LML Monday - Bouncing Back & Sharing the Love

It's Monday once again, my friends. And as always that means it's time to reflect on the things that made us happy over the past week. And of course now is also the perfect time to set the tone for a great week to come! If you missed my take on LML, you can find it here. If you missed the explanation of LML Monday, you can catch up here.

Bouncing Back
Today I am most thankful to say that I am feeling much better than I was at this time last week. That irritating bug hung on for most of the week (no matter how many times I told myself that it was going to go away any time now.) I still have a tiny bit of lingering congestion, but other than that I'm basically back to my old self. And the kids, as usual, bounced back even more quickly than I did. I was very glad to see that they didn't have to suffer very long at all.

Being sick is never fun, but after it passes it does kind of give you a renewed sense of vitality, doesn't it? (At least it does for me.) Over the weekend I found myself doing laundry, cleaning the house, and taking care of all the other things I had been putting off all week - and actually enjoying it, because I could move around without feeling like my head would explode. It never hurts to have a change in perspective now and then. :)

Sharing the Love
Like I said when I started this blog, one of my original goals was "to remind you to always look for the bright side" of any given situation. And as my LML movement started, it's also been my goal to not only have you look on the bright side, but to share it and spread the joy. Focus on the happy side of life, and encourage everyone else to do the same. And I've loved what I've seen!

Now it's time for the next evolution. I've had some suggestions from friends and readers and other bloggers that I host a blog hop (or something of that sort) and let other bloggers help spread the LML joy. I think this is an awesome idea, and I'm sad that it's taken me this long to get around to putting any serious thought into it. Not that I was ignoring the suggestion, but my focus is always pulled in so many directions that taking on something new often has to get put on the back burner.

But as I finally started working on a way to get started... I realized that I'm kind of out of my depth on this one. There is such a myriad of sites and styles and tools and ways of doing blog hops, etc. that I realized I should really get some advice before I dive in. So that's where you come it. If you have any experience in this area, I would really appreciate your opinions and suggestions.

I'm hoping to have something up for next week's installment. So for you other bloggers out there - I'd love for you to start thinking about joining in with your own LML Monday post. I have a feeling that you'll find, as I did, that keeping your eyes open for post ideas will really help you focus on the things that are going well in your life. Projecting the positive always feels better than noticing the negative. Give it a try!

Thanks a lot, YouTube.

This morning, I totally thought that this post was going to be all about the wonders of technology, and how great it is to be able to quickly and easily find the information we need to solve problems on our own. I was praising YouTube and everything.

But five hours, one visit to the hardware store, one visit from a plumber, and $110 later, things changed a bit. I know - it wasn't YouTube's fault. But there was a good lesson to be learned from it all.

This is what my husband and I were dealing with this morning. There's a good chance you've been there, or at least somewhere similar. You know - that "oh crap" moment when something suddenly breaks, and you aren't prepared to fix it.

So being the fully capable people that we are, we looked up "How to replace a water supply valve" online, found a very helpful video, and watched it on my husband's phone as we sat right there on the bathroom floor.

Believing that we were fully prepared to do this all on our own, we headed off to our local hardware store and quickly (with a little help from a nice associate named Bill) found what we needed and headed home to conquer our leaky toilet. On the way home we even had a conversation about how cool it was that we could find such a helpful video online and be able to fix things ourselves instead of calling a plumber. Yeah. Of course we did.

And it is cool. I still stand by that. We can find answers to all sorts of questions, and instructions for doing all sorts of things, just by looking online. Just think about how many times you've answered a question with "I don't know. Google it." (Don't try to deny it. I know it's not just me.)

But the problem is, being able to find answers to anything just by grabbing our phone and going online sometimes makes us forget that the modern technology that we are raving about doesn't automatically make us capable of actually fixing the stupid toilet. In an ideal world, yes. In reality... not so much. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. Sometimes you still need outside help.

We finally reached the "had enough" point and called a plumber. And we were really irritated about having to do it. Because we should have been able to do this ourselves, darn it! The irony is, not so long ago we lived in a world where calling a plumber was the natural first step when confronted with plumbing issues. Oh, how things have changed.

So lesson learned. Yes, technology is awesome. But no, it can't do it all. Find your answers when you can, and rejoice. But remember that it's still ok to ask for professional help sometimes.