Just Plain Happy

Summer... A week until summer. Deep contented sigh. Lots of daylight. People sharing the fun things they are doing. Birds twittering. Swimming pools. Red white and blue food with lots of greens thrown in. The smell of barbecues and beach bonfires. Life seems easier.
 
Theologians go on about how Joy is the most important. I dunno , I agree...yeh sure...but....ice cream happy, sno-cone bliss, children claiming themselves as the primary instructors on summer fun is good too. Happy circumstances have much to be said for them.
 
A kind of sabbatical year has started for me. From now through next summer I’m going to be finishing every personal and professional project I’ve started.
 
But tonight as I look at the collection of green totes containing each individual project and see the sunset over the Olympics through the windows behind the totes , I dunno. It seems the better part of valour to watch day turn to night.
 
KING FM is playing some lovely symphony which reminds me I could work on some music.
 
Or I could just plug the earphones into my phone and watch another movie with my free Netflix month long trial.
 
Only for gosh sakes when you watch ‘A Little Bit of Heaven’ with Goldie Hawn make sure you have at least two boxes of tissues! Total wonderful satisfying tearjerker. Right up there with ‘Stepmom’.
 
For two weeks I’ve been working on a two part column on my Mom and our relationship. She died a little over ten years ago and it’s taken that long for me to process being the only daughter of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.
 
It’s taken me a heap of reflection and one truly awful situation to separate out what I loved about her and what I hated about living with her.
 
But tonight as I think about the Bloody Mary I ordered that had delicious pickled vegetables and was the size of a milkshake and how silly it was that I, the lightest of lightweight drinkers, desperately wanted to drink the whole dang thing because the tomato juice was so good, = but if I did I would be more drunk than anytime at the Delta Sigma Phi house in Berkeley when I was a freshman in college = realize I’m not into heavy thinking tonight.
 
That would be as deep as I’d want to think tonight; revisit an awkward Bloody Mary moment when I didn’t want vodka but wanted the juice.
 
Tasha the cat is asleep. In just two weeks in our new home all the hair on her rump,where it was shaved last December and continued splotchy and patched with balding spots, has grown back in healthy and long. And the vet gave me the good news that what I thought was a horrible flea situation that wouldn’t get better is actually a corn allergy. What a happy ending.
 
I could finish reading all the magazines on the coffee table: Women’s Day, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Image: a journal of Theology and the Arts. The ladies magazines were a subscription special last year of multiple magazines for $12. The Image was a gift. The feel of paper in my hands, books, magazines, newspapers, is a real pleasure. Reading makes me happy.
 
I know. Last night I watched one of my top five films: ‘And then She Found Me’. It’s one of the few movies with people of faith as regular characters. I’ll boot up uto the part where Helen Hunt sings Baruch Atah Adonai on shabbat and then fast forward to hear her sing the Schemah. Tonight I would like to hear the Semah.
 
Hear oh Israel, The Lord our God is one God....
 
Well whadyaknow..... the source of happiness is the same as the source of Joy. Full cycle thought journey.
 
Deeper next time. For now, the placid contentment of a summer’s evening.
Love, Deborah