Day 15- Small Things Add Up- and I need to remember that.

Small things adding up became the theme of my day yesterday.  I was sitting (half of forever) in the drive through at McDonalds yesterday morning waiting for coffee.  I must say- I almost never go to McDonalds for anything but my place that I stop for coffee is being renovated and since I was in a hurry I decided to bypass going into Starbucks and give McDonalds a shot.  I think it was a sign for me to slow down and get my head right because it turns out that McDonalds computers were down and so as each person got to the little order speaker they hollered out "We are accepting cash only please pull ahead to the first window and we will take your order."  That means that things were SUPER slow. 

While I was sitting there waiting I remembered that they have a little bin below the window where you can put donations for the Ronald McDonald House.  The idea is that a lot of people will throw their in their change.  Of course I put my change in there and then I struggled with whether or not it was "enough".  I looked in the mirror behind me and saw the line of cars and was reminded of an email that I created years ago when I was first doing fundraising for my Avon Walks.  The gist of it was that any donation, all donations, make a difference.  I figured up what it takes to get to a thousand dollars:

100,000 pennies

or
20,000 nickles
or
10,000 dimes
or
4,000 quarters
or
1,000 singles
or
200 fives
or
100 tens
or
50 twenties
You get the picture.

Now- ask yourself- how many pennies do we throw away every year? How many pennies, nickels, dimes or quarters do we walk over on the street? Let me tell you- they add up, and quickly! So- if you want to put them to good use- let me know. You can email me for the address to literally send those pennies and we will roll the up and turn them in or you can go to my Arthritis Walk web pages and make a small donation.

I looked at all of the cars behind me again and imagined how much money would go to the Ronald McDonald house if every car that came through that day gave their change.  I bet it would add up pretty quickly.  Finally I got my coffee and off I went. 

The irony here is that I ended my day at Weight Watchers.  I got there and I got on the scale and I was down two tenths of a pound.  I struggled with this while I was waiting for the meeting to start.  On one hand I kept thinking "You have been on prednisone for 5 months now- you know people who are up 25-60 lbs from five months on this drug and you had a loss- take it and run."  On the other hand I was disappointed with the ONLY .2 pounds.  I have struggled with the same two pounds since April.  Up-down-up-down and I have let it really derail me on occasion.  All of these things were swirling through my head when our adorable little leader Valerie came in and revealed the theme for the meeting.  Her board said:
.2
.4
.6
.8
Why don't we appreciate?

She proceeded to ask how many of us hear these numbers at the scale and are disappointed?  Not one person in the room kept their hands down.  Valerie talked about how these small losses add up and how we can take the small weeks and learn from them.  While she was talking I kept kicking back to that whole dialogue I had running in my head in the drive through at 7am.  It made an impact.  I realized that while I can appreciate the smallest donation to my causes, I beat myself up when it comes to small weight loss.  Do you see the inconsistancy that slapped me in the face?  I finally did and that was a terrific gift received.