Can I start off by saying that I had this entire post written and lost it all? Deep breath, don’t cry, let’s try this again.

In the spirit of copying things from last year so I don’t have to think, this italicized bit is what I wrote on 9.02.09 (not to be confused with 90210).

I so enjoyed your answers to yesterday’s question–what would you do if I handed you seven bucks? Little did you know, I wasn’t messing around. One of you is getting $7 in the mail this week, and the lucky winner is based on nothing more than my own whimsy.

Welcome to MarlaTaviano.com where Dreams! Come! True!

Or where Marla tries to buy new friends for a measly seven dollars. (hey, 7 bucks is nothing to sneeze at, as evidenced by all the cool things you all were planning to do with it!)

Back to 2010.

I seriously considered giving the 7 bucks to Rich who said he would buy flowers (or one flower) for his beautiful wife. Shalla is a friend of mine, and she has many small children and deserves many, many flowers. (Rich, how about you go buy her some anyway?)

And I love that my adorable friend Maddie (14) wanted to “go to Meijer and ride the pony 700 times!!!” Can you even imagine?

And I was tempted to choose one of you suck-ups who offered to hand the money right back to me.

But in the end, I picked the dude who said he’d “Give five to the homeless man on the corner and ask him to share the other two bills with someone (or someones in need).” Congratulations, Jeff! In the spirit of Radical, the $ is yours. On one condition–that you actually use it how you said you would. And then tell us how it goes. (And could you e-mail me your address please?)

And you guys should totally check out Jeff’s blog, Pilgrimage of the Heart. I hopped over tonight, and I’ll definitely be going back to read more.

And may I encourage each of you who would’ve given the money to organizations that help people in need (or directly help those people yourself) to take $7 of your own money and go bless someone today? That would rock my world.

Man, can I tell you how disheartening it is to rewrite something completely from scratch??

Anyway. A few items of business before I let you loose to celebrate a delightful 3-day weekend with the ones you love.

1. The Radical Read-Along starts THIS TUESDAY, September 7th! Pop on over here anytime Tuesday to answer a few introductory questions (about yourself, not the book).

2. If you’re up for extra chatting about the book on Facebook, come join our group!

3. A HUGE thank-you to M, S, P, M, S, R, and C for sponsoring a grand total of FIFTY-FOUR Radical books!! Isn’t that amazing?! Thank you for letting God use you in such a crazy-awesome way!!

And I thought to myself, why not just mooch a little bit more from last year’s post while I’m at it? Happy Weekend and here you go!

And I do have another question (which may or may not but most likely may not involve cash rewards). It concerns procrastination. What is one chore/duty/responsibility that you constantly find yourself putting off? And what activity do you find yourself engaging in while you procrastinate?

I literally sat and stared at my screen for FIVE WHOLE MINUTES just a little bit ago. And NOTHING. Nothing at all came into my mind. NOT A THING.

I know that all I write about lately is this:

Or this:

But, really, if you could peek into my head and see how FULL it is of that kind of stuff (Radical, Cambodia), you would understand. You might not like it, but you would understand.

So, at about 12:15am, in a moment of desperation, I decided to look back at September 1, 2009 to see what kinds of things I was writing about back then. Not shockingly, I was blabbing about all my “swirly” thoughts. My goodness, will I ever settle down?

But the last sentence of the post caught my attention, and I’d like to repeat it here for you today:

If I handed you 7 one-dollar bills right now and you had 30 minutes to get rid of them, what would you do with them? Go!

Thought I’d share some posts that have blessed me this week. They just might bless you too.

–Answered prayers (thank you, Jesus!) for this precious little girl and her family. (The x-rays came back completely normal!)

–A sweet tribute my brother-in-law wrote to his wife.

–You sweet single gals HAVE to read this (and the rest of you should read it too). I met Lindsee in Houston in January and not only is she stinking gorgeous, she’s stinking awesome.

–This heart-wrenching post written by a military wife whose husband is deployed. (Be sure to click on Part 1 too)

–A powerful, beautiful seatbelt ad (of all things).

–I cannot wait to do this with my husband.

–There’s something about this Missy Girl that always gets me laughing, whether she’s talking about fanny packs or turning 40 or whatever.

–These comments blew me away yesterday afternoon. Thank you, Gabe, Holly, Peter, Brian and Jill.

Did something bless you this week? Leave a link!

And have an awesome weekend, friends!

For the record, I am writing this post because I love you, not because I want to poke fun at anyone and certainly not because I fancy myself some Grammar Queen or something. No, I do not delight in pointing out every misspelling or improperly-used word I see.

(Gabe may beg to differ. And I probably do correct people more than I realize, but  I do really try to let stuff go, because really? Who likes to be around a smarty-pants? NOT ME.)

HOWEVER, I’ve seen one particular mistake about 46 times in the past little while and felt the need to make a Public Service Announcement.

You might not believe me, but there’s actually an honest-to-goodness word in the English language spelled L-O-S-E, as in, “I hope we don’t LOSE the game,” said Olivia. I know some of you didn’t know that such a word existed, because when you want to talk about losing games, you spell it L-O-O-S-I-N-G.

In your defense, the word LOSE sure doesn’t look like it rhymes with CRUISE, but it does.

There IS a word spelled L-O-O-S-E, but it’s used to describe things like “Ava’s LOOSE tooth” or “Don’t tell Marla, but I think she has a few screws LOOSE.”

The whole LOOSE TOOTH thing is actually your key to remembering. LOOSE and TOOTH both have two O’s.

And I don’t know how to tell you to remember how to spell LOSE. Suggestions anyone?

And while we’re at it, does anyone have any other mnemonic devices to help us remember confusing grammar/spelling rules?

Happy Weekend!

p.s. If it makes you feel any better, I HATE the words further and farther, because even if I’m 98% sure I’m using the right one, I still pause in anguish before I let it leave my tongue.

Let me just say that by the time I click the “publish” button on this post, it will be after midnight. And I have been writing, writing, writing for three hours straight. I take that back. I took a cheese and cracker break about 45 minutes ago.

Today I tweeted/facebooked the following: I just had a startling revelation. The tireder I am, the more I eat. Great.

I may or may not have already mentioned (I can’t remember) my plans to scale back on how much food I consume (I refuse to use the word “diet.”). I see no reason why the jeans I wore last August should be impossible to pull up past my knees the following April. I also see no reason for my middle to bulge out of a tankini whose pieces previously overlapped with room to spare.

You get the picture. (And I apologize for that.)

So, the past 2-3 days, I have been so stinking energized by this writing project that I realized I wasn’t snacking nearly as much. And then I did a whole bunch of jumping jacks and felt even better.

And then today happened. For one thing, Nina climbed in our bed at 4am, and that marked the end of my REM sleep. Add that to the midnight oil I’ve been burning lately, and ugh. Then Nina and I went to the zoo with my darling friend Krista, and we met up with our darling friend Dara and ran into our darling friend Erin. Four hours later, I came home DEAD EXHAUSTED.

I shoveled a bunch of junk food in my mouth, tried to stay awake to write, but ended up taking a nap instead. Woke up in a stupor when the girls got home from school, shoveled in more food and went to a soccer game.

On Facebook, my friend Katie commented that when she was working three jobs, it was very bad for her waistline.

My cousin Michael said,”That is why you need sleep. I would say seven hours. Here is another interesting thing. When I run (more than 2 miles) I do not crave snacks and have more energy. Amazing.”

My aerobic-teachin’/physical-trainin’/best-bod-in-the-universe cousin Camy chimed in, “When we don’t get enough sleep we do indeed crave foods- particularly sugary carbohydrates to help keep us going. (Or so our body “thinks” it needs that) And yes- exercise will give you more energy! Seems like it would be the opposite, but it isn’t- we have to “burn” energy to get it. Exercise will also help you sleep better and it will be more restful sleep! I could write a book here, but I won’t…”

So. The plan is to start running again. And sleep more. But I just need a couple (10) more days to hammer out this writing project first. I know, I know, I’m not going to make it that long if I don’t start running/sleeping, right? Sigh.

So tell me, oh, wise ones. How do you fit exercise and/or sleep into your busy life?