Dear Local Coca-Cola Distributor,

Dear Local Coca-Cola Distributor,

I feel should explain your recent drop in sales in the KC Metro area.

It all started innocently enough after college when I started working in the real world for the “man”. I had an early East coast territory and each morning it was a struggle to be chipper, attentive, productive and resilient against the no’s. They started everyday around 7am and that was hard for me. So I medicated. I mean drank the magically caffeinated beverage of Diet Coke. One was never enough, so every few hours I would wander across to the break room with my jingling change. I would feed the magical machine my 50 cents. Ah…I can hear the can dropping down to me still. Then my drawer was soon emptied of coins and then I would scavenge through my car and ask friends if I could borrow from them. Not pretty. I knew I had to do something.

So logically, I started packing in my own 12 pack for the office fridge and I would have extra ones under my cubicle desk. This went on for years. I was kind enough to share from time to time with co-workers and friends. And when we would go out for lunch, I would drain two to three refills of the delicious caramel colored liquid without even thinking about it. Ah… The fizzy bubbles.

Then my life changed almost 10 years ago and the office stash wasn’t needed anymore. I could just load my fridge at home of all the Diet Coke I could afford. I became a stay at home mom. I started operating on sleepless nights and wet kisses. And for the past nine years it would have been scandalous to find no Diet Coke cans in my house. (of course, cans were my delivery mode. The snap and crack of the tab opening and listening for the sound of the fizzy, bubbly goodness… DELISH)

But just recently I have decided I am worth more than what I have been consuming. It just can’t be good to be pouring artificial, yet delicious gunk in me each day. Surely I can kick this habit. I feel like I am over the hardest part and now I have the confidence to walk away. My Dad has a saying that I hear often. It is, “better living through chemistry.” He says in tongue in cheek, because he is sure that we all have gotten into such a made for us kind of world that we are missing the good stuff. I am going to start getting away from this type of living. It can’t be what fuels me anymore.

So dear Local Coca-Cola Distributor please take note. After years of only choosing restaurants if they carried your brand of soft drinks, I am parting ways. There I admit it. Whew.

I am done. I want to stop the damage that I am sure aspartame is wreaking on my joints. I want to be a better role model of health for my 3 sweet children. (if they aren’t allowed sodas…why am I?)

Of course, water will be the best choice for me. And switching hasn’t been too bad. And this change will be a help to our bottom line in two ways.
bottom line #1: financial responsibility
9 years of staying home
x  12 months per year
——
108 months
x  30 days per month
——
3,240 days of staying home
x      2 average Diet Coke consumption per day
——-
6,480 Diet Cokes consumed in 9 years
x. .30 average price per can of a 12 pack at $3.50 at a retailer
——-
$1,944.00 spent on Diet Coke !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bottom line # 2: my rear
I’m pretty sure that Diet Coke has zero calories, BUT it tastes best with things that are  salty, sugary and juicy, which   have a gazillion calories!!!!!!! Hoping that this helps my overall health and helps me focus on the temple God gave me.

So thank you for your faithful service and stocking of Diet Coke to help fuel my days and wake me up. I no longer will be needing your services.

Looking forward to a soda free me from now on. I am joining my sweet husband in his refusal of sodas in his diet. He gave them up 7 years ago for Lent. Guess it is true that no one can make you change until you are ready. But I am ready now!!!!

Good bye for good.
Kristin Wooldridge
aka Water Woman

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Grain of Salt… or a Salt Lick?

How do you react to life, new information, or problems?

DEEP QUESTION right?

Who stops to think about how they weigh out what percentage they believe in something that they learn, hear, witness or be part of?  I waiver between taking “things” with a grain of salt to the extreme of taking “things” with a salt lick.

Some history because I got curious… where does that saying come from?

Wikipedia states that a grain of salt means to accept it but to maintain a degree of skeptism about its truth.  And that it goes back to 77 AD.  Food wasn’t always prepared to the USDA/USFDA standards… mainly because it was forever ago.  So salt was added to help food be “safer”.

My only interation/memory of an actual salt block was grocery shopping in the little town of Smithville, MO.  Weekly I would head to the store with my Mom and we would spend quality time at Big V. (V = Value)  I can clearly remember the entire layout of that little store and the faces that would greet me in my cute long pigtails. (mainly Ms. Velma) I can even remember where we would place the green 7-Up bottles for deposit.  We were “green” before green was something to strive for.

Anyway… I remember wandering off from my Mom while she was in the produce section.  I would be on my own.  Don’t panic… small town, late 70’s… early 80’s.  The employess always knew who was in the store because they really knew them.  I was allowed to wander.  And I admittedly would touch everything.  (sorry Mom)  In the baking aisle I took  my biggest liberties.  There on the bottom shelf on the left side was the biggest blocks of salt I had ever seen.  They probably weighed more than me.  (see picture below)

50 lbs of Moton’s salt.  Right at my pip-squeak level.  I didn’t know what they could even be used for but they intrigued me.  I can see myself back in that store right now.  I see this little girl with freckles looking up and down the empty aisle to see who was near.  And if the coast was clear, I would lick my finger and rub it on the block and then lick my finger again.  I KNOW THAT IS SOOO GROSS NOW and then.  But it was such a daring move for this type A, first born, rule follower.   (talk about full disclosure… I don’t even know if my Mom knows I did this regularly)

But when I think of how I react to life, problems or news I clearly see the difference between a fine grain of salt which is insigificant and an entire Morton’s 50 lb salt block.

I try to reframe things with a small grain of salt.  Or at least a salt shaker so that I can be adaptable, flexible and not continuously disappointed.

BUT those salt lick block moments happen.  50 lbs dropped out of no where and landing firmly on me with an incredible amount of power.  We all have to chip away at the block to get back to a grain.

This made me curious about the number of times salt is mentioned in the Bible.  In the King James Version it is mentioned 40 times.  Not an insignificant grain is it?

I find clarity in this verse and I hope it helps you measure out your reactions:

Let your converstaions be always full of grace, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone.  Colossians 4:6 KJV.

I promise that it has been almost 30 years since my last salt tasting in Big-V.  🙂  And that I don’t do it now at Hy-vee!!

Dear God…

How many times do you start that prayer each day?  How does it sound?  How do you feel after?  Do you pray at all?

I have been thinking a alot about prayer lately.  Especially during my 10 day blogging break.  I will tell you that I am a prayerer.  Is that a word?  I have trained myself over the years to pray first.  Before questioning, planning and freaking out.  Now I will be completely honest with you, I don’t always succeed.  But I do try.

I mostly pray outloud.  You probably could have guessed that about my bold approach to life.  I need to say it out loud.  I am a very verbal person. (since the womb if you ask  my mom)  Probably why I majored in Communication in college.  I can talk.  I can listen too!  And I love to discern and think about things.  But when I pray I just let it all hang out.  It seems easier to just acknowledge the request, praise or concern out loud like I was even on the phone with God.  I just dial him up without a phone in my hand.

It used to be a struggle for me to pray.  I thought there was a formula or that someone could pray better for something than I could.  Now I have had so much practice in my house and van that it just comes.  I think that is because I spend time with God on all things.  Good, bad and the ugly.  I also trust Him.  I know I can’t figure out things as well as He can.  And there is no way that I understand some things that happen.  But I have faith He knows.  He wants me to have a relationship with Him that brings me closer to what He has in store for me.

Every once in a while I can be walking down the hallway by my daughter’s room and I hear her praying outloud.  She doesn’t know I am near. She has learned she can talk to God when she needs to.  Not just over a meal or at bedtimes.  God is there for her no matter what she is doing, facing or thinking.  I am so happy to pass on this habit to my kids.  Even when they get all crazy I pray for them outloud.  Often you can hear me in my house (especially over summer break) spout of, “I am praying for the peace of the Lord for all of you.”  Yes they often stop what they are doing and I add and for me too.  They laugh and tell me crazy thoughts about God laughing at us rough housing in our living room.  It grounds us.  It brings together the connection of our current lives with our heavenly father watching over us.

I know that I am thankful for Facebook for helping me pray more.  I truly do want to pray for others but it is sometimes hard to know what for.  To see a post on Facebook gives me direction on how I can pray for a friend and I want to encourage them by letting them know they aren’t alone.  I know that when I have had harder times in the past that were pre-Facebook, I felt supported by few because there wasn’t an outlet to connect us.  Then when my Mom had breast cancer two years ago, Facebook and her Caring Bridge page kept me going.  I was her PR Manager.  I got to share with others, which then sparked an ongoing conversation with many people and it really helped me feel God’s presence during a storm.  She will tell you it gave this Type A, Get ‘er Done kind of girl some control and purpose.  And she is right.  If I was in prayer and it was shared by the many that followed her site and her ongoing battle it was helpful in my own processing.

If you aren’t praying because you think there is a “right way to do it”, please release that.  God is already in your head and knows it all.  Really ALL of it.  Even the stuff (judgements, criticisms, failures, etc.) that you think you have hidden from everyone.  He knows.  Just speak.  I once told a friend that praying should be like going to the faucet during the day.  Really think about it how many times do you touch a faucet during the day.  What if, really what if, every single time you touched your TAP that you prayed.  Tapping into God starts out of deciding to spend more time with him.  So next time you head to wash your hands, brush your teeth, wash a dish or prepare your food for a meal TAP into prayer.

Psalms 145:18
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

Off to pray over my mountain of laundry for my family.  One last note… I used to HATE folding laundry!  But now as I fold I spend time in prayer for each of my family members and I am thankful for our blessings.  Give it a try.  Makes it go faster too!

 

Significant… a reflection on 9-11

It has been since September 2nd, since I have posted here.  Pure neglect.  My head was overtaken by motherhood and ongoing thoughts and to do’s for MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers).  At first I was a little disappointed that I didn’t make a whole 30 days straight to blog daily.  But I know that is crazy to be so hard on myself.  And that to blog again it needed to be significant…

What is significant is what called me back to post again.  Significant because today is such a hard day of remembering as an American.  I was 25 on 9-11.  A girl by all means.  Sure I was college educated, home owner, working, and married, but when 9-11 happened I was lost like so many.  My big view of being invincible came crashing down around me as those towers crashed and planes fell from the sky.

Like most I vividly remember all that day and for Amon and I our 9-11 story started a few days before.  We returned from a 5 day escape to NOLA (New Orleans) on 9/8.  We had a great time as a young married couple in an amazing city that was pre-Katrina.  It was almost magical except for Amon’s 102 fever right before we left.  Then on 9/10, we returned to work.  My sweet, hard-working yet not currently billable to a big client was asked to turn in his laptop because he was part of a large downsizing at his internationally known consulting firm.  What a blow.  And we thought that was a big and a bad day.

But when I was evacuated on 9-11 from the downtown core due to being close to the new Charles Evans Whittaker Federal Courthouse (named after my great-uncle but that is for another day), I was heading to my Amon.  As I pulled into our 1 car, 2 beds, 1 bath sweet, post WWII Prairie Village house, I knew he was waiting for me.  He received me with his hug and we cried together for hours in front of our t.v.

What I am thankful for that day is that he was already there waiting for me.  Also for what he said that day will always be in my heart.

We had been married for 3 years but had been together as a couple for 6 and were toying with the idea of starting a family God willing.  But on 9-11 I told him in no uncertain terms while sobbing the ugly cry, “That too much is wrong with this world and we shouldn’t ever have children.”

I was pretty adamant and lost.  He took me and hugged me and said to me that isn’t what God wants.  Even with all this tragedy, we have to live on and bring joy into this world.  Or we really have let the enemy win because they have stopped us from dreaming and living.  I cried so hard and knew deep down he was right.

On December 25, 2002 God fulfilled our dream of starting a family.  What a gift and blessing our son has been to us each day.  And when I think of 9-11 I am so thankful that my husband’s faith was strong when mine was lost.

My prayers go to the families and friends who lost thier loved ones so abruptly and tradgicly and to our nation as we remember to live on in honor of them.  God Bless the United States of America.

~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t let darkness keep you from dreaming and loving.  Your light can shine through any darkness and by shining you light the path for others to follow.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (NIV)