NATIONAL DAY OF HAPPY
Cindy Maddera
"My tile. #aidswalkkc #onestepcloser"
Did you know that Sunday was not only the first day of Spring, but the International Day of Happiness?!? Probably not. Let's face it; international happiness is not really on the top of the list of things being paid attention too. In fact most of the stuff getting all the attention right now are things that are the opposite of happiness. I awoke to news the other morning of terrorist attacks in Brussels and a particular Republican candidate (rhymes with rump) has already started flinging out racist hate. Because that's what he's best at. (Side note: Do you really want a President whose 'best' skill is being a racist fascist hate monger?) Finding happiness on a national level is turning into a Where's Waldo book. I apparently stopped looking for it weeks ago because that's when I stopped uploading a happiness picture into my VSCO ap.
Things like International Days of Happiness make me question things. Am I happy? What do they mean by happy? Is it like happy 50% of the time or just more of a shrug with a general side of happy? How do you measure happiness? When people say they're happy are they being honest or is it just a polite answer to how they are doing? While I was typing all of this, I was also thinking about the layers of dust in my house and how I want to clean under the furniture. If you were to ask me, I'd say that happiness is directly proportional to how clean the house is. Please note that in the time it has taken me to write any of this, I have completely dusted the whole house including baseboards and ceiling fans. I did not however get under the furniture with a dust mop of any kind. I'm only one person.
If I remember correctly, last year I had a hard time with that whole Winter to Spring transition. This time around though, I feel less disgruntled and more unsettled. I keep rushing forward to the next thing on the calendar without being still for the day I am currently on. This week I have had a chiropractor visit and I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. This is all scheduled around wash times and fix times and microscopy times. Next week I have an appointment for my yearly women's health exam and I still have to make an appointment with my general practitioner about the whole cholesterol thing. I have gone from hardly scheduled to over scheduled and I'm not sure how it even really happened. I have yet to schedule a time to get the side mirror fixed on the scooter so I can get it inspected because the tag is due. Nor have I scheduled an appointment for Josephine to have her yearly shots and exam. Then there's the car tag that's due, but I don't need an inspection for that because it's a fairly new car. And now I'm rambling and I haven't even mentioned the garden or the chickens. Every weekend we've planned to work in the garden or clean out the coop has been a cold miserable weekend.
This is also a reason for my unsettled feeling. The weather. One day it's warm, like today. We may even get thunderstorms tonight. Then the next day will be cold. It's supposed to snow on Friday. I am as unsettled as the season, but am I happy? With all this unsettling I haven't really had time to think about it. On the actual National Day of Happy, I painted a tile for Mosaic, an AIDS Walk fundraiser. They sell the tiles at First Fridays and at the AIDS Walk. The Cabbage painted two and then Terry covered her hand in paint and pressed her hand to a tile. We all had a grand time for a good cause. In the moments when I wasn't worrying about how many paint brushes the Cabbage was using or all the paint cups she had placed next to her elbow, I can say that I was happy. I was so happy that I might even start taking a painting class at the studio.
As soon as things are a little more settled.
[Don't Forget to donate to my AIDS Walk page!]