Fear of Happiness

Forget pursuing happiness. I run from it, screaming. Far too many of my previous happinesses were immediately followed by long stretches of pretty freakin' unhappiness, so I try to play it safe, and never feel happy. Or sad. Thank heavens my dogs don't feel that way.

 My first impulse, when I do feel a twang of happiness, is to quickly subdue it, in case it flowers into a full-blown sense of well-being.
That's been really hard to do, lately. My happy meter is reaching heights not charted since my earliest days in habiting this planet. And, as usual, the happy stopped. I am re-starting, as usual, from scratch.

I think I forgot to post this picture of my mock-orange, my other favourite plant. This was a very good year, I wish it had had MORE blooms, but I really didn't prune it right last year. Mr. MockOrange grew tall and bloomed mightily, encircling my house in this heavenly scent, a scent that brought tears of that h-word to my eyes. Believe you me, ANY good scent around my house is a very good thing. Martha would be proud.

One of the hardest parts about moving the shop was trying to ignore all the letters & obsolete logos I was sorting/packing/pitching in the recycle bin. It's hard to be a closet writer person, and have a huge pile of letters, all mostly pretty, to play giant games of scrabble with. And who can scrap a Lion? Not mE! He's now guarding my garden.

I've realized, after this vast amount of time I've been here, that my immediate female family has a genetic tendency to turn any human male they contact into a useless pile of goo. I'm not saying we do it on purpose, mind, I am just saying it as a sociological oddity. Maybe because there are three of us sisters, we might have made some sort of weird coven, inadvertently in our childhood, and bam. Useless men. Not their fault. We just do it, and it's not our fault either. Some women are just too powerful, and it's draining men. OMG, I love that pun!

OH, on the Stanley and Dad front, they are turning into the happy odd couple. But they gave me quite a fright a few weeks ago, right around the time we were really busy shifting the business. Dad phoned to report that Stanley had BIT him. Naturally, I had already worried about this scenario, so I fully expected that I would be held responsible for patricide by feline. Dad said as much.
I asked how the bite had happened, and Dad reported he was rubbing Stanley's tummy at the time. Dad's skin is paper-thin. Dad had immediately put some polysporin on the wound , yay Dad! I had to try to explain to Dad (whose most usual method of dealing with cats when I was a kid, was to scare the ever-loving fur off of them) that rubbing a cat's tummy was always a slightly dangerous endeavour, especially a male cat. I just couldn't explain cat sex to my Dad. I just couldn't do it. ew.

So, I mentioned that maybe Dad should just pat Stanley behind his toothy mouth, and Dad, of course, retorted "The cat cannot tell ME where to pat him!!" Hey, if Dad pats Stanley at all, I'm happy. Anyway, the bite wound healed, all, so far, has been forgiven, and Stanley and Dad seem to be happy enough together. Dad tells cat stories now, & it still seems slightly surreal.
I hope they are not TOO happy, of course. You know where THAT leads..

I have a new word for how things change as the world changes. Habitatary evolution. It happens all the time everywhere, and I bet a thousand dollars it is happening to people too. Okay, a gazillion dollars. I know money can't buy happiness, but man, it sure helps buy dog food.

OH, and we have confirmed wood ducklings, saw them today, six at least! WhooHoo for Mothering Nature!