Category Archives: happiness

When a Bubble Guppy goes from a mystery to a memory

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Life is a perplexing thing.   There is no rhyme nor reason to the circumstances of our daily existence.  If there were a giant book of instructions and an elongated list of logic explaining the happenings in our lives it would be in a language nobody could decipher.

We are not meant to know the meaning of things that occur while they are happening.  We are merely challenged to learn from the events we encounter and use that knowledge to enhance our future.  I found myself in the middle of one of those moments last week.

They were a lovely family, originally booked to visit the lodge in July but had to postpone due to a medical diagnosis that required immediate action.  Even after rescheduling their vacation, a last-minute trial became available to help battle her recent diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  Two trips to St. Margaret’s Hospital during their four-day “vacation” were made much more bearable by their one “magical” day at Shamrock Lodge.  I was extremely fortunate to be a part of that magic by being asked to make a “Bubble Guppy” cake for her daughter’s 2nd birthday.

I had no idea what a Bubble Guppy was but my longing to make this vacation memorable was overshadowed by my ignorance and this is the cake that arrived at their table and made three generations of their family smile….especially the two older generations.

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I will forever remember driving home that afternoon to finish the cake for an early celebration because her treatment came first.  I will always cherish the look on her two-year old’s face when she realized this cake was for her and it was a Bubble Guppy cake.  And the moment that I will hold closest to my heart is being a part of a celebration that may not happen again if the medical trial fails.

Life is a perplexing thing.  But watching a family hold each other close and truly celebrate together helped me slightly dispel the mystery.

Life is about commemorating the moments we are able to celebrate.  Life is not about worrying about what comes next or what we may miss.  Life is about making the most of the time we have together and living in the now.  Life is about having a Bubble Guppy cake and being able to share it with the family at your table, not ever considering they may not be there for the next birthday celebration. And life is just about being with those who you hold closest to your heart for as long as you can.

If I have learned anything this past week, I have learned that life is too short to spend on things that are not number one on your list.  If there is something you want, chase it.  If there is something you yearn for, pursue it.  And if there are people in your life that make your days brighter, do everything in your power to make the sun shine on them for as long as you can.

You never know when that Bubble Guppy will revert from a cherished memory to simply a mystery.

 

 

You have a choice…they don’t

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As the police officer broke the window, I could see the situation was dire.  As much as I wished this were fiction, I could audibly hear the cries from the crowd and the lingering image of the tortured face in the back of the car was eerily memorable.   I have fallen victim to another barrage of Facebook videos that have struck a chord which echoes, and continues to resonate deeply, within every fibre of my being and I am currently writing this post from behind swollen eyes and continual sniffles.

Once things like these videos are seen they cannot be unseen and I will most likely have nightmares tonight.  The torture and suffering that occur are so preventable yet these tragic situations continue to unfold before the eyes of those who are stupefied and forced to take action to avert fatalities, only if they get there in time.  It’s a horrible trend that is so easily remedied, but still continues to happen.

Leaving children or pets in hot cars is inexcusable.  There are NO plausible circumstances that make this a forgivable choice.  A child or a pet does not have the capacity to voluntarily surrender their right to basic care.  They unknowingly give us their permission to nurture and protect their essential needs and wants.  It is the responsibility of the adult to put the needs of others before we consider the unencumbered ease of performing mundane tasks alone.  If speed and agility are your goals for your shopping adventure, find someone responsible to care for your children and pets while you shop.  Even if you think you will only be there “for just a second”, remember you are not the only factor in the equation of your shopping experience.

Life happens.  And while some unforeseen aspect of life is happening to you in Aisle Four of your grocery store, life is slowly being taken away from the living, breathing thing you left in your car because you were going to “be right back”.

I err on the side of caution when it comes to my dog.  She may not agree with my choice to leave her at home while I shop but at least I know she will always be there to greet me when I return home.   She does not have the aptitude to formulate the reason she is in a cool house while I shop for our basic necessities and the temperature inside my car reaches lethal levels.  

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Sure, she is disappointed when I leave.  Sure, I get the cold shoulder on my way by the window.  But I know I have done the right thing by not subjecting her to a life-threatening situation and I know the gratitude I feel seeing her happy face when I return home is enough rationale for me.   She is still conscious and thriving because I chose to “be mean” and leave her at home.

Please, please…..”be mean” to your pets.  Leave them home alone on that hot, sunny day while you pick up those one or two items that will only take you “a couple of minutes”.  Tomorrow they will not remember that you left them at home.  But tomorrow you will feel the horrible regret of leaving them in a car that reached an inner temperature of 140 degrees in 15 minutes and possibly took their life.

Children should never be left alone in a vehicle, period.  Take your child in the store with you.  Face the evil stares from people as your child throws an epic temper tantrum in the middle of the store.  Budget that extra 15 or 30 minutes it will take you to put back every item your child has mysteriously grabbed from the shelves.

Or be the parent who chooses to leave your child with somebody else while you shop.   Feel guilt free if your grocery shopping takes you an extra 15 minutes and enjoy the fact that you don’t have to keep looking outside, wondering what the temperature has risen to inside your vehicle while the life you left inside of it, the child you promised to protect and nurture, endures temperatures that are unbearable and fatal.

For the sake of your child or your pet, make the choice to leave those loved ones at home with someone else to watch them even if you know it will disappoint them.  No item in the grocery store will ever be worth the life that may have been put at risk while you shopped for it.

 

 

 

 

 

Just one drop of kindness equals a recipe for success

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Facebook is an overwhelming aspect of social media.  Timeline’s are inundated with nonsense, Farmville and game requests are sent at alarming rates and too much personal information is given away like candy at Halloween.  But every so often a little gem of humanity seeps through the cracks and makes me appreciate the sharing of information.

The video below is one of those rare gems.  I watched it twice because the message really plucked some emotional strings in the orchestra of my life.  I have always been a firm believer in treating others as you wish to be treated, in paying forward a show of altruism and allowing others to benefit from your tenderness and understanding.

Every action in life creates a ripple effect.  Whether that ripple effect is as visible to the naked eye as a drop of water in a pond, or is so infinitesimal that it is unseen by the human eye, there is always a reaction.  A little bit can go a long way and that ripple may spread further than you could ever imagine.

I hope you will take the three minutes to watch this video created by a Thai insurance company.  Its message is heart-warming, emotional and eerily accurate.  One drop of human kindness could change the tides in so many oceans.

 

The real perception of time

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To the people who work at Shamrock Lodge, the weeks of the summer of 2015 are flying by. It seems like only a few days ago we were saying hello to the first of our summer families but that was weeks ago! We have officially begun week five of our ten week season and it has gone by in a blur.

But time is a funny thing. To us it hurtles through some time-space continuum at warp speed while to others, to children who are anticipating their days at the Shammy, time moves slower than a turtle.

Their restless nights are spent planning their days in the Kid’s Klub. Their exciting visions of their little legs on water skiis, making it around the circuit for the first time, disrupt their sleep. Their predicted screams as they skip across the lake in the tube echo in their minds. Their week of fun and games at the lodge is as tangible as the parents longing for some quiet moments while the kids are busy being entertained from morning to night.

Many lounge chairs are filled with dozing parents while their children are, not only waterskiing and tubing but, playing soccer, going on scavenger hunts, bouncing on the water trampoline, building sandcastles, playing tennis and having canoe races.

Time, from the perspective of the parents and children who have already come to the lodge and returned home, has gone by in a blur of sunshine, laughter and memories. But for those children waiting for their chance at their Shammy vacation, time seems to go by one very slow second at a time.

Ask me in forty years and I’ll tell you what happened

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When I look back at the road behind me, I am content with many of the life altering decisions I have made.  There would be nothing worse than glancing back over the history of my life through the eyes of regret.  But will I be that fortunate in another forty years to feel the same way I do after the first half of my life?  Will I take all of my knowledge, and the lessons I have learned about only living once, and disregard the opportunity to obtain the most happiness I can possibly achieve?

I don’t want to reach my ninetieth year and remember the moment that I let an opportunity for pure bliss pass me by.  I don’t want to have “what if” nagging at the  back of my mind.  I have 46 years of growth and experience under my belt and I can only hope I can wring every ounce of those two things out of me when it comes to pursuing my ultimate happiness.

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Sure, I’ve made my choices and I go through the motions of every day life but how would I feel if there were something out there that was just perfect for me and I let it pass me by?  Whether it be a job, a trip or a new love….opportunities are not presented every day.  Some of those chances are serendipity, a fortunate accident, and some are created through some mystic energy in the universe, perhaps a karma of sorts.

Regardless of the circumstance, I don’t want to regret a moment in my life where I should have taken a chance, but didn’t.   If  you ask me in forty years, I hope I am able to tell you that I followed my heart and made every moment possible by simply taking that chance on something that seemed like it was meant to be just for me.

 

 

 

Thanks WordPress….do you have any tissues?

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My third year anniversary on WordPress is rapidly approaching.  Since my timid foray into blogging, I have truly come into my own and really love this journey I am on.  I have discovered so much about myself and thrown myself into an outlet where I find I can be really honest about my feelings and opinions.

Over the course of my presence here, WordPress has made many changes and upgrades to their program.  The cause for my tears and subsequent request for tissues is the addition of “related posts” at the bottom of our existing posts.  This subtle link at the bottom of my posts has caused me to click on one of my previous posts about my mom and my tears didn’t even have the option of staying or flowing – they started at full force and kept coming.

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Once I cleared the blurry vision and was able to control myself, I realized what a great extension to my blog that this little tear-inducing gem had become.  If readers are interested in the blog post that day, they can click on the links to previous posts they may have missed and be able to follow my earlier thought processes that may have some relevance to the entry I had recently posted.

I appreciate that WordPress is bringing my past into my present.  They are connecting the dots of my artistic as well as my emotional journey and allowing others to participate in the history of my blogging adventure as well as the most recent part of my writing experience.

Tissues are available at the door.

 

 

 

Sweet June and doing small things with great love

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A little less than a year and a half ago my life was irrevocably changed when my mom passed away.  She had been ill for a while but it was still a shock to receive the call on a Friday morning that she was gone.  As fate would have it, a small typo at the funeral home transformed an evening that could have been incredibly morose into a night of bizarre toasts that my mom would have found hilarious.  In the haze of tragedy, my family was able to find laughter.  In the wake of death, my family was still able to breathe some life.

One slight alphabetical error was a domino effect for a myriad number of things that would follow. Had the funeral director not misspelled Jane and typed June, the course of our mourning and subsequent celebration of my mother would have been profoundly altered.  You can read the original story by clicking here.  Since then there have been continual toasts to “June”.   There is a place setting for June at family meals and she is always a part of our celebrations.

Recently, I began to dabble in cake decorating again and decided that I would like to bring the old cake business back to life.  The company name I had used in the past no longer seemed to embody what it was that I was trying to represent and I struggled to come up with a new moniker for my part-time occupation.

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After sifting through photos of cakes I had done in the past, I came across this cake I made for my mom on her 70th birthday.  Without hesitation, I knew the name of my new venture would be “Sweet June”.

“In this life we cannot do great things.  We can only do small things with great love.” ~ Mother Teresa

 These cakes are the small things that I do with great love.  I find peace in the moments of creating special memories that help celebrate milestones.  I find joy in knowing that I was an invisible part of a happy occasion.  And I achieve the most reward, now, by knowing that my mom, Sweet June, will forever be a small part of those moments as well.

To covet or not to covet, that is the question

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I remember the word covet securely fastening itself in my brain after I watched The Silence Of The Lambs.  I had always admired the word as part of the English language but never truly gave it the power it so richly deserved.  For having a mere five letters, the word yields much more of an impact than meets the eye.  With the pun intended in that last sentence, I began to realize how it easy it could be to covet something that was so far removed from my reality, yet so much of a presence in my daily thoughts.  I could always see what it was that I wanted.

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Signs and portents of the things we covet will surely present themselves in a myriad of ways and those glowing neon reminders will only serve to keep that item at the forefront of our brains.  Though we may not have access to the object of our attention on a daily basis, the wish plants a small seed in our brain that sprouts and grows every time we give it a moment of thought.  That lingering speculation permeates the moments of our day and the spark of what could be fuels the evolution of our fascination.

By giving ourselves permission to covet, we allow ourselves the opportunity to keep our desires alive, to live with passion.  And, even if those dreams never come to fruition, we were privately granted the right to give that fantasy a breath of life, if only for a few fleeting moments.  There is no legitimate way of telling our heart it was wrong.  It will beat the way it wants to beat and we are powerless to its incessant drumming.

I am intimidated by the fear of not following my desires, of never having opened the door to possibility and thus never being able to define what is truly important to me.  Coveting those things, identifying the wants that truly envelop me but knowing they may be the things that I can never have, affects my world on a scale beyond my comprehension.  But those impervious wants, those things I covet,  allow me to begin to sketch the blueprints of what it is that I truly desire.  The idea that I may eventually attain those things satiates my thirsts and attempts to quench that desire.

To covet is to wish.  To wish is to dream.  To dream is to live.

What I might be

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao Tzu

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I have been so consumed by my job lately that I have begun to redefine myself by my career and not by the person who is performing that job.  I give up small parts of myself to become a larger piece of the work puzzle and, although I thoroughly enjoy my job and the people I interact with on a daily basis, I lose sight of the potential success of my personal goals.

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I saw this quote and the cogs in the wheels of my creativity began to align and click into perfect place.  By allowing myself to become what I might be, I give myself permission to become all of the things I wish for myself.   Work is a means to pay the bills but work will never be the summit of the mountain of my possibility.

Each day I write this blog, each day I allow the words to flow from my brain, is a day I step closer to what I might be.  There is a part of me still lurking in the shadows.  There is a creative mind waiting for the moment that reality does not quell its desire.  When I finally am able to truly let go of what I am, that creative mind will become what it should be.

Finding little pieces of myself along the way

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I lose time.  I don’t mean I have dissociative fugues and the inability to recall past events.  Time simply rushes by me at such a fast pace that I seem to lose little pieces of myself along the way, pieces caught in the vortex of the life I am living that is whirling by at a great speed.

Those missing bits seem to fragment during my busy work days and I don’t always recognize their absence until I inch closer to my day off.  I feel like a part of me has been eclipsed, hidden in a shadow, waiting to be rediscovered.

Today I had the benefit of finding some of those remnants of myself and putting them back where they belong.  Today I came home from work, knowing that tomorrow is a day free from structure, and allowed myself that moment to finally relax and let those misplaced segments of my life re-establish themselves.  Today I put my feet into the wading pool, bought for my dog, and let the water wash away the lingering moments of my work day.  Today I put together the puzzle that is me with the pieces I had lost during the week.  Today I made myself feel like the garden AND the rose.

It is important to take that quiet moment to collect all of the pieces of ourselves that are essential to us and recreate the whole picture of ourselves.  Segments of us will get lost along the way but the significant substance of who we are will always find its way back.  And in the moments that I was gathering the scraps of me that I had left behind, I came across this picture and it all made sense.

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