Tag Archives: Bliss

happiness

The heated steering wheel

It started with a heated steering wheel. To backtrack a bit, this summer my sister was showing me her new Volvo and one of the features was a heated steering wheel. 

I had just come back after spending the last 4 years in Southern Virginia, and it was a warm spring day in Alberta so I’m afraid I didn’t fully appreciate how awesome the option to have a  heated steering wheel is. 

Today I had to take my car into the Volvo dealership for some maintenance and the courtesy car they gave me had (among many other exciting features) a heated steering wheel. Extra exciting since we woke up this morning to a pretty decent dump of snow.  It was a happiness moment keeping my hands warm while I drove on the cold road.   
While I was driving back home enjoying my new ride I got to thinking about my happiness journey and how this year has taken me in directions I never would have imagined. 

Years ago when I read Eat, Pray, Love I was mesmerized by her happiness journey, but with little kids and a crazy schedule I was also pretty bent that she could run away for three months and find her balance. 

Slowly I’ve come go realize that Elizabeth Gilbert could do that because of the things that made her uniquely her. 

The things that have come into my life this year to hold, support, and encourage my happiness journey have happened for reasons that make me uniquely me. 

Not many people have family who opens up a house for them when they are in crisis and needing help. Not many families have an old house that just happens to be empty and sitting there waiting for the right moment to be occupied. 

I called on a Monday and said we were coming home, and by the weekend they had the house ready for us. And I’d seen the place at Christmas. They went to a lot of work to transform it into the place we now call home. 

Likewise, not many people have a sister who steps in and gives them a car to drive (and a pretty nice one at that). She had her old Volvo at home  to gift to Dad, but after he died she turned around and gave it to me to use. Supreme kindness. 
 
I’m learning a lot from following other people’s happiness journeys, but I’m cognizant of the fact that what makes someone else happy may not be what works for me. Likewise, the tools that other people have available to them as they walk their path are different from what I have. 

I am incredibly blessed in my life and one of the greatest things about my journey for happiness has been a reminder of the wonderful life I have been given. 

Which is sometimes  made even sweeter by a heated steering wheel. 

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Christmas tree hunt 2015

Going for the annual Christmas Tree hunt is a big deal in my family. It’s a tradition dating back  before my time, and one I’ve participated in every year that I’ve been home for the holidays. This year we were extra lucky because it was really nice out. I think back on years when it has been -30 and we have shivered through the fields trying to find a tree as quickly as we could.

This year we only had to worry about being done while there was still daylight, it was pretty sweet to be able to slowly walk around and check out all the options.

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As you can tell, everyone was busy looking in different directions for their perfect tree. Somewhere along this ridge they looked at me and said that they would see this moment in my blog as the happiness moment (it’s like these people know me or something).

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It was so nice to have so many great tree options to choose from. I think everyone got their own perfect tree this year.

The girls were looking for little Charlie Brown trees. Jenna picked this little one out to sit in the sunroom at her Nana’s. Photobomb courtesy of Echo the dog.

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Jacob not only picked out the tree for our house, but with a little help from his uncle he cut it down as well. He was the saw man last year too. I’m more than happy to pass that torch over to him.

The tree

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Photobomb by Jenna

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It was so lovely to get out on the ranch and breathe in some nature (and the Christmas-y smell of the trees) and spend some time with family. I am so grateful that we are home again. I love it here, it’s a heart happy place for me.

My happiness moment, being in a place I love surrounded by people I love. We are blessed.

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An Abominable Evening

It feels colder outside today, and when we got home (in the dark) we were hangry and tired. Hungry is bad enough but the hangry combo of being so hungry you are angry can be quite scary!

I made our supper as quickly as possible. I had started a veggie curry soup in the slow cooker this afternoon, so there were just bits and pieces to add to it – the kids each had a steak because they were having a red meat craving. While we waited for supper to start I reminded Jenna that we had some Christmas shows that we could watch at some point.

With a vote of 3-0 we decided to opt for supper in front of the TV tonight and choose An Abominable Christmas. Apparently the kids had seen it before but it was new to me. It didn’t make my list of favourites, but it was cute.

Part way through supper my parental guilt kicked in and I said “tomorrow we will have to sit properly at the table and have a fancy supper to make up for this one.” To which Jacob responded “mom, you’re lucky I’m wearing pajamas.” So I looked at him closely for the first time and realized that somehow he had managed to sit and eat with  only the pajama bottoms on (sadly this is a reoccurring theme in our house). I appreciate his wit though.

I love these Christmas shows – partly because they’re cute and funny – but mostly because it means that we stop what we are doing, cuddle up on the couch, and spend some time together watching a movie. To tie down a teen and a tween for forced family fun time can sometimes be a challenge and I’m grateful that they also look forward to this time. My happiness moment.

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Mary’s Boy Child

I’m finding this Christmas season a confusing one emotionally. I keep looking around for Dad to do my getting ready for the season things with and then remembering that he’s not here. I miss him so much I am left with a sad tinny like taste in my mouth. How can it be that he’s gone?  Then on the other hand,  I’m so happy that for the first time since 2004 I’m either not coming home for the holidays and pretending to be ok with that, or packing up all our presents and fly home as soon as the kids are done school (lots of work).  We would decorate our house, but not get to fully enjoy it, and by the time we arrived home there would be only a few days before Christmas so we were behind the game there too.

So, I’m so happy that we are here, settled in one place for the holiday season. We have more things to decorate than we have time for. The kids and I can bake cookies and make hot cocoa whenever we want. I found the recipe by the girls who own Crave Cupcakes for their shortbread cookies (the article includes an interesting story on how they became Crave) and we made cookies tonight. They are supposed to be for Jenna’s school tomorrow, but we may have eaten enough of them I’ll have to make another batch. Totally worth it though, they were melt in your mouth delicious. It’s a great recipe!

I have had my Christmas Carol playlist going for about a week now, but somehow I forgot all about Mary’s Boy Child, it’s one of my favourites. It came on the radio today and when I got home I had to pull out all three of my versions: the Anne Murray one (which reminds me of childhood and home and good feelings), the Boney M one (which is the one I always heard on the radio) and one that was on a kid’s mixed cd. We sang the carol over and over and ate too many cookies.

My happiness moment was an evening of cookies, carols, and then a cuddle with my girl while we watched a bit of Home Alone.

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Yoga Bliss

I wrote the other day about how doing yoga has made me a better person, albeit not a more flexible one. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it was that really drew me to the practice of yoga in the first place. Mostly it was the way it calmed me and made my soul happy. When I would really get into it I wasn’t as bothered by the fact that that I don’t bend as well as I want to because my spirit would just feel so good.

I was really good and faithful about my practice before I fell into my dark night of the soul years. I’ve struggled as I’m finding myself again to really develop a solid routine that makes me feel good.

I realized that maybe I’m doing the wrong kind of yoga these days. Now, I’m doing my Healing Light Yoga Therapy, which is a completely different kind of practice. One that is so important to my emotional and spiritual well being. But, it’s not something I do on a daily basis. It’s something I need to do in addition to some kind of regular yoga practice.

I had to sit down quietly and think about what it is that I want from yoga. What I came up with was that I needed to go to Kripalu. Lovely, but not really possible at this moment in time. So, I had to think what is it about Kripalu that makes me feel so good?  (ummmm everything) and what can I do here to replicate that feeling.

Lightbulb went off.

On several of my visits to Kripalu I have been fortunate enough to have attended a class led by Rudy Peirce. The way he leads a class made me fall in love with yoga in the first place. Yoga based on compassion and love. Every time I have done one of his classes I feel so much better about everything.

He has some CDs that he sells and I had bought a couple of them on a visit to the Berkshires years ago. I loaded a class on my phone (they’re audio) and spent some time this morning reconnecting with my spiritual practice of yoga.

I felt so much better when I was done. This morning I had felt really anxious and ungrounded and when I was finished my yoga I felt more like myself again. There is something about his voice and the way he so calmly and patiently guides one through the poses that calms me down. I knew it was working because Ella the Yoga Cat showed up on my mat and purred her way though most of the class. She only does that when she’s really feeling the bliss.

My happiness moment was the wonderful feeling I had after my class this morning. I need to keep attracting all that love and bliss into my soul so that I have more of it to shine back out into the world.

As a bonus happiness moment, Jenna spent the entire ride into school this morning looking out the window of the car at the moon shining brightly with Venus underneath it . I love how being in this space is getting us more and more in tune with nature.

   

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Life off the leash 

Years ago I put myself on a leash. I tried so hard to be the person that I thought other people wanted me to be, I  stifled a lot of the things that made me me.  Interestingly enough, the people I was trying to impress with by being someone other than myself either didn’t notice or weren’t impressed. Of course now I know that trying to be someone other than who I really am is an exercise in futility, but it took me a little while to get there.

The unfortunate byproduct of all of this sadly though was that over time of not being true to my self, I lost touch with who I really am. Thus years of anxiety, unhappiness, and tears.

One of the great things about this happiness journey that I am on is that I have started finding myself again. Not all of the stuff I’m finding is fantastic, but it’s all really me. And I’m happy about that.

It’s a beautiful day in Southern Alberta today. Apparently we are in a heat wave – experiencing above average temperatures. It isn’t beach weather, but it’s about +5C which for this time of year is pretty warm. I took the boy and the dog out on the ridge for a walk (I made it both times past where we scattered Dad’s ashes without breaking down in tears…. progress!). I listened to Jacob go on and on about the new Star Wars movie and I watched the dog run and jump in the snow.

Dottie looks like I feel. Poor Dottie had to live life on a leash for 8 years until we moved here where she has the freedom to run. She is an entirely different dog with all the freedom she has. As I’m letting go of the idea that I need to be anyone besides who I am (my leash), I’m feeling more and more like she looks.

Happy.

Freedom

My happiness moment today was walking with my kid and my dog along a ridge where my footprints have been hundreds of times before. I used to ride here, walk with Dad here, toboggan on the hill below here, and I know we have lots of new memories to make along the ridge. Off the leash.

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Happiness mishmash 

I had several small happiness moments mixed all through the day today. I went into our Save On this morning to get something for supper and got bumped ahead in line because I only had a couple of items. When I thanked both the man who let me go and the clerk who suggested it, they said it was one of the perks of living in Cochrane – small town kindness.

Jenna went in to see the head seamstress in the family today to get some help (but also to eat cookies … mmmmm shortbread…. and visit). It warmed me to hear them, heads together, busily planning out her sewing project. There’s a special relationship between grandparents and grandkids and I’m so grateful that she is getting to strengthen that bond.

 

I have put a hard limit on internet at home and the kids have responded by actually playing together and having family time. We watched Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and then Jacob found his track set his aunt gave him a couple of years ago. They spent an hour racing their cars around the track.

About 30 seconds after I took this picture a huge tickle fight broke out with the dog jumping on top of both kid licking faces furiously. That was funny because it wasn’t happening to me…..

I love big happiness moments, but life really happens in these little moments. The ones that don’t cost anything, that aren’t planned out, that just happen because we are alive and we are living in the moment.

 

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Simple things 

Today my happiness was  found doing simple things. It was another beautiful day, I love these bright sunny days that have no wind. I went out for a walk along the ridge – so no wind was essential for an enjoyable time. This was where Dad would go for his walks whenever he could, and where we scattered some of his ashes. I can see why he loved it so much, it’s beautiful. I used to love riding along the creek below, so it had an extra boost of happiness as I remembered the freedom I felt spending hours wandering around with Pirate.

I stood at the spot where we scattered his ashes and cried for a while. I’m not really sure why. So much emotion has been stored up inside. Sadness over Dad, sadness over a lot of things I’ve had stuck inside of me for a long time that I’m finally learning to let go of. I’m starting to realize that I need to feel those feelings and acknowledge them in order to let them leave.  Then I had to giggle a little bit when I thought of how lucky I was that it was warm out. If it had been cold and windy all those tears would have stuck to my face, then I really would have had something to cry about.

I came back in the yard and went over to the hill where the girls were sledding. That brought lots of laughter back into my heart. There’s something about being around people who are really enjoying life that makes me feel the same way. The happiness overpowers the sad all the time.

As an added happiness moment, Jenna is still healthy and happy after her long cough. Saturday night she slept 15 hours and last night 14 hours. I am so grateful she had the time to slow down and spend time healing her body – and then time to get outside and enjoy life!

 

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Sun sledding 

Today was one of those perfect Alberta winter days. The temperature was above freezing (not by much, but enough to be warm – or hot when we were running around in snow gear), the sky was blue, our yard still had snow, and there were kids waiting to go outside and play.

Jenna has been waiting all year to get to play in the snow. She spent the entire month of November inside coughing and looking longingly outside at the snow falling.

The “little” cousins were down visiting for the weekend, and one “big” cousin was able to come over and play – along with some happy dogs. It was wonderful to see the yard fill up with happy footprints, snow angels, and snow drawings.

And, of course… the sledding. Sledding is kind of a big deal for us. Or better yet, going out on the toboggan… but that will come later in the winter. Today was about sledding down the small hills.

We had some visitors watching us while we went down the hill by the barn.

The girls did this hill over and over, laughing and giggling. I joined in one time and laughed the whole way down. I may have broken my bum (I don’t bounce like I used to…. and I did bounce a lot! I’ll be sore tomorrow), but it was worth it.

It was an afternoon full of happiness moments. Listening to children’s laughter, sledding, visiting, being outside enjoying the nice weather. We are so blessed to live where we do, back home with our tribe around us.

 

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