A Naturally Happy Day

First my apologies for missing a few days. I was out of town on vacation with no easy internet. I’m going to post a couple of blogs to help catch up. BTW for anyone who cares, this is my 265th blog, which means I only have 100 more blogs to meet my 365-blog goal. Yippee!!!!

Yesterday I had a naturally happy day. By natural I mean uncontrived - a day that was happy on its own merit and not one I have to cajole myself into believing it was happy.

I’ll give you an example. When it’s raining and cold and I’m freezing to my bones I can say, “At least I’m cozy inside and not out in a leaky tent with no bathroom.”

Or I can say, “I’ve got a sore tooth but I could be relatively tooth-less like my cousin in Tennessee who ate hard candy even as a baby.”

These things are designed to make me feel better by comparison. If I see myself in more pitiful circumstances, then I’ll feel better about my current plight and even silver-lining myself up a couple of notches on the happiness scale.

This method of happiness works, but every now and then things go so well I’m not forced to look at the miserable side of life to get pumped up, and yesterday was one of those.

First, I found a swimsuit that doesn’t make me look fatter than I am, and it was ON SALE! Next, I found a couple of tops that don’t make me look fatter than I am, and they were ON SALE too!

This in itself would have been enough to make for a pretty happy day, but I also went hiking in a wilderness area at the base of Three Finger Jack, a central Oregon mountain with jagged peaks that look more like a bunch of jagged peaks than three fingers. I’ve seen that mountain from every angle and still can’t find the fingers, but this did not make me unhappy because it was gorgeous up there, with snow-fed streams and wildflowers blooming in every direction. We hiked for four hours, which wore me out and therefore must have burned a lot of calories. Lucky for me because I had a bag of chocolate cherry trail mix that a genius invented. S/he stuck some peanuts in there to make it “official” but for the most part it was chocolate and more chocolate. Could a wilderness hike be any better?

Then I dozed all the way home while my husband drove which was great because I was unconscious as he passed extra-long RV’s on curves and risked our lives in other creative ways that usually give me a heart attack.

But the real happiness came when I got home and read my emails. Not only did I have several new site members (thanks and welcome!), but also the book I helped to write about global warming got an endorsement from James E. Hansen, the world’s foremost authority on global warming. HOW EXCITING!

Hansen is a NASA scientist who has written a couple of books about global warming as well as teaching at Columbia University and being called to testify before Congress. He is no slouch. So having his endorsement is such a wonderful thing even though you have never heard of him.

You can see the endorsement on the website www.thebookfootprint.com and/or order the book on amazon.com (www.amazon.com/Footprint-Funny-Thing-Happened-Extinction/dp/0984509003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279605711&sr=8-1

Riding on the high of all this, my daughter’s boyfriend had left the movie, “Big Fish” at our house and I watched it. What a delight! That Tim Burton is a very interesting director, and I was sucked into that movie like a lollipop into my toothless cousin’s mouth. By the time I went to bed I was bubbling. A wonderful day never hurt anyone.