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 60: Nature

I was up at 6am going to the grocery store to buy milk.  As I walked back to my apartment in the cool morning air, my bag laden with milk, butter, brown sugar, bread and apples, I stopped for a moment and looked around me.  The air was crisp and there was dew hanging from a spider's web on a nearby rose bush.   The grass was lush and green and sparkling.  The sky was blue, as it is often here in California, and everything seemed to be at peace.  Even the birds seemed happier.  And I've noticed... I've been having more and more of these moments.  I will stop and think and wonder at the beauty of nature, the brilliance of everything around me, and I will be happy.

Lately, AM and I have been eating healthier.  Less processed foods, less junk.  We watch the sugars on foods that we buy like yogurt, and we don't buy diet foods (except Lo-Carb Monsters... because caffeine is essential).  More often than not, we will make things at home, using natural and fresher ingredients, and I am finally finally learning to cook in a way that is healthy.  I'm not losing weight, but I am not gaining weight either and my body feels a lot healthier and trimmer.  We use whole milk, full fat yogurts, real butter, real eggs, lean cuts of meat and vegetables. Every meal must have some sort of vegetables or fruit... or at least we try to make that happen.

Yesterday's lunch was tortillas with tomato basil hummus and feta cheese.  Very yummy.  This morning we are going German with some German puffed pancakes and apple slices.  I haven't made German pancakes in ages, and they used to be my sister and my favorite food when we were kids.  I'm using the half recipe here German Pancakes, and slicing up some apples and mixing them with brown sugar and baking them down a little bit until they are tender.  Should be great! I'll let you know how they turn out.

I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday morning and stay happy and healthy!

Love and lollipops,

ToryLynn

Episode 58: Dishes

This will shock my family.  This may shock the few friends I have that know me pretty well.  It actually sort of shocks me. Here goes...

I actually like doing dishes.

No, I won't come over and do yours.

Ok, so here is why.  There comes a certain satisfaction from just drowning your arms and hands in a deep sink full of dishes.  Ever since I moved in to this apartment, I have lacked a dish washer.  I no longer could just rinse the dishes and stick them in the machine that would sanitize them and make them scalding hot.  I have to get in there, pick off the dirt and debris of the past day's worth of eating (or so... I don't like doing them all the time). I use the many tools of the job: the sponge, which if Mythbusters is to be believed (and they are) is germ laden and disgusting; the bottle brush to get those hard to reach places which my hands are too big to get and the green fuzzy plastic scrubby thing that is safe for my Teflon pots and pans.  With these tools, I wash away all of the left over sauces and fat drippings that come from a rich diet of not entirely healthy foods.  If a particular bit of something won't let go, just give it a bit of time in a warm bath with plenty of good smelling soap and it will lose its stubbornness and eventually soften and let go.  Sure, my hands may be a bit pruny as I continue to wash, but that will take only a bit of time to mend. And at the end of doing dishes, once everything is dried and put away, there comes a bit of satisfaction that the job is done for the night, that there is order in the world, even in just one small part of the world, and that you know where everything is, in that kitchen.  It is a good feeling.

And I'm finding, life is like that on a larger scale.  Doing dishes is an interesting metaphor for life.  You take time to work at the problem spots, or just set them aside if they are too large to get to and eventually, it will all work out.  You may have to do a little bit of work, spend a little bit of time, and you may have to find the right tools,  but your world can come to some sort of order if you decide that is what you want to do.  Your body or mind may get wrung out, may become a bit pruny, but just sit in a hot bath for a while, forget about that problem even for a couple of minutes, and you'll be able to face and beat it when the time is right. And in the end, you will find that order will be restored and you can look back on your life and those rough times when you were up to your elbows in troubles, and see that those troubles have been put away in the right places, life has sorted itself out, and you can feel that you have accomplished something.

For my friends and families with automatic dishwashers, may I suggest that tonight, or sometime soon, you let go of technology, fill your sink up with soapy water, and emerge yourself into just doing dishes and letting your mind go.  And while your hands are busy, and you are enjoying the peaceful meditation of a gentle, relaxing task you may find your mind wandering and a solution comes out of some that celebrates those quiet moments that come when you are just doing dishes.

Happy sudsing!

Love and Lollipops,

ToryLynn