Good Grief Guru

Posts Tagged ‘Happy thought’

To my surprise, Good Grief Guru received an unexpected blog award yesterday.  This award was received from an unsolicited reader, a fellow blogger I have never met.  Thank you to Dawn Storey from Alphabet Salad who honoured Good Grief Guru with this award.

Receiving awards can be a lot of fun, and for me, an individual who is motivated by feedback, The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award was a welcomed surprise.  It was one way of letting me know this site is having a positive impact on someone other than myself.  Plus, it’s not only fun to be recognized, it’s also fun to recognize others, which is part of what I understand this award to be all about.

Here are the rules:

• First of all, I am to let you in on seven secrets, little-known facts, or random oddities about myself.
• Secondly, I am to pay it forward by presenting the award to some other deserving bloggers, so that you, too, can share in their sweetness.

So, I will delay no longer.  Here are seven quirky tidbits about me.

1. I love scars.  Every scar tells a story, and when someone’s been cut deep enough to create a scar, those stories tend to be memorable and significant.  I especially love my scars, not because I enjoyed what caused them, but because I’ve earned them, learned from them, and have come to see them as beauty.
2. I like the achy feeling my body gets after I’ve exercised.  It’s my body’s way of saying, “Finally!  You did something with me, after all these years!” and that makes me feel a little healthier.  As the saying goes, no pain, no gain.
3. I really like trains.  I like the sound of them, the look of them, and the fact that when I look down a set of train tracks I can pretend I am at any moment in time.  In a world of change, train tracks are timeless.  I look down a set of tracks and it could be the year 2012, or 1883.
4. I have yet to meet a cheesecake that can live up to the cheesecake my family makes.  We eat it frozen, and it’s melt in my mouth goodness.  Cherry cheesecake used to be my favourite until I was introduced to her blueberry version, which has now taken the lead.
5. I like hugable boys my height, which is pretty down to earth.  It’s even better if they’re a bit rugged, but clean, you know?
6. The #1 artist I’ve listened to over the past year has been Keith Green.  His music is high on my frequently played playlist.  It has pulled me through impossible moments.
7. I thoroughly enjoy well-used books.  I have a thing for books that have been underlined, highlighted, and are falling apart because they have been so well loved.

Now, on to the pay it forward part!

1. Pardon my poppet (Mom/life blog)
2. It’s in my head, eh? blog (a blog about mercury poisoning, written by someone living through the adverse affects of amalgam teeth filings that later poisoned his body.)
3. Adara’s natural health blog (Naturopathic medicine blog)
4. Every little wonder  (Photography/life)
5. Alphabet Salad (Rants and ramblings)
6. Keith Green (Songs & Writings)
7. Ted.com blog (Ideas worth spreading, public speaker blog)

Of course there are other blogs I LOVE, but these are private (and at the discretion of the writer to share.)  If you are a writer of one of these blogs, just know I’m rooting for you even though I can’t advertise you.

Here’s to the new winners of the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award!  Way to go everyone!

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I turn on Bobs & Lolo’s “On your feet” song, and my daughter and I dance in the kitchen like nobody’s watching.  She observes my goofy moves and I giggle as she tries to imitate my actions.  Indian bangles are lined up her arm, and hooped over her ears like earrings.  One by one they fly off as we throw our arms in the air.  We twirl in a circle shaking jazz hands as we go, and then fall down in a pile of laughter.  It’s liberating, and laughable, to dance like nobody’s watching.

Check out the video below to see the adult version of a random  Laundromat dance.

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Since I am 33 years old I thought it appropriate to use Happy Thought #33 to write about something I love, that is a little more evident at 33 than they were at age 32.  Laugh lines.  I love laugh lines.  I think they are beautiful, and I happen to really like mine.  If you have laugh lines too I can guarantee I will also like yours.

I know these lines are often referred to as “crow’s feet”, and I may be an anomaly, but the truth is this year when I really started to notice them, their sight made me smile a little bigger.

As my face begins to tell the tale of my personality, as these lines of mine map out the legend of my life, I hope these lines will continue to chart my timeline with a positive imprint throughout my days.

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“Guess where we’re going today?” I asked my daughter Alexis.

She takes an excited breath in.  “Where?” she asks in complete anticipation.  Watching her exuberance about the unknown is like eating chocolate for me.  Her anticipation fills a craving I have to see my kid happy.

“Kids Zone!” I squeal with excitement.

“KidsZone!” she echos.

KidsZone is what we call Indigokids, the children’s section of the Chapters bookstores.  Chapters, which is also attached to Starbucks, has become a retreat for us both.  Often on a Saturday afternoon, I will drive Alexis and I to Chapters where I partake in a relaxing cup-of-joe, while she experiments with crafts, re-arranges trains, or pushes a kid-sized shopping cart.  She often pushes this shopping cart to a particular bookshelf where she picks up the same princess book almost every visit.  Once in cart, she wheels it to me, who am either sitting in the adult sized bean bag chair, or the magnified orange and blue tea cup.  She presents her find like a cat proudly showing its owner the dead mouse it killed and brought home as though it were treasure.  Of course, it is treasure to her, so I give her praise.

Today was the first time we visited Indigokids with my sister, brother-in-law, and niece, Poppet.  Good things for me tend to be better enjoyed with a close friend, or family member.

Alexis and Poppet played with the train-set…

…and then headed over to the craft table to decorate pre-cut hearts with red glitter and stamps.  All of which were accompanied by a certain Princess book.

This visit to Indigokids was particularly enjoyable because we got to enjoy it with my sister and her family, and that makes this a happy thought times two.

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(I highly recommend you listen to this post, but clicking the audio file below.)

Is Zee Avi the best kept secret, or am I the last to know?

I stumbled upon her music the other day, and have been in love with it ever since.  Her music is liken to fairy twinkle dust.  Light, airy, and gave me the feeling of drifting off to Never Neverland.

I found her music on her website at http://zeeavi.com/music and tracked down her YouTube playlist page.

She definitely made my Happy Thought list.  Perfect for background music, or getting carried away with on a whimsical Saturday afternoon.

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How sweet it is to sleep.  Oh, that my dreams of sleep might awaken to reality, and my reality drift off into sleep.

I often take God for granted.  I find Him in everything, and forget He is in all things.  I pause to consider that if He is the breath that keeps me alive, and the breath that is in me is returned to Him when I die, as Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it” what can I do but stand in awe of He who has granted me this very next breath.

To me, that is an abundantly jaw dropping thought.  The breath I breathe, the spirit within me, is it all on loan from God?  Is the soul mine, but the spirit is His, filling up my body like a helium balloon, one day to be let out and given back to the one who gave it?

As I said, I take God for granted all the time.  I am not planning on entering the debate on heaven and hell here.  What I will say is that my version of the worst hell I can imagine, is defined in my mind as total separation from God.  Like the absence of a friend, a lover, a husband, I feel His void when I do not walk with Him, and there is nothing more lonely, depressing or desperate to me than being away from that type of relationship now that I have known it once.  Like-wise, there is nothing more freeing, exhilarating, and completing than when I stand in awe and connect with another being, and even more so when I feel a connection to my Creator.

Dogs are great.  I may have a slight fear (for good reason I might add, having been bitten by a guard dog when I was a child) but I see the value.  In fact there are countless wonders in the world I would count as awe-inspiring, mouth dropping, phenomenal, or simply comforting aspects of life.  But, when I stop and actually focus on what gives me peace, what brings me joy, what is the number one thing I would miss even if everything else were at my finger tips?  I’m not just assuming this feeling now.  I have been there.  It would be a connection to God.

So, my happy thought in this moment of intentional focus and soul-searching, is undoubtedly, unquestionably, those moments when I know there is a God, and that God is as close as my next breath.

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On our second last day in Barbados, some of us ventured out to enjoy a visual feast of an art show, in Speightstown.  It proved to be a vibrant cocktail of lively colours, and fluid images, painted on canvass by Susan Mains, a self-taught artist from Grenada.  Mains‘ works have been showcased throughout the world, and can currently be found in Barbados, Grenada, and Miami.

Gorging on the feast of Mains’ depicted coconut trees, tropical flowers, and regatta sail boats, was delightful.  I love art, and art shows.  Especially ones full of life and vibrancy, like this one.

Heather Percy (my Mom), and the artist, Susan Mains.

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I’m slightly overjoyed with my floppy brown hat at the moment.  I have trouble sleeping sometimes…okay, a lot of the time.  At home I sleep in a very dark room.  Any light keeps me up.  Some sounds, like the sound of the dishwasher, hums me to sleep, but other sounds, like noises I don’t recognize, noises I want to investigate, or turn off, keep me alert.

The first night in Barbados I heard many sounds.  Crickets, whistle frogs, the sound of the sea.  All natural sounds that would normally pacify me to bed.  Then, I heard a new sound.  An industrial noise like the sound of a generator.  The only thing I could fathom was that someone must be running a generator to work on one of the boats at sea.  It wasn’t until the next groggy morning, my mother said, “It must be coming from a kite.”

“There is no way that sound is coming from a kite, Mom” I argued.  I should have listened to the local.  She walked outside and spotted the kite anchored to a neighbouring house, flying over head, humming powerfully down at me.  I hum-bugged back, “You have got to be kidding me.”

I have now learned there is a special way the Islanders make kites, which produces a noise-maker called a “mad bull.”  After a little research on-line I found I wasn’t the only one desperate for a pair of scissors to cut the mad bull down.

Between the indy race car noise flying over head, the bad karaoke hollering out towards another weekend night, and the spot lights around the beach house that can not be turned off, potential for sleep is not on my side.

But, finally, after two weeks of bull, I’m either going mad myself, or finally growing accustomed to the sound.  Now, I just have to find a solution to the intruding lights.  Then, I remembered my hat.  My thick, dark, floppy brown hat.  I wore it to bed last night, its flaps covering my eyes.  Lights out!  For the first time in weeks I slept like a baby.

As it nears bedtime again, I am beyond happy at the thought of my brown floppy hat, and the dreamy hope that another sound, dark, sleep awaits me.

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For three days I have been staring at mangoes.  I’ve been doing a few other things in-between, but every day I take notice of the three green mangoes, too unripe to eat.  It’s cruelty.  Pure cruelty.

I could take stock of some of my favourite life moments in mangoes.

Take high school for instance.  This is the stage I realized someone else could love me through mangoes.  My mother came home from work one day and told me to get dressed up.  We were going to the theater.  Once dressed we stepped into the elevator of her condo.  She told me to meet her in the lobby, and she would bring the car up from the underground.  I went to the lobby and there was my friend, waiting at the buzzer for the front door.  I opened it for him and told him I couldn’t go out, I was on my way out to the theater with my Mom.  I turned around and there was my mother, standing behind me.  “You’re going with him”, she said.

I’m feeling hard pressed to think of a better date I’ve been on.  He took me to a restaurant, read me a poem and gave me a hand-made flower (hand-made by him), and the night ended with us eating juicy mangoes in his car, and us washing our hands in puddles of rain water.

Fast forward to 2006.  I’m in the desert of Northern Sudan, 200 kms northeast of Khartoum.  I am with three new friends; a girl and two men.  One of the men is a local, and the other, a European photographer.  We are going to visit ancient pyramids that are older than the famous ones in Egypt.  I am standing inside an ancient structure, dumbfounded by the hieroglyphic I am not only staring at.  I am touching it.  It’s the real thing, only it’s not in a museum which is the only place I’ve ever seen one.  There I am in the middle of the desert, sounded by nothing other than history and a sand storm swirling outside the open entrance.

We walk back to our car from the pyramids and two men with machine guns ask to see our passports.  We seem to have the right ones.  They let us through and I let out a breath of relief.

We spend the night in a little town on our way back to Khartoum.  The next day we take a small boat across the Nile and go exploring.  We meet a goat herder and our local friend begins a conversation.  The goat herder leads us to a mango tree and starts depositing mangoes into a basket.  He puts the basket before us and tells us we can eat as many as we like.  They are the best mangoes I have ever had before, or since.  They are ripe, and full of juice.  I eat five, because I don’t want to seem piggish or anything.

2012, I’m here in Barbados.  Three days of patience, waiting to eat mangoes that tease me every time I walk by.  My cousin tells me to wrap them in newspapers to help them ripen.  I wrap them and let them be overnight.  Finally, the next morning, they are ripe enough to eat.

The paring knife cuts them easily.  I slice chunks off the seed and cube the mango flesh.  My daughter and I enjoy a juicy mango feast that does not disappoint.  They are worth the wait.

I thoroughly enjoy my life in mangoes.  Wherever mangoes seem to be found with me, a great memory is also sure to be.

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