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Life

You are currently browsing the archive for the Life category.

Sharing the happy

February 6, 2010 in Life, Life's lessons | 18 comments

Most of you are probably wondering what that Happy Book thing is on the left sidebar of my web site. I hope you are wondering enough to read on.

First, let me start by asking you if you are familiar with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, a novel by Ann Brashares (and later a movie by the same name). The premise is that four best friends, spending their summer away from each other, decide to share a pair of pants to keep them connected. Each keeps the pants for a short while and then send to the next friend.

Second, The Happy Book, written by Rachel Kempster and Meg Leder is a book about being happy. It is an activity book that encourages us to discover or re-discover the things in life that make us happy. They (the authors) say their book is more fun that a basket of kittens!

Third, one of those happenstance, must be fate kinda moments in life, I happened to log into Facebook right at the moment when a friend shared a link to Jamie Ridler’s Creative Living Blog, and since I wasn’t too busy with anything else I clicked on the link and read that Jamie had interviewed the authors of The Happy Book and…

Combine these three elements and what you have is Jamie’s idea to send a Happy Book around the world for people to share their happy things!

What a cool idea, thought I, so I signed up immediately, wanting to be one of the few to get in on this happiness sharing thing!

Jamie would accept 26 names, come up with a mailing list, mail the book to the first recipient who can keep it for a week and do whatever happiness she wants in it. Then she mails it to the next person who gets to the same and so on! Considering the mail time involved, it will probably take about a year for the book to make a round trip.

Well, first so many people wanted to do this, that Jamie decided to start 4 books on their trips around the world! I am in the Glee group and I am number 14 on the list. When the book gets to me I can do any or as many of the activities that I want. I can insert pictures or doodles or use crayons or whatever makes me happy! I can share with my family and friends, if I like, but when my week is up, I send it to the next person. If we run out of pages, we’ll just add more!

I know none of the people in the Glee group in real life. But, I know I am going to enjoy perusing what the thirteen happy people entered before me. And, maybe my happy will add some joy to the people after me!

Jamie mailed the books on January 15 to the first recipient in each group. I should receive it, somewhere near the end of July. It will be Jamie’s job to help us keep the book on schedule and she has set up a blog site  for us to follow our book through its journey.

That’s it! I’m in a sisterhood of a traveling happy book and that makes me happy!

Everyone likes to be happy, yes? Let’s use the comment section of this post to share things that makes us happy! Send lots of happy comments, okey dokey? I’ll go first…

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Gotta have milk

February 2, 2010 in Life | 32 comments

I don’t know if this blog post is about milk, or first grade memories. You will have to decide for yourself, I reckon, and then comment accordingly!

First, about milk. I love milk. It is my favorite drink in the whole world. I drink it at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner and sometimes I even have a glass with a snack.

I have not always had this close relationship with milk. Growing up, I never drank it. We rarely ever had it in our house. My dad, the grocery shopper, did not drink milk. So, he bought canned evaporated milk for mom to add to her coffee or to reconstitute for a recipe. 

When I was a senior in high school, Brian remembers coming to the house one morning to see me before school and was shocked and a bit creeped out that I had toast and eggs with a tall glass of Pepsi for breakfast!

At some point after we were married and I was pregnant, Brian convinced me that a glass of milk every once in a while would be “good for me and the baby.” And, so, I began my love affair with milk.

So, now to my first-grade memory. I bought the school cafeteria lunch everyday. Back then, students didn’t get to chose what to get on their trays, they simply got whatever was served that day – a mystery meat, vegetable, fruit and milk. The milk came automatically. But, I never drank my milk because I didn’t drink milk. I didn’t like milk. I never even opened the carton. Sometimes I traded it or just gave it to someone else to drink, but most days, it got thrown away.

Now, after lunch, we got to go outside to play. Ergo, the quicker we finished lunch, the sooner we played.

One day, my first grade teacher, Mrs. Biddleman, who sat at our lunch table with her class, usually across from me so she could keep an eye on me, decided that I should drink my milk. “Think of all those poor starving kids in China,” she said.

“I don’t like milk,” I said. “It makes me sick.” “The kids in China can have it.”(Well, I can’t remember our exact words, but it went something like that)

I’m sure I said something sarcastic that pissed her off, because she informed me that I could not go out to recess until I drank my milk. Now, somewhere in my six year old logic, this was wrong. How could she insist that I drink something that I didn’t want, didn’t like and had bought and paid for with my own (well, with my parents’) money? So, we sat. And, sat. And all the other kids in first through third grades ate their lunches and went outside to play. And, finally recess was over and everyone went back to class. It was then that I got to throw my milk in the trash and go back to class. Triumph! Or so I thought, as the next day, Mrs. Biddleman and I sat alone in the cafeteria for an entire recess once again, while all the good boys and girls got to go outside. But, I had my principles, dammit! When she did it to me for the third day, I began to worry. I worried mostly that I’d drink my milk and barf. Boy, that would sure show her!  But, by the following week, Mrs. Biddleman had tired of this little exercise in six year-old mind control and gave up. I am proud to say that I never caved.  

To this day, I am very picky about my milk and there are certain brands I refuse to drink. All milk is not the same! My favorite milk is Publix store brand. I like the ½ percent milk best, but if I can’t get that, I will drink 1 percent or 2 percent, too. I’m the one at the grocery store going through all the milk on the shelf to get the freshest one, too. Brian is trained to do the same.

I guess I’m a milkaholic. That’s the first step, isn’t it?

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Once in a blue moon

December 30, 2009 in Life | 5 comments

 

My friend, Dr. Rus D. Jeffrey, took this photo of a full moon in June 2009 shortly after his purchase of a new 1000mm lens. He has graciously allowed me to use it here! You can visit his website at http://www.DrRus.com

I hadn’t planned on writing another blog post before the beginning of the new year, but then I read that we are having a blue moon on New Year’s Eve (unless you are from Asia, Australia or one of those other South Pacific islands, then you will get your next blue moon in January)! 

Thinking this was pretty cool, I looked it up. In a nutshell, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month, unless you are using the Farmer’s Almanac (which defines a blue moon as the fourth full moon in a quarter year). Who knew?

Now, back in our agrarian days, we lived and died by the moon phases. We knew when to plant and harvest crops and perform other rituals by the moon. There are normally 12 moons in a solar year and we gave folksy names for each of them, such as growing moon, harvest moon, snow moon. The 12 moons coincided with our 12 monthly “seasons” and all was right with the world. Well, except when we had 13 moons. That extra moon wreaked havoc, confused us and generally screwed everything up. So, some brilliant soul gave this extra moon its own name, “blue moon,” thus keeping the rest of the moons occurring in their normal order and at their normal times.

Cool, huh? Here’s more about blue moons:

Blue moons occur about once every two and a half years. Or put another way, about 41 times a century.

The last blue moon happened in 2007, when the first full moon of June occurred on the 1st and the second one occurred on the 30th.

This year, our first full moon this month occurred on December 2 and the second one occurs on December 31. This makes this New Year’s Eve extra special because a full moon on New Year’s Eve happens once every 20 years! (If you happen to believe that the crazies come out every full moon, we are going to have a double whammy this year!)

Our next blue moon – August 31, 2012!

If you are using the Farmer’s Almanac’s definition, next one is November 21, 2010 followed by one on August 21, 2013.

Of course, blue moons aren’t really blue. Unless, it is a blue (the color blue) moon. This is apparently a really rare event. According to Wikipedia, a blue colored moon can be caused by dust particles in the atmosphere, like in 1883 after the eruption of Krakatoa. The moon appeared blue for two years. Who knew?

Oh, there’s lots more about blue moons on the internet. Google “blue moon” if you want to know more.

So, there you have it! On this New Year’s Eve, make a toast to the blue moon.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

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The year of living fearlessly

December 26, 2009 in Life | 8 comments

Another year is drawing to a close and I have been doing quite a lot of thinking about what lies ahead. That, in itself, is not unusual, I reckon. People often use the New Year as the place to plan new beginnings. It’s why people make New Year’s resolutions. I get that. It means that people believe they have some control over their lives: that they can endeavor to lose weight, get healthy, quit smoking, learn a new skill, whatever.

I’m doing that, too. I’ve been thinking about the new year for several weeks and I’m trying to wrap myself around a concept that I’m sure I have toyed with throughout my life, and that I am now ready to take to a new level.

This idea is not really a resolution, but if I can make peace with it, I’m sure it will make 2010 be an outstanding year for me. It has to do with fate. Or, more precisely, the opposite of fate. I don’t believe in fate, karma, kismet, destiny, coincidence or luck. Nor, do I believe that everything happens to us for a reason, although this last concept is the closest to how I feel. I believe simply that things happen. And, it is what we do with these things that shape who we are and direct our lives.

As I was searching the internet for a way to explain it to you, I stumbled upon a concept by author Craig Lock. He says that sometimes people come into your life and you know right away they were meant to be there, that they serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson or help you figure out who you are or who you want to become. Lock says that you never know who these people may be; your roommate, your neighbor, professor, long lost friend, lover or even a complete stranger who, when you lock eyes with them, you know that very moment that they will affect your life in some profound way.

That’s good, I like it, but it’s not quite right. I mean, people don’t come into my life to teach me a lesson. They come for their own reasons, don’t they? They come because they have changed jobs or relocated or got a flat tire in front of my house. They come for any number of reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with me. And, I can also honestly say that I have never locked eyes with anyone and just knew we would affect each other’s lives in any profound way.

Lock also talks about the events that happen to us, that may be horrible or unfair, but by overcoming them, we realize our potential, strength and will power of heart.  He says everything happens for a reason and that nothing happens by chance.

Yes, I agree! Yet, I disagree some, too. These life events don’t happen to teach me anything. They just happen.

But, here’s the thing. I believe we can learn from the people we meet, they do create who we become and we can learn from each experience, both the awful ones and the good ones, if, and this is a big if, we choose to be open to them.

I want to share with you a lesson I learned from my new kitten, Charlie. Charlie came into our lives for his own reasons, which I’m sure included food and shelter. He leaped into the unknown because he needed assistance to survive. Our other three cats didn’t like him one bit. Sam Dog immediately took a liking to him, but it was unclear in the beginning if it was because Sam wanted to make friends or eat the little thing.

But, Charlie was fearless. He stood his ground when he was picked on. He pounced on the bigger cats when they shunned him. He didn’t back down or run from the big dog like the other cats do. And, he slowly worked his way into the family fold to make a place for himself even though the odds were against him.

Little kitten Charlie, with no intention of anything, but to survive, taught me that success comes to the fearless!

I didn’t know that Charlie would teach me such an important life lesson when he came up on our stoop that day. We didn’t lock eyes and just miraculously intuit that we would profoundly affect each other. But, it happened just the same.

So, as I reflect on 2009 and prepare for 2010, I am thinking about the people that led me to here. They couldn’t know the role they have played in my life, but here I am as proof!

I expect 2010 to be an epic year for me! 2010 is a new beginning. It is a year to be fearless. It is a year to try new things. Maybe I’ll even learn how to ice skate!

Wish me luck! Oh, wait, I don’t believe in luck.

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I wish you joy and peace this holiday season!

December 21, 2009 in Life | 4 comments

This is the front of a Christmas card. It almost makes me wish for snow!

 

Last night I dreamed that I was ice skating. It was a Norman Rockwell scene, a beautiful setting with skaters and fires and hot chocolate and snow falling and laughter. And, I skated perfect figure eights and felt incredible joy. 

Very weird, cause I don’t even know how to ice skate!  

 

 

 

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