Taking a Personal Day

One of the things I've learned about myself over the past few years is that I generally don't get stressed out easily.  When thinking about the times that I should have been stressed, like during finals and wedding planning, I can remember feeling a little bit of pressure but nothing extreme.  I typically have a "why worry because it's all going to work out", carefree attitude toward what could be stressful situations.  And, even though I guess I could be considered a procrastinator, I honestly feel like I do my best work when there's a time crunch and I know I have to have something done in the immediate future.

Even though I don't typically get stressed out, I have been feeling SUPER stressed out the last several days.  Part of it is from various things happening at school that's completely out of my control, and I guess part of it is from personal things going on in my family.  This stress has caused my sleep to become restless, dreams become really strange, and my body to get physically ill.  I know I can't do anything to fix these problems except wait, but for some reason my body is responding to these things differently than normal.

Anyway, because I felt like an anxiety attack was well on its way, I decided to take a personal day off from work.  I had wanted to save my personal days, mostly because I feel selfish for taking a day off of work for myself, but decided that we're given them for a reason.  I told myself that I would only do what I wanted to do and forget about everything that I had been worrying about.

It was a gorgeous 70 degrees, blue skies, and sunny throughout most of the day.  After watching the news with a nice cup of coffee, I decided I needed to fill up the bird feeder in the yard.  We surprisingly get several types of birds at the house even though we're so close to the road, but they've been rather scarce lately.  Our small wooden bird feeder hangs from the side of a tree that can't be more than 5 feet from the main road in town.  I'd been wanting to do something with it for a while so I decided that today was the day.  I dug out some old turquoise paint and had at it.  This small project led to several other small projects, and I successfully crafted and cleaned my stress away.

We bought this watering can from Target last year mistakenly thinking it would actually work as a watering can.  It leaked most of the water out before we even got to the plants, and the pretty baby blue checked pattern faded within about two months.  So, I changed it.

I painted it yellow and this year I plan on planting flowers in it for a decorative accessory on our front porch.

Rearranged sitting area.  Please excuse the pretty gross cement.  I cleaned it today, but we rent our house so we unfortunately can't paint/stain the porch

Both kitties enjoyed the open windows and the breeze today.

Hopefully we'll have some good onions in a few months.

I know it's not super clear (it's our neighbor's tree), but the blooms are beautiful.  This was as good as I could get from our house.

A very relaxing evening after a very relaxing day on a clean front porch with "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife".