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Happy, Pt. 3
Here are my entirely arbitrary rules for compiling my list of go-to things that can perk me up when I’m feeling down. Everything on the Happy List has to be fairly specific. Nothing too vague, obvious, or insipid such as “reading a good book,” “spending time with family and friends,” or “doing kind things for others.” (As delightful as all of those things are). “Jetting off to Monaco for the weekend” or even “spending a weekend in NYC” don’t count, but “ogling the zebra finches, who spend their days pooping on the exquisite wrapping paper that lines their equally exquisite bird cage at Caspari on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville” does. The basic requirements: specific, doable without too much planning or forethought, and free (or nearly free).
Here’s what’s in my Emergency Happy Kit:
Visual Therapy:
- Looking at photos of puppies on the Puppyfind website, or for more diversified animal therapy options: the Cute Overload website
- This video of my nephew chortling with wild abandon. Watching this video will make you feel like you won the happy lottery. I can’t get the link to look pretty, but click on it and make sure you watch the best part, between seconds 30 and 34.
- Certain photographs of my own family. This set for instance:
Retail Therapy (Closely related to Visual Therapy, because no purchase necessary to get the mood-enhancing benefit):
- Stationery stores. Paper, paper, paper.
- Fabric stores work too. I don’t even know how to sew, but looking at all the different fabrics makes me inexplicably happy…I know. I don’t get it either.
- The greenhouse at Merrifield Garden Center.
- Browsing in the children’s picture book section of any bookstore in the evening all by myself.
Food and beverage:
- Smelling Earl Grey tea. It’s better than drinking it. But the best of all is to alternate bites of Breyer’s natural vanilla ice cream with sips of Earl Grey tea that’s served in a pretty teacup, naturally.
- A green tea latte from Starbucks, unsweetened. Looks vile, tastes divine.
Miscellaneous:
- Spending an hour or two playing my ukulele and singing songs from my Daily Ukulele songbook.
OK, now it’s your turn…What gets you out of a funk? READY? GO! Please leave a comment to share what’s on your list!
Lost
I used to be best friends with Siri…a harrowing tale of love, loss, and betrayal.
A spectacularly bad sense of direction has plagued me for years. You can’t even imagine how much time I lose on a regular basis because of my inability to navigate, not to mention the psychic toll I’ve paid over the course of many years of being lost (and completely losing it) on beltways, highways, byways, and windy back country roads…
When we first moved to Charlottesville, before the GPS existed, I would call Colin from the road in a panic. A typical call would go something like this:
“Hell-”
“I have no idea where I am! I’ve been driving for an hour and a half and I can’t find my way back home!”
“Where are you now?”
“What do you mean?! I just told you I have NO IDEA where I am! That’s why I’m calling you!”
“But can you see any road signs? Do you recognize anything?”
“Ummmm…OK, wait…There’s a fire hydrant on the right. Uh…I’m passing a big oak tree on the left. There’s…a field with black and white cows in it.”
It wasn’t as if I could go somewhere once, twice, or even three times and then be able to figure out how to get there again. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this has been a fairly serious handicap in my life, one which could easily have turned me into a homebound recluse. I was extremely reluctant to go anywhere I hadn’t been before, and stopped going anywhere alone at night.
In those early days there was one particular class I really wanted to go to, but after repeatedly getting lost en route there and back, I was going to give up on it. That’s when Colin came to the rescue with an ingenious plan. He made a recording of directions for me, with a sensitive understanding of the kind of directions that would be meaningful to me.
“Go down a steep hill, and then up a hill. Pass the house on the left with a giant pumpkin,” I’d hear on the tape. (Long-time Charlottesvillians may remember the house on Rio Road that used to always have a huge papier mâché pumpkin in the front yard around Halloween). “Now turn off the tape until you see the traffic light at the T-junction.” On the flip side he recorded directions to get me back home, because: yes, I needed them.
It worked! I got to my class and back without any problems! I continued to rely on my tape for the next week or so. One day I was on my way to class when I felt around for the tape so that I could pop it into the cassette deck. Suddenly, I remembered with horror that I had taken it out when I had cleaned the car and had forgotten to put it back in. My heart started hammering and I considered just pulling over, but as I continued to drive I realized I could hear Colin’s voice in my head, narrating the directions. I had the whole thing memorized!
“Pass the house on the left with a giant pumpkin.” YES, by George! There it was! It was like a miracle. How did he know it would be there?! I never needed to use the tape again.
Colin bought me my first GPS in preparation for the sabbatical year we spent in Carrboro, NC four years ago. It was a revelation. I never felt so liberated in all my life. I spent the whole year driving confidently around the the Triangle with my new best friend, the GPS lady.
One day as I was about to pull out of the driveway, Colin appeared at my window. I rolled it down and he leaned in to give me directions. I raised my hand and interrupted him to say airily, “I don’t need you anymore. I have my GPS.” Honestly, he looked like he might cry.
Sure, I ended up in a corn field once when I was trying to get to the mall. Sure, I didn’t particularly appreciate GPS Lady’s tone of voice whenever I missed a turn she had pointed out to me. Her “recalculating”s always sounded slightly pissy to me. I was just waiting for the day when instead of “recalculating” I’d hear her say in her cool, modulated tone, “You Dumbass. I said, turn right onto Hillsboro Avenue.” But apart from a few hiccups here and there, the GPS was a rousing success.
And then came…the iphone! At first I tried to ditch GPS Lady, but the lack of voice directions meant that the iphone navigation wasn’t useful to me. Then with the latest upgrade, which included voice directions, Siri became my new co-pilot. I thought this was going to be another dramatic, life-changing breakthrough for me. I thought we were going to be BFFs.
But while GPS Lady and I had a tense, but cordial relationship, Siri and I have far stormier, conflictual interactions. Basically, we want to pimp slap each other on a regular basis.
This Sunday I was trying to get my kids to a roller skating birthday party at the Greenwood Community Center in Crozet. Here’s a transcript of the fight we had:
“Directions to Greenwood Community Center”
“I didn’t find any places matching Greenwood Community Center”
“Find Greenwood Road”
“Here’s Broad Ave., Charlottesville. I’m not certain this is where you meant. Though.”
(Now I know she’s just messing with me).
“GREENWOOD ROAD in CROZET”
“I don’t know what you mean by Kroes A”
“I said, ‘CROZET!’ C-R-O-Z-E-T!!!” I shriek, “Where is Greenwood Community Center in CROZET?!”
My three children are very, very quiet in the back seat.
“Sorry, I don’t know where that is.”
“What good are you to me?!”
“Checking my sources. Would you like me to search the web for ‘What good are you to me?'”
“I thought we were friends. You’re DEAD to me, Siri. Do you hear? DEAD to me!”
1 year later…
I started this blog one year ago yesterday as a test run for the blog I wanted to write with my siblings. Since then, I have:
- become
a teeny tiny bitobsessed with the project, and - been as disciplined as possible about posting every day, Monday through Friday, for fear that my natural inclination toward indolence would overtake me and I’d give up on the whole thing, and
- regularly gone to bed at shocking hours in order to write, and
- shared all sorts of deep, dark secrets, and
- struck fear in the hearts of people close to me (“Are you going to blog about this?” “This isn’t going into your blog, is it?”), and
- tortured my children with what basically amounted to a year-long photo shoot, and
- been braver than I’ve been in a long time, because it really does take a certain amount of courage (foolhardiness?) to push that “Publish” button, and
- published 222 posts (more if you count the ones I deleted after publishing), and
- corresponded with people all over the world, and
- made a new friend when she came up to me and introduced herself, because she recognized me from my blog.
But, I have:
- had to face the fact that with a full-time job and three children, something had to give, and so:
- let my house and yard go to hell in a handbasket, stopped exercising, and most shamefully: neglected to pay the bills. Fortunately, Colin has now taken over the bill-paying and I’ve started to exercise again. (That’s me, staggering around the neighborhood like a broken-down nag, bringing down the home values every time I go for a “run.” I’m so sorry, neighbors). The house and yard, however, may very well languish for all of eternity in their handbasket in hell. (Again: I’m so sorry, neighbors).
It’s all been worth it, because I’ve started to find my way back to the girl I used to be, who thought she could fly if only she practiced hard enough, and who used to think she’d be a writer when she grew up.
For the next two weeks, I’m going to republish some of my favorite posts while I give myself time to think about where I’m heading next with this blog. I’ll be back here with brand new posts on October 1st and am hoping to launch “Hangin’ With the Harpies,” (the sibling blog), around that time as well. Please stick around and keep reading, and if you’re so inclined – please share “owonderfulwonderful” with friends. This year has been a blast “wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!” THANK YOU!
no words
I’m a dork.
One week ago today I reached two important milestones.
The first one had to do with what I like to refer to as my chariot of fire:
My sweet pimped out ride. See that Albemarle County Schools magnet on the gas cap? Custom, Baby.
Many years ago I was chatting with my much younger, much hipper cousin and I was happy to discover that we had something in common in that we both drove Hondas.
“So what do you drive?” he asked in his smooth, understated sort of way.
When I replied that I drove an Odyssey, he claimed that he’d never heard of it. I was flabbergasted, but very earnestly explained to him that it was a minivan. As soon as he heard the word minivan, I could see relief dawning all over his face. I think he may have even actually said something like, “Phew. That explains it! I’m so glad I didn’t know what that was!” Oh yeah? Oh yeah?
Check it, cuz!
And then on the same day…THIS:
About five years ago I wrote one of those 25 Random Things About Me lists. Here’s what I wrote for Numbers 10 through 13:
10. I used to think I’d be a writer, and wrote all the time before I went to grad school and it squelched all the creative juices right out of me.
11. Don’t get me wrong, getting a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Columbia is probably the accomplishment of which I am most proud.
12. In fact, after 11 grueling, soul-crushing years and a stomach-churning dissertation defense that left me shaking, it really bothers me that I don’t get an alumni magazine addressed to Dr. Adrienne X, like Dr. Colin X does. Shoot, I’d be thrilled to get a fund-raising appeal every now and then. I might even give them a buck or two. The fact that I don’t get junk mail from Columbia deeply disturbs me, and makes me wonder whether I dreamt it all.
13. When I confessed this to Colin he got a gleam in his eye and I had to tell him that if he made a call to the alumni office, the ensuing junk mail from Columbia would be meaningless to me. Meaningless!
Well, friends, I’m going to have to revise my list! It wasn’t a dream after all. It took them nine whole years, but Columbia finally tracked me down. Now I know I got a Ph.D for real, because I have the junk mail to prove it! After Colin swore that he hadn’t contacted the alumni office on my behalf, I broke out into a happy dance.*
*By the way…#21 on my Random Things list: I am a spectacularly bad dancer. (Some things never change).
Shopping in C’ville
I recently got to spend a delightful Saturday with my best friend Janel, who came for a short visit. We spent a leisurely day wandering around the Downtown Mall, which has some of the best shopping anywhere.
Our first stop was the bustling farmer’s market on Water Street , where you can find everything from bee pollen to cut flowers.
The Downtown Mall is dotted with boutiques that have beautifully curated collections. Here are four of our favorites:
At Roxie Daisy on Water Street there are elegant displays in predominantly neutral tones:
We especially loved their collection of cards:
O’Suzannah on 4th Street is organized like a box of watercolors with its monochromatic-themed displays that make you want to linger for hours. This, for example, is the blue section:
The charm of the displays at Caspari on West Main is the gorgeous mix of rich hues:
A stop at ChaCha’s, headquarters for kitsch and neon on East Main, is obligatory.
Someone bought the Barbie chandelier shortly after we popped into the store:
On the way back home we capped off our expedition with a stop at the brand new Pearl Bakery on Main Street:
How to summarize the day?
Seen at Roxie Daisy
Tank Man
Twenty-four years ago today this happened:
He was an ordinary man, on his way home from work. Perhaps he had stopped off at the grocery store. Somehow, the prosaic plastic shopping bags he held in each hand lend power and poignancy to the scene. Seeing the line of tanks advancing, he decided that he had had enough. In the two days before, unarmed civilians had been massacred in Tiananmen Square. Knowing this, he stood all by himself facing down a line of tanks, armed not with a rifle or even so much as a can of tear gas, but simply with moral indignation and courage so audacious it takes your breath away. The “Tank Man” was hustled away and has never definitively been identified. His fate is unknown. But his act of extraordinary bravery inspired the world and will never be forgotten.
WiFi Woes
The view outside my window.
I was hoping to keep up with posting while in St. Louis, but am being thwarted by painfully slow WiFi. I’ll be back next week!
o wonderful, wonderful 