Today’s February Joy Dare was to find a gift nearly worn out, a gift new, a gift made-do.  The Joy Dare’s really help me to see God in the small things of life and to appreciate the many gifts that are around me.

A gift worn out – my old black T-shirt that I wore today.  It wasn’t quite warm enough and later I put on a heavier sheet as we went from 80 degrees yesterday to barely 50, complete with high winds most of the day.  I used to wear that black shirt to work years ago.  It’s faded, a little pilled, but oh-so-comfortable.  I’d wear it all the time if I could.  I love it when clothes better as they get worn out.

A gift new – we got the dogs their new beds – all three of them.  Yes, the little guy got one of his own too.  He’s been using it!  He still likes to sprawl out on the big dogs bed, but he’s enjoying having one of his own.  So far, dog #1 has not tried to stuff himself into it like he did the cat bed.

A gift made-do – my favorite boy toy recently completed a big job.  He struggled with his iMac.  It kept bogging down, taking precious  minutes to complete a task.  He made enough from the job to get a new computer with a faster graphics card, more storage and more memory.  The same tasks are now done in a few seconds.

It’s possible his old computer is having a hardware failure, but he got it scratched and restored and now it’s mine.  So in addition to my laptop, I have a full size iMac with the latest version of Lion on it, plus a copy of my Photoshop Elements, Topaz filters, and Apple’s Pages.  I love the big bright screen.  Even if the hardware eventually fails, it’s nice having a computer up in my office instead of dragging my laptop all over the house.

I also have one more gift from today – actually, I read the dare wrong and had recorded this before realizing my mistake:

A gift re-do – a few days ago I mentioned that I was no longer swimming due to the time it took.  After thinking it over for a few days, I realized the time commitment to swim 3x / week, including driving to & from plus showering would be roughly the same was walking 4x / week.  My cardio workout from swimming is much better, I catch less colds, and swimming makes me feel really good after I toughen up to it.  So I re-upped my gym membership for another year and started swimming again.  As I get back into a routine swimming, I will probably spend my lunch time either taking pictures, writing or reading.

I thank God for my nice clothes that last long enough to be worn on weekends, that I can afford to buy new beds for my boys, for an answer to my prayer for a regular computer, and for exercise that agrees with me and improves my health.

It was a good day today.  No wandering though, but I did enjoy reading and cuddling a dog.

Over at A Daily Life are two new posts on getting blank lines into your blog post as well as changing your E-mail address in WordPress.

Dogs Exercise Joy Dare comfy clothes dog beds Joy Dare old T-shirt swimming