Month: January 2021

Happiness2 Day 8 (1/28)

I really enjoy yoga. I used to take it 3-4 times a week at the boutique gym about two blocks from our old house. When the pandemic started, they went virtual, and started offering it on a slightly different schedule, but I kept attending, because I really like our small community, and yoga just makes me feel good physically and spiritually. I basically don’t do yoga on my own, though–I need a class.

I hadn’t taken a yoga class in over a week, because various things got in the way, including our furnace being broken. When I used that as an excuse on Monday, Matt said I could have pre-heated the bedroom, and taken the class. So I decided to try that today, and it worked! I turned on the fireplace and a space heater at 4:00, and closed both doors to the bedroom. At 6:00, when yoga started, it felt like a normal temperature (for winter in a house with a working furnace).

So, yes, I’m happy I got to do yoga today (without freezing).

Happiness2 Day 4 (1/24)

Today it made me happy that Kim asked me to print off the book she has to summarize for English class (everything is online right now) and that she was very impressed when I handed her the big stack of paper (266 pages, but I did print double-sided, so it was only 133 pieces of paper).

Happiness2: Day 3 (1/23)

Today, my happiness stems from friends. I was happy that my good friends Dave and Doty stopped by and we had a socially-distanced chat on our front porch, and that my friends Alex and Anthony came out to belatedly celebrate my birthday at two different establishments (outdoors, socially distanced). And I’m also happy that my friends Carolyn and Heidi (and her baby Emilia) are interested in joining me for a belated birthday part 2 next weekend (I’m thinking we do all females, with the three of us plus Kim, somewhere bearable–and hopefully next weekend isn’t quite as cold!).

P.S. I’m also happy that I finally figured out how to set the time zone on this site, so tomorrow my posting time should show up correctly.

Happiness2: Day 2 (1/22)

I know it’s technically tomorrow already, but I haven’t gone to sleep yet, so for me it still counts as Friday, January 22.

I just finished getting ready for bed, and as I was getting ready, I was trying to decide what I would talk about for my happiness today. The thing is, there are so many things: family stuff, work stuff, food stuff, friend stuff—it’s hard to decide. Then I landed on it: my office.

I don’t mean the one downtown I haven’t stepped foot in in months, but rather my home office. It’s a very pleasant space in general, my little aerie at the top of the house. When we moved in, it was already painted a cheery blue, and Matt kindly put together a great desk for me. I put together my own riser to make it a standing desk when I want. So I have my nice blue rolly chair, a cheap footrest that is just the right height to be truly ergonomic when I’m sitting down, and a cushy mat to stand on when I’m standing up.

So, it’s not actually my office itself that made me happy today, it’s the things that happened in it: 1) I stayed warm, because even though our furnace has been broken since sometime overnight Wednesday, the office has its own electric heater on the wall that keeps it toasty; 2) I had exactly the right amount of work today—it wasn’t one of those days where I’m drowning in too much to do or so bored I start surfing the internet, but I had just enough work that was nicely varied, so I got it all done in the allotted time; 3) Kim came upstairs to say hi and get a hug. Usually she opens the door at the bottom of the stairs, and I lean over the railing to talk to her, but she came up right as I was finishing work just to say hi and to claim the morning hug she had forgotten to get in the morning.

Re-Introduction: A New Year of Happiness; or, Happiness2: Day 1 (1/21)

I haven’t touched this blog in years (four, to be exact), but I was inspired to start another year of happiness for my 45th birthday for a number of reasons:

a) the seemingly never-ending coronavirus pandemic and all the advice coming from almost every direction that to get through it with your mental health at least vaguely intact, you should find things to be happy about/grateful for on a regular basis

b) my friend Dilovely dedicating November 2020 to 30 days of gratitude

c) turning 45! Almost as eventful as turning 40

d) it’s not a leap year like it was for my 40th, so it should be (marginally) easier to get through this

Oh, how much has changed since January 21, 2017! I just reread my last post, and, well, almost nothing is the same anymore. I’m still married to Matt, but the dogs are both dead (Georgia in March 2018, and Marty in March 2019). Matt and I now have a teenage daughter, Kim, who joined us for foster-to-adoption in June 2020, and we formally, legally adopted her nine days ago. I’m now a cancer survivor (brain cancer found in June 2018 and all treatment completed by October 2019, though I do still get MRIs on a regular basis to make sure it’s staying gone), and all of us in DC are coup survivors (remember January 6, 2021?!). We no longer live–nor own a house in–Richmond, Virginia. We now live in the house we bought in December 2020 in Washington, DC. Rather than one awesome fireplace (like the RVA house), this house has two awesome fireplaces. We also no longer have the truck Matt was so excited to buy in RVA–we traded it in for the much more family-friendly Subaru Forester after Kim came along. Matt had already started back at MPD by my 41st birthday, but that was working for Chief Newsham. Now he works for Chief Contee, who started on 1/1/21. I’m now working for DC’s Interim Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice. Rather than the worst choice ever for president, yesterday we got our breath of fresh air (after holding our collective breath for four years and clenching our teeth for two weeks) in the form of the completely uneventful swearing in of President Biden. Oh, yeah, and we’ve been in a global pandemic since the end of 2019 (March 2020 in this area).

I did learn one lesson from my last attempt at writing something daily, and numbering my posts: have the days written out ahead of time (I kept messing up last time around and having to go back and renumber, when I’d realize that I had skipped a number or used the same number two days in a row, etc.). So before I started writing this re-introduction, I grabbed a calendar, and wrote the number on every day (then I got to the end of December, at which point I realized that my calendar didn’t have January ’22 on it, but since it was only 21 more days, I wrote them in the margin).

Oh, and before I forget, my happiness for Day 1 is Matt coming home early (as in, at a normal time, for probably the first time this month), a great meal from Albi, and slippers for my birthday from both Matt and Kim! Instead of being perennially under-slippered (and trust me, since the furnace went out today–something that did not make me happy–slippers are an absolute necessity!), I’m now awash in slippers!! They also got me a fun board game–Blokus. But the slippers are probably the happiest part of my day, that and all the random friends of mine who wished me happy birthday and claimed to have gotten me a new president for my birthday. So far, 45 is turning out pretty well…just gotta get that furnace fixed.