Tag Archives: Bliss

Uncategorized

Birthday time 

Today we celebrated my Mom’s birthday. I won’t tell you the number but it was a big one. In the past 11 years we have only been with her for one other birthday celebration, so it was wonderful to get to actually be in person with her on her special day. 

My Mom has taught me so many lessons about life. She’s taught me how to love; fiercely and unconditionally. She’s shown us her love through all our trials and tribulations. She’s taught me to love even when that seems like a difficult thing to do.

She’s taught me about strength. She’s shown me that it’s possible to beat the odds time and time again. She’s a living example that just because people tell you  that something  can’t be done does not mean that has to become your own personal  truth. She’s shown me that you can have tragedies happen and you can still keep moving ahead and achieve greatness and happiness. 

She’s now also Nana and is playing a huge role in the lives of my kids. I always say it’s important to have grandparents because it gives the kids that buffer between generations. It warms my heart that my kids can run over to her place any time they want for a visit. 

I’m so thankful that she’s my mom. She’s my mentor and my friend as well and she’s shown me how to be a better person. 

My happiness moment today was being with her on her birthday. Lucky me!!

Standard
Uncategorized

Morning soul warmth. 

I need to add a happiness moment to my post from earlier today. 

As we were getting in the car to head to school this morning I looked east and saw this sight:

  
The sun rising over the hill while the cattle were grazing.  Every single second I count my blessings that not only are we home, but that we are home. Nestled right in the heart of our family, where our roots are planted, in the house where it all started, with views like this as a way to start the day. 

We are incredibly blessed and fortunate people. 

Standard
Uncategorized

Don’t feel like dancing

I love it when what I think is my happiness moment for the day morphs into a different yet somehow related happiness moment of extended bliss. 

This morning Jacob and I had to go into the drug store to get me some cough drops (still. Hack. Hack). Their radio was playing Don’t feel like dancing  by the Scissor Sisters. 

Jacob and I hid in the back corner of the store and danced around a little bit giggling so hard I snorted. I couldn’t believe he actually let me do that in public (the dancing and the snorting). Afterwards he shook his shoulders and said so that just happened. And then we went back to pretending to be normal. 

Obviously that was my happiness moment. It’s so wonderful to just let loose a little bit. The fact that I could do it with him was that much better. 

When we lived in Quebec, the Scissor Sisters had a link on their page where you could go make photos of people dance to their song. Little 4 year old Jacob and I spent hours pasting our faces onto the bodies and watching them dance around to the video. It was entertainment for days. 

I thought about that this morning and I thought about the friends I had in Quebec. I managed to surround myself with a really amazing group of women in the time I lived there. It was a pack of girlfriends unlike any other I’ve had in my life. 

A great thing about being home again is I get to retrieve old members of my tribe. Friends I’ve had from long ago but haven’t had a chance to spend time with in years. 

This afternoon I met two old friends for lunch. They are ladies I met 14+ years ago at our birth and babies class. Being able to reconnect with these friendships is so important to my soul and my happiness. It was a great lunch – 23C out so we sat outside on the patio, lots of catching up and smiles and sharing. An extended happiness moment. As a bonus we discovered the Canadian 100$ bill really does smell of maple syrup (Canada you are awesome). 

The song may be Don’t Feel Like Dancing, but it left me feeling the happiness rhythm all day long. 

Standard
Uncategorized

Jump into fall

I took a cold induced nap this afternoon. When I went to sleep it was rainy and gross, when I woke up it was warm and sunny. Welcome to Alberta.

After I rolled off the couch and assessed myself – coughing less, breathing easier, thankful for that  – I looked outside and saw some of the family up at my cousin’s trampoline.

I headed across the field and spent a wonderful chunk of time watching kids (and once my sister) bounce and flip and generally have a great time defying gravity.

I’m loving the beauty of fall this year. This is my favourite view on earth. The view from home.

My happiness moment. Standing outside watching our kids – cousins- spending time together. We are so blessed that they are getting the chance now to grow up knowing each other. Standing in the beauty of the place I love so much. Happiness really does begin at home.

Standard
Uncategorized

Opening the gates

One of my favourite childhood memories is of grabbing my horse and heading off through the fields for the day. It wasn’t until I started learning about meditation and the importance of connecting to Source (or God, or Nature) that I realized that this is what I was doing as a kid. Riding has always been a very spiritual activity for me and I have been blessed to have been able to ride for miles and miles in quiet freedom with the companionship of a beloved pony.

I haven’t come across a lot of really difficult gates in my adulthood – either they’ve made them easier to open or I’m not heading into difficult fields, I’m certainly not venturing as far on horseback as I used to. But, when I was a kid there were some incredibly difficult gates. I’m sure part of it was my age and size, but a larger part of it was those gates were made from insanely tight barbed wire – they were made to stay closed. Once in a while I’d be lucky enough to come across one that had a stick wrapped around the wire for extra pull – or I’d get really lucky and it would have that metal snap that went over the top. But, often I’d be stuck at some gate that was just barbed wire wrapped around a pole.

They were so hard to open. I’d stand there with my patient pony beside me pulling and struggling at the gate. Harder yet was when it would open and we would go through, because closing those tight gates was so much harder than opening them ever was.

For some reason it never occurred to me to just not go through the gates. I was busy exploring the ranch and if there were places I needed to go, then I needed to get to them.

Today when I was driving into town I saw a man come out from one of the fields where they are shooting a movie. He was standing at the gate trying in vain to close it. He didn’t have the technique down at all – the posts and wire were only half way up as he was trying to snap the gate closed – and I knew he was going to be there for a while. As I drove past he turned and looked at me with a face of frustration and impatience. I actually thought of stopping to help him, but there were a few other men standing around and I figured surely one of them would help him out. I was late for kid pickup, and things have changed just enough that I’m not comfortable stopping on back roads to help strangers the way I once was.

It made me think though, as I continued to drive to town, how much time I used to spend struggling with those gates. I would have been out all by myself, and have opened the gate so there was no option but to close it. I had been well-trained in the rule that if you come across a closed gate you alway, always, close it after you go through.

I am grateful for that part of me that felt like quitting was never an option. When I come into struggles in life now I think back to how I was as a child and I used to just keep moving ahead. Even if it seemed impossible, if I had a goal in mind I just kept working at it until I reached it. I think about it now as I’m on the quest to be the best me  which has involved stripping myself down and looking at the deepest and darkest parts of my soul. Walking away from that is also not an option. I can’t turn away from that anymore than I could have turned away and left one of those gates open. There’s certain tasks that need to be completed.

Sunrises seem to be my happiness scene these days. I started the day off looking at this:


The sun rising over the barn where I spent so many hours of my childhood. There are bits of all of my family’s souls in this building my grandfather built. It brings me constant happiness to be able to look out my kitchen window and see the barn. My happiness moment today was watching the barn be awoken by the sun this morning.

Standard
Uncategorized

Head in the clouds

I love it when a happiness moment happens first thing in the morning. Starting the day with smiles and laugher is a better boost than any cup of coffee ever could be. 

We were driving down into the hay valley on our way to school when we noticed that there was a cloud lying in the middle of the field. 

We all got excited, as every time we drive through a cloud we reach our arms out and try to grab it. We had low lying clouds that would rest on our mountain in Roanoke so it’s a past happiness memory. 

The three of us unrolled our windows and held our hands out touching the cloud while we laughed at how silly we were. After we stuck our hands back inside we all tried to find bare skin on someone else to show them how incredibly cold our hands were. Which brought more laughter. 

  

I love these drives back and forth from school. Many happiness moments happen while we cruise this beautiful country. It’s good to be home. 

Standard
Uncategorized

The middle of the road 

Jacob has been home sick the past couple of days. Welcome to back to school time- suddenly we are around a lot more people, add in some personal stress on his part about starting a new school – and voila! Cold virus enters our house. I knew he was really sick today because he had to miss 3 blocks of phys ed, making it his absolute favourite day of the week.

Towards the end of the afternoon he seemed to perk up a bit and wanted to watch a movie with me. I pulled out one that I’d PVR’d a while ago just hoping someone would want to watch with me. An old classic (in my mind), Canadian Bacon. As someone who has lived in both the States and Canada I love the stereotypes in this movie. Add in John Candy, Alan Alda, and Dan Aykroyd, as the Canadian cast actors and it is just that much sweeter. I miss John Candy – he made me laugh. They all make me laugh.

It was awesome that Jacob also got a lot of the double entendres of the movie. He remembers living in Quebec and having the language police checking to make sure things were in both English and French. He knows how many people think that Toronto is the capital of Canada. Often when we are out in public I’ll turn to the kids and say “be normal… not normal for you, normal for everyone else”. He now knows that line comes from this movie. And oh my… the scenes in the RCMP detachment, I could watch them over and over.

My happiness moment today was sharing a movie that I love with him. In the 25+ years I’ve been watching it, I’ve never found anyone who would watch it with me. It was wonderful to have someone to laugh at it with. Someone who got it in many of the same ways I do.

Today as I was driving home from the morning school drop off I came across someone else who drives the same way I do on my road. This road I drive as fast as I can and right down the middle. I have to – the pot holes are so bad you have to know exactly where to drive to keep the car in one piece. I was flying in the middle going one way and a big white truck was booting it down the middle going the other way. As we moved to our own sides we waved, braked, and backed up so we were window to window. It was my cousin-in-law. We sat on the middle of the road having a morning chat, giving each other heck for being on “our road”and  in the “middle of the road”. When we were done and had each pulled away, Jacob started laughing. He was looking in the rearview mirror and said “and here you guys go again, right down the middle of the road as fast as you can”.

It’s good to be home. 

Standard
Uncategorized

Pie and ice cream

Tonight we had a dinner party at my mom’s house. It was the first gathering of laughter in the house since before Dad died. A much needed, long over due time for laughing and sharing.

That house has always been a great house for gathering friends and family. From the time I was a young child I remember people coming together in Grandma and Grandpa’s (now Mom and Dad’s) house for tea, for visits, for fun.

When we would have supper in recent years it was usually finished off with a bowl of ice cream. Never were my sister and I so lucky as kids to have ice cream for dessert on a regular basis, but somehow becoming grandparents turned my parents (my dad in particular) into an ice cream eating machine.

Part way through supper Dad would look at one of the kids, point his fork at them and while shaking it up and down say “someone better go set the ice cream out on the counter”. Always one, usually more, kids would jump up and run out to the garage and grab the many varieties of Mackay’s Ice Cream that lined the shelves.

We didn’t eat any ice cream at the dinner table this summer. It just didn’t feel right.

Tonight loving, dear friends of Mom and Dad cooked and brought out supper to share with us. They along with my cousin and her family, my mom, and my family joined around the supper table for some good food, some story sharing, some laughter, and some pie and ice cream. It was a supper that would have made Dad so happy. He would have loved to have been here to enjoy it with us, but I know he is happy that we joined together anyway and celebrated. My cousin-in-law took one for the team and sat in Dad’s seat at the table and he did so with class and finesse. It was fitting.

What an act of true friendship-kindness from this couple whom my parents love so much. It was so incredibly thoughtful and so timely of them to have a dinner at our place. The laughter and joy that belongs in that house was brought back and the mood was light and free from the sorrow of the past few months. Fitting too that it was shared with my cousin and family as they are an extra daughter, son, and grandkids to my parents and siblings to us all. More people who needed to share in the joy of the occasion. The happiness moment today.

Standard
Uncategorized

Cat and mouse games. 

With the unstructured life we lived in the summer, Ella the cat and I fell out of our routine of playing fetch in the morning. She also had stopped joining me in my morning yoga stretches  

Ella being very uncooperative as I try and take her picture.    
Aladdin being posing for the camera. He didn’t want to be left out. 

 The last couple of days as the kids have finally settled into their school routines, Ella has decided it is time to revive our old game. Fortunately for her, Abu and Aladdin don’t seem to care about her precious mice at all. Although Aladdin is starting to show some interest only because Ella is so obsessed with them. 

Playing fetch with Ella became part of our morning routine pretty much right after she adopted us last year. It is something I really enjoy- a good bonding time with her as well as a quiet mind time for me. 

I realized today that being back in our routines is a good thing. Because of new school times, Jacob and I have an hour in the morning together. We go to Tim Horton’s and order the cheapest drink we can get and sit together and visit. It’s quickly becoming a favourite part of the day. A chance to have quiet one on one time with my teen. 

Because we are eating at a better time we are cooking in a more structured manner. Tonight being Friday we had our traditional pizza night. It was wonderful all of us being in the kitchen together cooking the meal. 

We are getting to bed earlier and are better rested. Again a bonus to the routine. 

Before starting to study arurveda I was not as good about followijg a routine. Now that I am so used to following my Ayurvedic routine I find our whole household is a much happier and healthier place. 

My happiness moment today was when Ella dropped her toy mouse on my yoga mat and sat and stared at me until I sat up and threw it for her. She knew it was time to pick up our old habits and structure ourselves again. Much as I like to claim to be a free spirit, our house needs a certain amount of structure in order to thrive. 

Standard
Uncategorized

The good, the bad, the happiness in between….

Today I have been in a real pisser of a mood. I’m not sure what has made today any more spectacular in the bad mood department than any other day, but the feeling is here and it’s real.

There’s a couple of specific things that are irritating me, nothing that isn’t a first world problem, but irritating nonetheless. While I was away my cousin discovered that my furnace isn’t working – which means we have no heat. Perhaps not a big deal in some places, but it was snowing here when we landed on Saturday and it’s been cold and crappy since then. Today wasn’t bad, but the old house didn’t seem to know that and held onto the bone chilling cold of the past few days.

Because of this I’m tired, I need to sleep in my own bed, covered in purring cats. The purring cats and the lonely dog agree with me – they’re not happy that they’re alone at night.

Jenna was home sick today. While that’s really a poor Jenna thing, I managed to make it about me and was all I never ever get any time to do the things I need to do. My course work is so neglected because I’m always running around after people and I never have a freaking moment’s peace.

I had a massage today. I have found a wonderful woman who not only is working out all the tension and the anger and sad emotions that I’ve been storing in my hips (see where this is going?) but she knows how to release my jaw so that pretty soon I will actually be able to chew food on both sides – and maybe even not walk around with it clenched all the time. What a blessing that is!

I’m pretty sure she hit my anger button today as she was releasing things and it has just about sent me off the cranky deep end. The good thing is after all the work I’ve been doing I know this is just a feeling and that it will pass. Sometimes I can separate from that feeling and just allow it to work itself out of me – which is what it needs to do.

So, as I’ve been observing (and sometimes actively participating) in these pissy feelings I’ve come back to the intention of my blog. Happiness. Thank goodness I decided to follow 44 days of happiness last January when I turned 44, and I’m even more grateful that I decided to continue looking for a moment of happiness in every day since then. Because even with all the trials and tribulations of this year there has always been a moment of happiness in every day.

The flip side of my cranky feelings of today are these:

This wonderful, old, loving house we live in. I love it, the kids love it, it has been home since the moment we walked in the door. For some reason the past few days I’ve when been talking to people, I’ve told them the story of the miracle of how we returned home. This old house was empty and when I was home at Christmas time there were no appliances, the rooms were boarded off, there was no working toilet and it was just not in good shape. When I called on a Monday and said we were moving home I asked if it was possible for us to move into that house. By Sunday when we arrived, my cousins and aunt and uncle had cleaned the house, put in temporary furniture, bought some basic groceries (cheese and buns for that boy of mine), put appliances in, and even left a huge bar of chocolate. My Dad let me use his old car  so I was able to get around, and after he died my sister let me use her old car that she had been in the process of gifting to Dad.

If ever I doubted that miracles happen, the wings that lifted us up and brought us back home have convinced me that we are very much loved and very much supported and that with love absolutely anything can happen.

While my furnace isn’t working my mom has very graciously opened her doors to the kids and I to crash here. We can be messy and annoying and loud and she has been so kind about letting us stay here.

So, when you compare all that love and kindness and support to something as insignificant as the furnace not working – the scales are definitely tipped in favour of the happiness, loving, wonderful side.

Every time I have gotten frustrated today at being overly needed by kids and have groaned inside about it, they have either said something funny or come over and given me one of those awesome kid hugs followed by I love you mom. There is no better feeling in the world than that. I would never, ever trade being needed and loved for being alone and unnecessary. I consider those two my greatest blessings. Again, no contest – the happiness side of that coin is the winner.

As an aside, I spent a great part of the day angry about the fact that I’d lost my headphones. I had racked my brain trying to figure out where I had left then and finally I was forced to come to the conclusion that someone had broken into the house and stolen them (yes, only them – they had left everything of value and not messed anything up, but stolen them for certain). I found then in my backpack just a little while ago and did a little dance of happiness.

I’m so thankful for my happiness project and how it continues to steer me in the direction of joy, peace, bliss and happiness. I’m even thankful that these pissed off emotions are working their way through me, because the other option is that they stay stuffed in my hips forever and that’s not desirable.

My happiness moment today was watching Jenna walk across the room holding Aladdin. She holds him like a baby and from the front all you can see is a big ball of fur snuggled into her chest. She walked past me and he had his arm around her back giving her a huge hug. He loves that girl so much and spent most of the day cuddled up with her helping her feel better.

Standard