Category Archives: happiness

The shit really hit the fan

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During the eight years that I have been in a relationship with my dog, she has been nothing but loving, giving and very intuitive of my desire to not scoop the poop.  I have almost three acres of land and she has been courteous enough to befoul the outskirts of my property and not defecate on the portion of greenery that I mow on a relatively frequent basis.

Today, I cleared the lawn of the remnants of chewed branches and fired up the mower for what may be the last mow of the season.  We have been enjoying a later-than-usual heat spell so mowing in November is an enjoyable treat.  I nonchalantly pushed the machine in the usual fashion, adhering to my own rules of the direction of lines in my lawn maintenance, and it happened.  The shit literally hit the fan (or the mower blades, close enough).

I hadn’t thought to look for any brown bombs on the lawn because Callaway is too gracious and too private to leave her feces in plain sight.  I silently cursed as the wafting smell of dog crap reached my nostrils and I did everything in my power not to gag.  I glanced over at the deck and Callaway was watching with a deep concern for my well-being.   There was no sense of embarrassment coming from her, so I knew the poop in question had not been produced by her.   We both glanced in the direction of the neighbor’s house and knew that the black lab from next door had left his calling card.

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 (image credit: quickmeme.com)

 Perhaps we should have had a few more scheduled play dates so Callaway could train Casey in the art of excrement.  At least I will be more prepared the next time I have to cut the grass and I will scan the lawn with a thermal imaging camera.  You can’t be too careful these days and, as we all know, shit happens!

The more things change, the more they are different

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Blogging is a fickle mistress.  Back when I started this journey I had no followers and no clue what I was doing.  I just wanted to write.

With much persistence and an avid desire to keep writing, I did just that.  Along the way, people began to read what I had to say and, not only that, took the time to make comments and leave their two cents about the words I had spent so many hours crafting into submission.  Those were blissful times in my life and, as the momentum continued, I gained new followers and new friends throughout the process.

But as with all things that change, and contrary to the subjective saying, nothing every really stays the same.  Life gets in the way and those little joys that were once so ingrained in our daily lives are shelved to make room for reality.  During the last three summers, work has taken a front seat while my creativity has been stored in a tool box in the trunk of my life.

Every autumn, I find the key, open that trunk and hope my creativity has maintained some of its shape during the bumpy rides it has been made to withstand.  Although the integrity of my imagination seems somewhat intact, the struggle to achieve the same level of contact with readers and followers seems to wane.  It is the fault of no single circumstance and it simply means I have to delve back into the vigor of writing that I had when I began this wonderful pilgrimage through written expression.

I have sworn to be diligent, not only in my writing but, in my covenant to be a good follower of all the blogs I have chosen to support with my likes and comments.  I have been inattentive, through no fault of my own, and have made a pact with myself to make up for my negligence and become more of a presence in this world of words, especially with those who have stuck by me on this ride.

Relationships of every kind take effort.  I look forward to challenging myself to put forth my best effort to post things of meaning and to post them often.  I look forward to mending fences, creating new connections and having my little typewriter appear in many areas of this blogosphere and throughout the other worlds of people who love to read.

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Sometimes it feels like only your keyboard will listen to you, but if you keep at it your audience will grow and you will find your true voice.  ~ SN

 

 

The things we were meant to find beautiful

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They grab my attention

and hold me in their embrace.

Chasing them to catch just the right shot

is like chasing the illusion of perfection.

Their shapes, like our lives, can change in an instant

also changing our perspective.

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Once you adjust your position

the view is never the same.

The closer you get to something,

the more beautiful it becomes.

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Sometimes, if you are lucky,

the view is so much better than you anticipated

and those moments should be savored,

breathed in like a fine wine.

 Our destiny is written in the sky,

our hope, painted on the largest canvas possible

but our dreams can change in a whisper.

Although the wind may alter the portrait,

perhaps it was meant to change.

Just maybe, life is as big as the sky

and those clouds should be the cherished blessings

of the things we were meant to find beautiful.

Turns out I’m not the biggest loser

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For the past month I have been diligently somewhat enthusiastically following a strict regimen of caloric intake to participate in a weight loss challenge (#wlc) with my best friend and her husband.  I have made many sacrifices and changed my shopping lists multiple times to adhere to the necessary guidelines of not eating food I should not be eating.  After thirty days, we have all weighed in and, although I am proud of my accomplishment, Daniel won the battle.

The deal going in was that the “losers” had to eat what the victor had been using as nourishment during the challenge.  Daniel decided to change the rules and we had to succumb, I’ll admit enthusiastically, to a double cheeseburger today.  Once the arbitrary new guideline had been established, I hungrily began making my shopping list for dinner.  I already had frozen burger patties in my freezer but the necessary garnishes were required to complete my meal.

I felt like a thief, looking over my shoulder across the parking lot, as I smuggled my contraband ingredients to my car.  The jar of pickles, processed cheese slices and bun lay hidden in my grocery store bag as I tried to conceal my guilt on the way to my car.  I have been known to cook several very upscale meals but, when it comes to my burger, my cheese of choice is synthetic Kraft Singles and nothing else will do!

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The burgers were cooked perfectly.  The pickles were just as salty as I remembered and the almost-real cheese dripped from the burger patties just as it should have.  My dinner was delicious and the anticipated two extra pounds were worth it.

As I say my “White Rabbit” three times tonight at the stroke of midnight, I can only hope luck will find me once again this month and continue the trend of shedding pounds.  I may not be the biggest loser but I’m still a loser, and I’m okay with that.

A little blood on Halloween seems almost redundant

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I used to love carving pumpkins.  I was one of those weirdos hoping to have the most creative pumpkin on the block, so I bought a carving kit and some patterns and locked myself in a room to avoid distraction.

Walls were spattered with stringy pieces of eviscerated pumpkin.  Elongated strings of profuse verbiage slithered under the doorway, assaulting the ears on the other side of the door, and small drops of minor arterial spray infused themselves into the paint on the wall.  But at the end of the painstaking process I achieved success!  The copious amount of band-aids, blood loss and light-headedness were worth the effort.  My pumpkins were the talk of the town.  My then-boyfriend’s children (who I still refer to as my step-children) were even proud to acknowledge the creativity on our front doorstep.

After my first attempt, I became a little less guarded when it came to the carving process and the whole family would get involved.  Where there were originally only two arms covered in pumpkin guts, eight sticky arms reveled in the joy of dissecting the large gourds and separating the seeds from the gooey mess.  Each of us skilfully created our masterpieces and sat back with a smile as the toothy pumpkins returned our stares.

The house would begin to smell of the roasting pumpkin seeds and, after a massive clean up, we would light our pumpkins and snack on the seeds in the darkened living room.  The memories of those nights of laughter and camaraderie are the ones I still hold close.

As the eve of Halloween approaches, I am slightly saddened that those years are so far behind me.  I live on a street where no children trick-or-treat so there is no need to create any more scary faces.  Perhaps this year I should take advantage of the fact that my digits are all still intact and drag out the carving tools once again.  I’m sure my dog would like to sit in the dark with me staring at faces like these:

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Happy Halloween everyone!

Which side of the road should the chicken be on?

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It is almost November and the weather is going to great lengths to remind us of the impending torture of unpredictable temperatures and precipitation for the next thirty plus days.  Today was a glowing example of that.  The remnants of Hurricane Patricia swirled hungrily around our little town and brought with them the feeling of doom that always precedes winter.  The rain fell sideways and the South West wind systematically unzipped our coats to leave us feeling exposed to the elements.

On my drive home from work, watching the storm-laden sky become even darker, I could think of nothing more than crawling into a cave of blankets in my living room and allowing myself to succumb to the heat that would soon be escaping from my baseboard heaters.  The thought of having to cook a full dinner did not impress me at all so I visited the grocery store and purchased a warm, fragrant pre-roasted chicken.

There is nothing better than comfort food on a cold, grey night.  The pungent smell of the chicken permeated my kitchen as I boiled some potatoes and made a somewhat deconstructed stuffing.  Onions and celery were left to saute with some bacon as the potatoes were mashed into submission.  I usually love to add some flare to the presentation of my meals, but comfort food speaks loudly and needs neither pomp nor circumstance to assert its message.

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The food was delicious.  My heaters obliged by taking the chill out of the air but the meal lacked a certain something.  I love my solitude.  I enjoy my own company and I have several friends, one close friend in particular, who admire me for being so content on my own.  But my “Thrifty Thursday” Chicken (as the store labelled it), my mashed potatoes and bread-less stuffing would have tasted much better had I been able to share it with someone special.

There is much to be said about living on your own.  That privilege of freedom defines gratitude better than a thousand dictionaries.  But the joy of being in a room with someone who helps accentuate your happiness is immeasurable.  Whether those moments are shared in silence or lost in a cacophony of laughter and endless conversation, those are the moments that create memories.  And those are the moments that can sometimes make solitude feel a little more like loneliness.

 

All arrows pointed to Chile….I mean chili

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(image credit)

With the days growing shorter and the nights becoming cooler, my natural reaction to this autumnal phenomenon is to adorn the apron, plant my bare feet firmly on my kitchen floor and cook.  Today the universe made the signs of my nesting tendencies abundantly obvious when our grocery store flyer found its way to my desk and had every necessary ingredient for chili at a discounted price.  As beautiful as the landscapes are in Santiago, I opted for some ground beef, kidney beans and the two necessary ingredients for my chili that others may frown upon but they make it mine.

I find a deep sense of comfort in my kitchen.  While chopped onions feverishly jump in the Dutch oven and the rest of the ingredients lay in wait to join the party, the smells of happiness assuage any other feelings I may have carried home with me from the remnants of my day.  The food in the pot is not just food – it is my sanctuary and my resolve to end the day on a positive note, regardless of how it began or how it ensued.

Cooking and baking are a tonic for me.  They are a natural drug I can always count on to make me feel like myself again.  And they are not just there to pull me from a sullen mood but also there to heighten my well-being on the good days, which thankfully far outweigh the bad days.

I have often pondered the idea of taking a leap of faith and pursuing this passion to make it a career but I am always left with fragments of an unfinished conversation that always takes place in my head.  ‘If I do it for a living, will it just become a job and will I lose my passion for it?’  I would hate to have something I take so much pleasure in become a prosaic way to pay the bills.

Until I become brave enough to get within range of that bridge, I will not even entertain the thought of jumping off of it.  For now, I will remain content with the wafting smell of chili from my kitchen, the collection of frozen soups in my freezer and the anticipation of the already-marinating pork tenderloin for dinner tomorrow.

“Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” ~ Julia Child

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a bad math exam

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I lived through a very tumultuous marriage.  It was a great lesson for me but, in mathematical terms, the product of my relationship was divided by the sum of our differences and eventually created a result that lacked a remainder.   There were so many variables and so few constants that our bond was doomed from the beginning.  I should have been the operator but, instead, I felt like a fraction of my true self.

The formula for a successful bond relies on a form of symmetry.  The arrangement of the most fundamental parts of our lives need to align to create a true collaborative bond.  You cannot expect to live a happy life in a paradox.  You cannot create an answerable question without supplying the linear equation that gives you those answers.  All of the pieces of your life need to make you happy, not just the sum of the happy parts.  Going through the motions and cancelling out the negative parts of the bigger picture subtracts from the value of each day.  Sure you will make mistakes along the way, but those mistakes should add to your education and not take away from your self-worth.

I lived that equation.  The perfect number may exist in the glossary of mathematical terms but it does not thrive in real life.  Perfection takes effort and, at the end of the exam, all of the negatives never added up to a positive for me.  I was in the wrong equation and it was glaringly evident.  It was time to subtract myself and cut my losses.

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Once my math exam was over I learned to breathe freely again and I felt empowered by my freedom.  I learned to enjoy my own company more than I ever had and it was liberating.  What I currently perceive as solitude some would call loneliness but they don’t have the numbers to back up their hypothesis.

I now spend my days knowing that I passed that math test and that my final grade has truly helped me balance my life in a way that I never thought possible.  And now that I have erased the errors of my past, I am free to create a new formula for my happiness.  I can choose to remain constant or I can choose to add or subtract the things that will bring me the most happiness.  Regardless of what I choose, I know I will only add the people who fill the gaps in my life and not those who subtract from my bliss.

Even the greyest skies can be beautiful

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Mottled grey,

monochromatic morning

lending a painting

as the ceiling of our day.

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The sky need not be pink

for us to see its splendor.

There is beauty in all things,

we just have to look beyond the norm.

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A storm will come and go

but there is always artistry

in the wake of its anger.

From darkness blossoms light.

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When the world seems silent, the heart still has a voice.

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The whisper of real love

tickled my ears so long ago

and feels like a long forgotten conversation.

Those words,

those sweet nothings,

sadly,

no longer seem to be in my vocabulary.

But the book of love

still has music in it and

every so often I open that book.

Those notes play melodies on my heart-strings.

The familiar phrases of love,

the notes on the scales of romance,

still exist

and play wistfully in my memory.

Perhaps I am meant to hear that music again.

Just maybe the songs I hear from that book

are heard by someone else

and we haven’t yet had a chance to listen to them together.

For just a moment,

 I want to close my eyes and really hear the music.

I want the Book of Love

to play a song for me just one more time

and have it be the only song I truly hear

for the rest of my life.