Whoa! What a day!  I’ve been up, down, and all around town today — lots of exciting things happened, too!

First, I worked a half-day at my full-time job.  I snacked on grapes around 10:30:

And at 12:00, I had yogurt, a crushed Kashi TLC bar, and blackberries.  I just wasn’t feeling a "lunchy lunch" and decided to just go with what I was craving!

All of the sudden (I feel like I’m existing in a time vacuum right now) it was 12:30 and I needed to leave my house to go to my part-time gig at the holistic clinic! 

I grabbed some food "to go."  Seriously, I eat in my car now wayyyy too often.  A banana:

And an Amazing Grass Chocolate Superfood bar — which was really good!  Veggies + chocolate?  I’m in!

After work was over, I drove to Target to kill some time before my Physical Therapy appointment.  I was getting super sleepy and decided to grab a coffee from Starbucks — I love Starbucks with drive-thrus!

When the cashier wasn’t looking, I stuck an Operation Beautiful note on the drive-thru window.  :)  Sneaky, sneaky!

I got an iced skinny vanilla latte.

Up next was shopping at Target.  I got a new bikini (yay!) and a new shirt.  The shirt was only $10  -  what a steal!

While in the dressing room, I posted ANOTHER Operation Beautiful note:

I was totally riding high on life after posting these notes — it’s kind of crazy, but Operation Beautiful is REALLY making me a nicer and happier person!  And I’ve had so many people who are also participating in Operation Beautiful e-mail me to say the same thing.

Once you start actively looking for ways to make OTHER people happy, it somehow manages to make YOU feel good, too.  I don’t need more money, I don’t need fancy clothes… I just have to reach out to other people, and suddenly life seems soooo much better!  Honestly, this is a side effect of Operation Beautiful that I did not anticipate — it’s pretty awesome.

For example, when I left Target, it looked like it was going to start to pour rain.  If you’ve ever been to Florida in the summertime, you know that we have torrential downpours every afternoon.  Literally, inches of rain fall within 10 minutes.

I’m driving down the road, and I look to my left to see an old lady sitting at the bus stop.  She has a walker and is only wearing a rain coat with a hood.  I looked down to my passenger seat and realized that a perfectly good umbrella was sitting right next to me.  Here I was, in my air conditioned and dry car, and this old lady is sitting in the rain. 

I think before Operation Beautiful I would’ve just thought "Oh, that sucks for her!"  But I was feeling SO GOOD from posting my notes that I pulled over to the shoulder, jumped out of my car, ran across the street, and gave her my umbrella.  You should’ve seen her face — it just light up.  It truly made my YEAR.

Crazy how a little thing like Operation Beautiful can SPREAD to your whole life, huh?

I drove away and headed to Physical Therapy.  It was a really great session.  We went over my knee taping again because I think I was doing it a little wrong, and we did of new exercises.  I’m really enjoying PT and I hope my knees are getting stronger!

I ate about 1 serving of pretzel rods while at PT, but sorry — no picture!

On the way home, I calculated how many hours I worked this week between my full and part time jobs, the blogs, and planning the Healthy Living Summit, and I worked about 78 hours in the last five days.  I know — insane.  So, I’m going to take the rest of the evening off from blogging.  I’m making a casserole for dinner, but there will be pictures + leftovers tomorrow! 

My lovely friends, have a WONDERFUL evening.  And if you haven’t participated in Operation Beautiful yet — trust me, you need to!  Post a note, take a picture, and send it to me at seebriderun@gmail.com!

Goodnight!