Tag Archives: joy

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Signs of spring 



This is my happiness moment for the day. Crocuses always remind me of springtime at the ranch. Which means family, calves, green coming back, long days, that gopher and crocus in the snow picture at my parents’ place, and the beginning of summer fun. It also reminds me of the flower book my dad put together with stories of all the wild flowers we grew up picking or looking at.  

Today on my walk I saw actual leaves starting to pop on trees. I saw these crocuses growing in the garden of a friend of mine. 

Spring. New beginnings. New life. New hope. Seasons change and we have to embrace the new and find love in happiness in every single minute. It’s the only way. 

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Yoga Cat

Our cat Ella has a very strict rule that she likes to be “close but no touching”. She likes to be in our space, but as with any decent cat, she lives life on her terms. So, with the exception of Jacob, her rule is that she will be close to us, but please don’t try and cuddle, pick up or generally touch her. Jacob (whom I might add does absolutely nothing to help look after her) is allowed to carry her upside down, over his shoulder, like a baby, and about any other way you can imagine. She crawls into bed with him and curls right up into his armpit purring away while he talks to her. If Jenna or I even try and pick her up she meow-screams and tries to wriggle away as if her life depends on it. By the way, this is why I also have to have a dog. Otherwise my self esteem would be completely shot.

The only time she changes this “close but no touching” rule with me is when I do yoga. As soon as I roll out the mat she comes running from wherever she is and is all over me. Sometimes she even drives me so bananas I’ve tried locking her out of my room. This does not end well for me as she lies on the other side of the door with her paw sticking underneath it while she meows mournfully until I give up and let her in. I always start with some forward bends. So as soon as I stand and stretch up into mountain pose before bending down, Ella runs and lays at my feet on her back with her belly exposed. She does this because she loves having a belly scratch. Every time I bend down I have to stay in that stretch and give her a good old belly rub. This lasts about 5 minutes.

Then I go on to table position and she jumps onto my back. She stays there while I do cat/cow pose and goes along for the ride when I go back into child’s pose. Sometimes she even stays on after that while I go up into downward dog, climbing up onto my butt to sit for a while before jumping off. At this point she usually buggers off for a while, leaving me alone to do the rest of my poses. Until I get to the last one, which is the reclining double leg twist. I have my arms out to the sides at this point and she comes and lays in a similar pose to me with her head on my right hand and purrs while I scratch her face.

When I’m done my yoga I do 20 minutes of meditation. My back’s been a bit yucky so I’ve been meditating lying down with my legs up on a chair. Ella comes and either sits on my chest, staring at me while purring (this doesn’t last long – it starts to hurt) or she wraps herself around my head and purrs the entire time.

Then, I’m done. She knows it. And we immediately return to our regular routine of “close but no touching”.

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Scratch my belly, minion.IMG_1302

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My moment of happiness on day 26 of my 44 days came with Ella this morning. Every morning we play fetch (seriously) with her toy mouse while I eat my breakfast and have my tea. Sometimes she likes to hide her mouse in my slippers if I’ve taken them off. This morning she came over to me with her mouse and she was playing with it when I looked away for a few seconds. She started meowing and pawing at my slipper and then looking up at me – very clearly telling me the mouse was in there. I felt around inside and got nothing. She still insisted it was in there. I picked up both slippers, shook them around – nothing came out. I put them back down in front of her and told her that the mouse was gone. She continued looking at me with her big eyes, insisting it was in the slipper.

Suddenly she leapt straight up in the air about 2 feet. As she went up, her body circled so her legs all met in her middle. I watched as she grabbed with all 4 legs the mouse that she’d been hiding under her belly the whole time. She ended up taking it in her front paws, throwing it, and then chasing it when she landed. Little sneak! She totally did it on purpose just to mess with me. I swear she was cat-laughing when she was done.

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The small moments

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We are still snowbound. Not that that’s a bad thing – it’s still quite nice. The great thing about being snowed in is that it forces us to just slow down and be. There’s nowhere to go, nothing to get done, no housecleaning to stress about (because if we can’t get out, no one is going to be able to get in to want a showing). We just are. Just us hanging out at home with each other. And we do weird things, simple things, fun things together because of that.

Well, first I did make them go out and shovel the driveway again. But because they didn’t grow up in Alberta like I did, it wasn’t a feared and despised chore like it was for me. They were actually excited to go out and do it. Go figure. With the three of us working together it actually was, dare I say, fun!

Helps that it wasn’t -30 and there wasn’t ice.

We also had a small comedy break as we watched the mailman drive up the unploughed hill in his Jeep. I have no idea how he kept going, but he made it all the way up and down. Although he was stuck at our driveway for a good 5 minutes while we stood there and watched. He was laughing and laughing and when he got out next door he said this was “one of those slow days” and got back in, drove back down part way and then raced back up the hill. I think there may have been more fun than work for him today. Good day to have a Jeep. Good day to be out with a positive attitude.

Yesterday I talked about finding the small things, today was all about living in the small moments. All those small things that happen that don’t really seem like much, but that actually make up life, that ground and form our relationships, that give us memories. Those are what happens in the small moments of life. I feel sometimes like we get so focused on the big moments of life, or the worrisome moments of life, that we forget the small moments. That’s where the longterm bliss lives. We can have those big happy moments like going to Disneyland, but if you don’t have the grounding of the longterm small moments already, it won’t impact the same way.

Today we had small moment fun. Small moment joys. Small moment bliss.

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Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but we did a couple runs down the road before they ploughed it. They were the best runs of the day. 🙂

IMG_3052Tomorrow’s another snow day, but since the roads are now ploughed, I think we will likely venture out just for a small change of scenery (and to replenish groceries – my word these children eat a lot!)

Day 23 of 44 days of happiness comes from the joy of the small moments and the blessing of being able to slow down and live and breathe in those small moments.

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How to annoy a goose (and a heron)

IMG_1368I came across Henry Heron (on the far left) hanging out with the Canadian Geese this morning. My iphone photo does not do it justice – it was a really beautiful sight with the geese and the heron all in the water. I had to stop and watch them for a little bit (and then fumble with my phone while wearing my gloves to try and take this picture).

The better picture – or video really- would have come about 15 seconds after I took this picture. Henry Heron does not like it when I stop and watch him, it makes him irate actually. Suddenly he started making this terrible squawking sound and lifted his huge wings and started to fly out right over the geese. Well, this seriously pissed off the geese who started jumping up 3 of 4 feet in the air above the water – flapping wings out – and letting out a huge *honk* before bouncing back onto the water. So there was the squawwwwwwk from Henry and then honk (bounce) honk (bounce) honk (bounce).
I actually laughed out loud (making my own kind of honk I suppose) watching all this happen. Obviously I am easily entertained.
Day 17 of my 44 days of happiness comes courtesy of those crazy birds and from the wonderful feeling of unexpected laughter. *honk* *squawk* *honk*
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Let’s play fetch!

This should be a blog about my dog and I playing fetch. But, no, the fetch player in our house is the cat Ella. And a very demanding fetch player she is at that! Every morning starting around 5:30 I hear mew, mew, meow, meeeooowwwwww, scratch, scratch, bang, bang on my bedroom door. I don’t really have to worry about my alarm not going off now that I have Ella there to wake me up. When I open the door I am generally met by her big eyes looking up at me and a little line of her toy mice set up at the door.

I grab one and hop back in bed and spend the next few minutes lying there doing my morning readings and throwing her mouse across the room for her to “fetch” back to me.

Then I have breakfast and then go sit in my chair in my room and for the next 20 minutes before the kids get up she and I play fetch.

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Today, on the 5th of my 44 days of happiness my happiness moment was brought by Ella. Not just because playing fetch with a cat is fun, but because she makes me stop whatever I’m doing and just focus on playing with her and having fun. Full attention, no distraction, living in the moment fun.

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Emotional Age or Physical Age?

I’m turning 44 next week and while part of me says “Holy $h!t how can that be possible?”, there’s a deeper and calmer part of me that says “Bring it”.

When I was a teen I never thought I’d make it to 20. Not that I planned on dying, I just could not imagine myself being so old as to be 20. The worst possible thing would be happening. I would be an adult.

Well, I made it past 20 twice over (and a little bit). I still think the worst possible thing that could happen to me would to become an adult.

I had to go downtown in Calgary a couple of weeks ago to get my passport. It was cold out so we walked through the plus 15s to get to the Harry Hay’s building. While we were walking all the cool downtown businesspeople were out having their cool downtown business lunches. Some of them looked happy and excited to be there and some of them looked completely beaten down by life. What I thought as I walked past them was “Thank God this is not me. I would never be happy living this life down here. I’m so happy I chose a career path that keeps me out of an office.” I know people who have office jobs and love, love, love them. Me – not so much.

My kids have been known to say things like “We have to go to _________ and they said we need a responsible adult. You’re an adult mom, they don’t have to know you have the maturity of an 8 year old, try and see if you can pass it off.” And they say it with smiles on their faces. Because they have told me over and over how much better it is to have someone who loves to live life as their parent (they were around when I didn’t love to live life, so they know the difference).

It seems to me that once you’re in your 40s, unless you have cosmetic surgery (even then it only covers up so much), your face tells the world what kind of life you’ve lived. A lot of my peers look exhausted, run down and like most of the fun has been sucked from their lives. Others look happy and full of life (ojas) – they’re the ones the others talk about “how does she stay so happy and young looking?”

At our church we have “the candy man”. He’s an older man who sits up at the front of the church with a big bag of candy and passes out a piece to each child as they walk back from communion. Last week before church he walked up to me and gave me a tootsie roll, then as I was walking back from communion put his hand out to stop me and then gave me a whole handful of candy (I very inappropriately did a little happy dance in the aisle). I’d like to think he recognized that my inner child needed a little something sweet to get through the rest of service (I was the only adult to get candy). He’s also made me decide that in 50 years or so when I’m finally old I’m going to be “the candy lady”. In a church where so few of the kids know the “grandparent generation” he is loved and visited with by all of the kids.

I may still not be 100% sure what I’m going to be when I grow up. But I know what kind of life I want to live. I want to continue to be the mom singing along (badly) to Def Leppard at top volume while my kids cover their ears and yell “mom!!!!! aghhhhhh“. I want to continue to smile every day and wake up with the feeling of gratitude that the day ahead is going to be another wonderful day. Although my physical age may be increasing, I want my emotional age, my spiritual age, to remain at an age of happiness and joy.

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A spiritual being having a human experience

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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The last few days I’ve been doing different readings and this quote is showing up everywhere. Even randomly on my Facebook feed. My dad and I had a conversation somewhat along these lines over the holidays. It seems to be something that I really need to pay attention to.

I find it so easy to get hung up on being a human being. The physical experience. How does my body feel today. How does my body look. I walked along the river this morning and thought about the fact that I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I felt my body resist this thought (whaaaat? No you’re not. Feel me, I’m here). And at the same time my spirit feel joy at this thought (thank you for finally noticing I’m here. When that body is gone I’m still going to be here, you know).

Being a spiritual being reminds me that we are all gifts from God (even those people who annoy me, I need to especially remember that those people are). We are all here with a Divine purpose and it’s our job to figure that out and live blissfully in it. Find our dharma and live it with joy.

Remembering that I am having a human experience reminds me that any struggles are temporary. This physical aspect is but one part of the entity that makes me me.

That little light that shines in all of us? That is our spiritual being. Shining with love and bliss and brilliance.

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I ain’t missing you at all….

This morning I was listening to John Wait’s Missing You which apparently led me into a morning of self-reflection. The kids have been sick the past couple of days and as a result we have had the opportunity to completely slow down, which has given me time to reflect and read and work and play. Listening to this song this morning made me think of who-I-used-to-be. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about who-I-really-am and how do I get to living that authentic life on a continuous basis. Lately I’ve realized that who-I-used-to-be and who-I-really-am are actually pretty close to the same thing.

In my mid 20s I made 4 major decisions that altered the course of my life. It doesn’t really matter what those decisions were – they were made long ago and with the best of intentions for my future, but as a result of those choices I went from a life on purpose to a life on default.

What does that mean? I used to be a dreamer, I had ideas of doing fun-filled and exciting things with my life. They were always a little unconventional, but being a bit different was something I used to embrace about myself. I may not always have been 100% sure about where the path I was on was going to take me, but I always was certain that I was enjoying the ride there.

When I switched to a life on default, I gave up on my dreams, I decided to take the safe route and choose stability over dreams and fun. Although I had no idea at the time, the result of this meant I was no longer being authentic to myself. Instead of being the star of my own life I chose to become a supporting character in other people’s lives. So, instead of writing my own life story on purpose the things that happened in my life happened in a supporting role, on default.

The result of this is that I have become one of those women in their 40s sitting with a basket full of unfulfilled dreams. The good thing is that I have now realized that I am the author of my own life story and that it is not only possible, but necessary for me to live a life on purpose. To realize that I can live with intention and passion and joy because all of that is my birthright.

I took the kids home this summer for our longest trip back in 9 years. Those 9 years have been fun, busy child-raising years – but they also have been difficult and unsettling years. We have moved several times – across Canada and to two different states. I really wanted them home for an extended time for many reasons, but one of them was that I wanted them to get to see who-I-used-to-be. I felt that they only knew a stressed out and unsettled mom and I thought it was important that they knew that I used to be a fearless badass. The unexpected bonus of this trip was that *I* remembered who-I-used-to-be and realized that that still is who-I-really-am.

If I could rewind time I would go back and do the opposite of those 4 choices I made. But, there are many things about the life that I live now that are wonderful and beautiful and fun and I would never, ever trade them for the world. So, I will live with the life I’ve created quite happily. However, it’s wonderful to know that I now also have the ability to create my own future.

I thought taking the safe route would lead to security and stability and in reality it did exactly the opposite. Which, as I was singing badly but happily (even more happily when the kids started covering their ears telling me to stop, because that is funny) to my song this morning, made me think “If I had followed those dreams earlier in life I probably wouldn’t be in any worse shape than I am now, except I would have known that I tried.” Instead of that being a sad thought it was actually quite empowering. What do I have to lose now by following dreams? Seriously.

I think it’s freaking awesome that we all get to write our own life stories and that we can choose to live our life on purpose!

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