I feel relaxed and good. I just took a nice hot shower, which I really needed. Hot water is very healing. I think today I understand what it means to be joyful even when you're not happy. I feel good, and a little more grateful than usual for a lot of things in my life right now, but at the price of knowing that two of my friends, one of them a very close friend, are facing cancer. It greatly saddens me, because it seems so unfair, and this close friend of mine doesn't even know what type it is, if it even is cancer, or what treatments she'll have to endure. She already finished one round of chemo for a previous cancer. And it went into remission. Now there are signs of something new... The other friend will likely have to have a hysterectomy because of her cancer. That situation sounds a lot like Mom's. Mom never tested positive for cancer, thank god, but she kept developing precancerous tumors, and needed a whole hysterectomy to prevent cancer from occurring.

Cancer is so scary. Why do my friends have it? This is so awful. I keep becoming afraid that I might get it, too. That and other things in life continually cause me to face my own mortality. Nothing is permanent, and no one is invincible. I feel like crying. The uncertainty of the situation really freaks me out as well. It is hard for me to accept that we can't always have the answers, we can never know for sure what's going to happen, and that nothing is really concrete. I crave stability and routine, plans. But any day, any of us could get into a fatal car crash, develop blood clots we don't know about, experience heart attacks/failure, physical attacks inflicted on us by other people, muggings, rapes, or worse.

Or a cluster of cells in our very own bodies might decide to turn on itself, and from one moment to the next, we could have cancer.

I am grateful nothing like that has happened to me or to Joe. But it is odd knowing that it could. And it is terrible thinking about what my friends must be thinking right now, what they must be going through.

The good news is that today has been very peaceful for me. Last night is another story, but the day has been nice. Since I had several hours of completely, painfully unrestful sleep during the night (and woke up in a wretched mood, achey and pissed off and still sad), I decided to sleep several more hours once I reached a state of deep sleep. I woke up feeling good, but still achey.

I did Yoga in my living room today. I did both the Stress Relief Yoga, and A.M. Yoga, both 20 minutes long. I ate a banana beforehand, and cottage cheese with peaches afterwards. A little later, I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on toast, a yogurt, and drank a can of ginger ale (my comfort drink, the one Mom always gave me when I was sick as a kid), while watching Dr. Phil and Oprah. Eating healthy, nourishing food is so rejuvenating. And the Yoga really helped with releasing a lot of the tension in my back. My body felt really good and happy.

And I always love watching Dr. Phil and Oprah. I can't help it. I love them! Dr. Phil talked about trust in relationships, I think (I only caught the last 15 minutes). What I saw was pretty cool. Oprah's guest was Suze Orman, and she talked to several guests about debt, financial planning, and being realistic about their money. I was shocked that people wanted to spend $40,000 on a wedding! No, I am not kidding. What are they thinking?! Going into debt over a wedding is about the weirdest idea I've ever heard of. Why start a marriage off with financial stress? Listening to those guests made me all the more happy that Joe and I handled our wedding the way we did -- stress-free, inexpensive, beautiful, romantic, and all the fun in the world. I loved our wedding SO much!

On the show, the husband-to-be (with the fiancee that wanted to spend $40K) said he'd be happy if they stuck to their original budget of $10,000. She said, "What can you get for ten thousand dollars? I mean, really, what can you get?"

And Suze Orman immediately pointed to the man and said, "HIM!"

Suze Orman kicks ass.

The show was great, I thought. I learned a lot of cool things about ways to save money. One smart idea: if you ever get a raise, you should live how you'd already been living on what you'd already been making, and put the difference away in a money market. And if you plan on buying a house, the minimum for a down payment is 5%. And paying anything under 20% means you have to pay PMI fees (I forget what it stands for now), as well as mortgage, homeowner's insurance, and maintenance fees. That's a lot! Here I had been thinking I'd love to own a home, but maybe not! (I'm sure all this might be obvious to a lot of people, but I know nothing about this kind of thing!)

She also said really powerful things such as, "Money is a physical manifestation of you. Your money IS you."

and

"Money by itself does nothing. You are in control of your money."

That makes a lot of sense. I have been pretty good with my money so far. No credit cards, therefore no credit card debt. I enter receipts into Quicken and check my bank accounts online. The only thing I have gotten really far behind in is checking my bank statements against my Quicken record.

I think Ms. Orman is onto something with money being a physical manifestation of ourselves. I like handling my money, and knowing exactly how much I have (which I don't right now). Not being okay with my money makes me self conscious and unhappy.

So that's something I'll have to work on soon. Just for today, though, I'm taking it easy. I tend to withdraw inside myself if I'm upset over something. I like to be alone and ponder things, the meaning of the universe, life, and how cats ever got to be so cute. Mostly today, I'm grateful to be me. I'm grateful that I have Joe, and my kitties, and I'm happy for this wonderful feeling of appreciation that I have in my life all the time. It is heightened today because my friends are facing some tough times. I feel bad that it's because of something so negative and scary that I feel extra appreciative of the wonderful things in my life. But sometimes things just work out that way. Life is complicated and strange. But, you know, I am happy. Just feeling a bit melancholy today at the exact same time.

~~Meg