticed that I started to feel anxious and my thoughts became more negative. So the lesson... don't push the body too far beyond it's capacity in one afternoon! As soon as I bit into an apple though, the relief was immediate. I love that gentle lift to the spirit that eating fruit brings.

Day 33

I had some avocado today for the first time in ages... it wasn't completely ripe, but that didn't stop me from gobbling up 1/2 of one with dinner anyway!

It felt like spring outside this morning, and I didn't even have to wear a toque (Canadian for wooly hat) when I went to work. Hooray! The temperature is supposed to keep rising until it reaches 10 degrees later this week... Ohhhh, I'm so excited for warm weather :)