Happiness...

I am the proud new owner of a gym membership! Bally Total Fitness called yesterday and offered me a membership for $49 down, $19 a month. It was the best offer I had ever heard of from any of the gyms in the area, so I called them today to find out more details. The price includes up to two hours of childcare per day, and if I want to renew it when the contract is up, it will still be the same price. I talked to a lady from church whose husband just happens to be the general manager of the Bally near our house, and she said he was amazed at the price and that she was even renewing her membership now. When I called Bally this morning, they told me that the promotion only went until 10pm tonight, so I was totally glad I had called in time! I can't wait to go work out. Hopefully that will happen tomorrow. I need to set up a schedule so that I know exactly when I'm going to go and plan for it, but I want to talk to some of the other ladies from church first because quite a few of them have memberships there, and we could possibly go together to give each other some accountability.

Today was my day off, so I got to get out and go to some fun places. First I went to Bally to get my ID card made, then I talked to Bonnie on my cell phone for a while while I sat in a parking lot. On my way home, I saw this little white Sheltie (sp?) running around in the street in a subdivision. I parked in someone's driveway and he started running up to me as soon as I got out of the truck. I petted him and talked to him while I checked his tags. He was dirty and his fur was matted, so I assumed he'd been running around outside for a long time. The tags had the name of a vet in our town on them, with a phone number. I figured I would check with a few houses first just to see if he lived in the subdivision before I called the vet. I walked up to the house whose driveway I was parked in, and little Doggy ran up to the front door with me. When the lady answered the door, he ran inside the house! Turns out he lived there. I was glad he hadn't gone far. She was so thankful and said that her dogs (there was a Basset hound staring mournfully at me from the front door) dug under the fence earlier today and she had called and called but he didn't come. She said thank you several times before I left.

It reminded me a tiny bit of Oprah's show yesterday. She had given $1,000 debit cards to 314 people and lent them all video cameras. Then she told them that the money had to be spent helping someone else, and the video cameras were to document what they did. It was an amazing show that I will remember for a long time. Many of the people had announced to businesses and their communities what they were doing and people had rallied around them and donated even more to whatever cause they had chosen to give to. There were several cases where people ended up with more than $50,000 to give to their charity. In one case, two sisters had paired up and were donating their $2,000 to an abused women's shelter. After all of the donations poured in (they had done some radio shows announcing what they were doing), they had over $200,000 to donate. It was just amazing! Then there was the family who called a bunch of delivery places and gave the pizza delivery guys $200 and $300 tips. It was so cool to watch their reactions! Just amazing. And everyone who participated was just amazed at how good it felt to pay it forward. What a good season for that message! It felt good to know that I had made someone a little happier today.