Episode 76: Happy!!

Every night before we go to bed, we sit at our dining room table, fountain pens in hand, and write on small 2"x2" pieces of paper that are cut from 24lb stock.  These pieces of paper are light blue and pink, the color of youth, the color of gender and for us, the color of happiness.  With my pen, filled with a beautiful hot pink ink called "Hope Pink" for breast cancer awareness I write my happy thoughts for the day.  Across the table from me, AM, with his turquoisish pen, filled with Bahama Blue, writes his happy thoughts for the day.  Our world is color coded in this way. When we are finished, we put them into an 8 cup Ball jar and seal the lid.  In this way, we record our happiness, one day at a time and fill a jar with love and hope.

We've been doing this since around February. Originally the thought had been to start January 1st, but we are slow to get organized.  The jar in the picture is our happy jar, with our happy thoughts color coded to suit us.  We put the day's triumphs, the happy little things that we did for each other, or that we talked about, or even just what we ate for the day.  They can be any thought, as long as they are happy and not negative.

The plan is to open the jar at the end of the year as a New Year's ritual and see all of the happy thoughts that we have created over the year.  Ideally, if we had started on January first, we would have 730 happy thoughts in it by the end of the year.  730 happy memories, 730 meals, 730 joys that we could share.  I am not sure what we will do with them as we review them. Perhaps we will create a scrapbook, putting them in order and gluing them to pages as a reminder of all the happiness that we had the year we got engaged and then got married.  Maybe we will let the jar fill (though it is already getting pretty full and we have to pack the slips down well) until our first anniversary, so we can have a record of our first year together and the time that we were engaged.  Maybe we will just tear them into smaller pieces and throw them over ourselves and our friends at our New Year's celebration.  We have a while to go until we pick out those pieces of paper and find out all of our happiness throughout the year.  I'm excited to see what he wrote, since our happy thoughts are private until the end of the year, locked up in our little jar on little pieces of blue and pink paper.

I hope that you all have your happy thoughts and that you share them with the ones that you love, today and every day.  Keep them somewhere safe, even if it is a journal or notebook, a planner or just in your memory, but my hope is that everybody has at least one happy thought a day, even if it is as simple as "the cute guy on the bus smiled at me" or "I ate all my vegetables" or even "I am still alive and my heart is still pumping blood through my body", everybody should be happy, every single day.

Here is to all of your happy thoughts!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 51: Ugh!

Holidays are over!  Officially. I'm back at work, life is... going... and I have nearly finished unpacking what I'm going to unpack for now.  It's nice to finally be in a place of my own, but it's also very hard to be alone in a place of my own.  Fortunately... I have things keeping me from feeling TOO lonely. (Oh, and I started to watch "How I Met Your Mother".  Cute show!

So.. yeah.. the Holidays are over, which means that it is time for me to stop eating like an idiot.  I admit, during the move, I kind of became addicted to fast food, as I couldn't really find much of my dishware.  Now, most of it unpacked (I have about 2 boxes of kitchen stuff left to unpack) and then I'm done with that. All of my cooking gear is out.  Not living with a dishwasher is an interesting thing, but it means that I can do dishes and have them put away in 20 minutes instead of the 2 hour dishwashing cycle.  So... yay!

Holidays being over means that I  also need to start getting back into my routines. I need to start going for walks again, need to start doing yoga again (I got to day 12, and stalled for 2 weeks. I think I'm going to start over) and start just moving around more.  My Wii is for more than just watching Netflix! :)  I have Wii Sports (who doesn't?) and Wii Fit Plus.. and both of those are going in my "let's have fun and not just sit around and do nothing in your new apartment" regime.

Now, I'm not saying that any of these is a resolution.  I don't do that.. I don't make resolutions, especially when it comes to life changing things because resolutions NEVER work!  I have made many many resolutions in the past and I have resolved to make myself better looking, take better care of myself (and those around me) and be a better teacher. Each year, I will do pretty well, until the middle of January and then I fall back on old stupid habits.  Well NOT THIS YEAR!!

I am not resolving to lose weight. I am not resolving to cook better. I am not resolving to work out more. I am just going to do it, and make myself a better lifestyle than the one I had, because the one I had had me dying at an early age of some sort of heart or lung condition.

Oh, while I'm talking about food.. and other great stuff.. Check out what I got for Christmas! http://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-Electrics-PIE-400-Electric-Bakery/dp/B005QSI5JO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325774741&sr=8-1  Now, when I want pie, it will take me 10 minutes, and I won't have the *entire* pie sitting there waiting for me to eat it... I can make tiny little mini pies of low point goodness. Yay for healthy little pies!

Anyway.. work beckons. I hope you all have a wonderful everything, and I promise to post here more often.  I don't resolve to.. I just will!

Hugs and love...

ToryLynn