Monthly Archives: February 2022

About the Perfect Day

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About thirteen years ago, our family took an epic trip to the other side of the world to visit friends that lived there. Besides the obvious attraction of reuniting with our peeps, along with free accommodations and translation services, it was a warm country surrounded by ocean. In other words, a perfect holiday destination, completely different from our temperamental country of origin. It was a vacation I’m remembering wistfully today, in the midst of our February deep-freeze, as it were.

Towards the end of our time together, we crammed all eight of us – with suitcases – into their car and made a pilgrimage to the sea. Our destination from their inland city was less than Vermilion to Edmonton, but it took us all day to get there – we actually broke up the trip into two days. Because: Indonesian roads, traffic and time are just not the same as in North America. We arrived at our beach house in the pitch dark and fell exhausted into bed, the roar of the ocean so loud we thought there was a good chance we would be swept away in the night.

The next morning, when we cracked open our bedroom door – after checking that we were still, indeed, alive – we were greeted by Dave who had (bless him) made coffee and opened up an entire wall of doors to a porch where we could sip and stare at the ocean in our front yard. Not long after, we took a walk along the beach until our crew found a place to play in the surf. We spent the rest of the day exploring the jungle (and somebody’s fantastic treehouse – even though we weren’t actually invited to), alternating with dips in the pool and playing beach volleyball. When the sun disappeared, we ate a perfectly grilled supper of marlin steaks, prawns the size of our hands, and fresh vegetables. And then we played all the card games that Lynn could think of until we were too tired to stay awake anymore, even though we didn’t want the day – or our time with our friends – to end.

At one point that afternoon, when the sun was high and we were cooling off in the pool, Dave pronounced that it was A Perfect Day. It is something that has always stuck with me. While I don’t usually pine for sandy beaches, there is something to be said for the resetting nature of time by the water. That day we had nowhere to be but HERE AND NOW. The day progressed slowly and quickly. We spent time outside, we walked, we were curious and explored, we got a little wet and sweaty, we ate some pretty simple food and we were with people we loved. It’s a pretty simple equation.

And one that could actually be replicated anywhere. Sure, a beautiful exposure to ocean or mountain is helpful but it’s also good to remember that Perfect Days are just the sum of Simple Things. Plus, the time and the awareness to realize that Perfect can be Now. Even in February. In Alberta.

About The Happiness Equation

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I’ve already said this: I am a fan of Neil Pasricha. My admiration started with his podcast Three Books and then I realized I had heard of him before – I had even slipped a copy of The Book of Awesome in one of my son’s stockings one Christmas. I fangirled so much over Neil’s kind and endearingly nerdy interview style on his podcast that I left a voicemail of appreciation. Then one day in the car, as I was catching up on episodes, to my surprise I heard my voice coming from my radio. If you’d like to hear it, check out Episode 89 after Neil interviews Zafar the Hamburger Man (at time 50:17).

It would make sense that I would then want to read all the books that Neil has written. But while The Book of Awesome and its spawn are New York Times bestsellers, I prefer to stick to his more prescriptive books, starting with The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything.

The book is full of good advice which humorously ends with the caveat: Don’t Take Advice. This is #9 – you need to read the whole book to understand why – but basically, the book is filled with information that resonates and makes sense. Although it seems weird in a book whose very title suggests it will teach you what you need to be happy, the very first section tells you to Be Happy First.

Wait, what? Is it really that simple? Think it, do it?

Actually, the important part of that mini-sentence is the DO. In the first few pages of the book, Pasricha outlines 7 Ways To Be Happier RIGHT NOW as verified by the field of positive psychology. Here they are:

  1. Three Walks – We all know that exercise makes us feel better, if not while we’re doing it, then for the benefits after. Research backs that as little as three 30-minute walks a week will activate pleasant feelings – a.k.a. happy feelings.
  2. The 20-Minute-Replay – If you’re happy and you know it, write it down! Writing about a happy experience lets you relive that experience as you write it down and every time you re-read it.
  3. Random Acts of Kindness – Hold open a door. Shovel someone’s sidewalk. Pay for coffee for the next guy in line. Five kindnesses like these a week help you feel good about yourself and thus, happier.
  4. A Complete Unplug – Periodically – be it after supper, for a weekend or during a vacation – disengage completely from social media, the internet and incessant texting. In fact, Pasricha is a proponent of landlines – if people really want to reach you, they can call you at home. (No one every does.)
  5. Find your Flow. Engage in a personally challenging activity that makes you forget everything else.
  6. Meditate – FOR TWO MINUTES. 2-minute-meditations on a regular basis increase compassion and self-awareness and decrease stress. All for the cost of TWO MINUTES.
  7. Be grateful. Once a week, write out three to five things you’re grateful for. As Pasricha says, “If you can be happy with simple things, then it will be simple to be happy.”

Sounds good to me. And easy. But hard. Because in the end it’s up to us to DO these things – no one else can make you happy. It’s all part of the equation.

About Romance

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[Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash]

[Another throwback: here’s what Valentine’s Day looked like for us twenty years ago!]

My husband and I are approaching a benchmark in our marriage. With nearly ten years behind us since we uttered those fateful words, “I do”, you would think that the idea of romance has been crystallized in our mind. After all, we’ve been living together for a decade. We should know what turns one another’s crank. And for the most part we do. Rick cleaning the bathrooms in our house is infinitely more romantic to me than say, laying down his coat over a mud puddle for me to walk over. (Don’t forget: I still do the laundry.) And if I would just sit next to my husband on the couch for an entire hockey game and actually pay attention, he would consider himself the luckiest man in the world.

What’s that? That doesn’t sound very romantic to you? Ah, well, don’t you remember? We have three small children. When it comes to romance, our paradigm has definitely shifted from the days of dating and smooching and holding hands. Not that that stuff is unheard of around here. Let’s just say we’ve become a lot more, uh, efficient. The trouble with Valentine’s Day is that it’s all about someone else telling you what to do and what to say in order to guarantee the appropriate swooning from your mate. And the flower and chocolate shops aren’t completely to blame. Let’s take a look at the origin of Valentine’s Day.

Although many myths surround this lovers’ day, Valentine’s Day is named for a priest, the patron saint of lovers, who secretly married couples against the wishes of the emperor. Erroneously, Mr. Emperor thought that this ban on marriage would encourage more men to join the army. It’s sort of a tragic Romeo-and-Juliet-forbidden-love-thing, which incidentally was also set in Italy. Hello? Italy? How are we supposed to get to the birthplace of romance if we’ve only accumulated 157 airmiles in the last 10 years? And no wonder those personal ads seeking romance always claim an affinity for candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach. Italy is surrounded by water! And Valentine’s Day was invented in the Middle Ages. They didn’t even have electricity back then! Clears things up a lot, doesn’t it?

You have to give credit to those Italians, though. Notorious as they are for their romantic reputation, they also have big families. Maybe we have the whole idea wrong over here in North America. Romance isn’t for twitter-pated teenagers. It’s for the seasoned veterans of love who know romance doesn’t have to fall between the confines of red roses and serenades. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Romance CAN fit in between the laundry and the bedtime stories. But sometimes, a babysitter is a pretty good thing.  

About February

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Ok, so it’s February.

While January has all the momentum of a sled on an icy toboggan hill – What? January’s done? – February comes in and sits, immoveable, like a four-foot-high snowdrift in front of your garage door. It’s hard to get going anywhere and it really feels like a lot of work.

“Well,” I thought to myself this morning as I surveyed the -35 degrees Celcius landscape out my window, “at least it’s a short month.” Not that weather is any respecter of Gregorian calendar lines – I got married the day after a snowstorm in August in Alberta. Oh, Alberta.

But then I got to wondering: just why IS February only 28 days (usually)? I mean, there’s a whole seven other months that have an EXTRA day and here poor old February is missing two. Did February miss a couple turns when picking teams on the celestial playground? Oh, February.

And so, I went down a short World Wide Web Wormhole, quickly realizing that there really is no rational answer. February (along with January) wasn’t even a thing until a Roman guy named Numa first corrected the old lunar ten-month calendar. He tried (unsuccessfully) to avoid having any months with an “unlucky” even number. He had 355 days to work with, so one month had to have an even number of days. (Which lends credence to the myth of Why February Feels Unlucky.)

One would think that when Julius Caesar decided to “fix” things, adding in the lost 10 days (they USED to add a LEAP MONTH every four years to rectify things) that he would just shuffle the deck and a bunch of 30s and 31s would be dealt out. But no, he didn’t want to mess with the existing 31s. He did, however, give February 29. And he renamed one of the months in middle after himself. (As “luck” would have it, Julius Caesar was murdered shortly after in the month of March, which was shortly after the now “lucky” February.)

This changed as soon his adopted son Augustus was in charge. As emperors will do, he decided that HE needed a month named after him, too, so whatever August used to be called was renamed for him. But since he had to be even-stevens with his dad, he stole a day FROM FEBRUARY to give his month 31. Oh, Augustus.

This begs the question: are people who are born on February 29 lucky? (They age a lot slower.) Or unlucky? (They don’t get as many birthday cakes.)

I’ll just let you think about that.