#100HappyDays - Halfway there...

As usual I have gotten WAY behind with these posts, and actually fell of the 100 Happy Days wagon somewhere around day 83.

Argh!  So close!

I thought that instead of doing up several posts to bring you all up to date, I would just finish off this one which brings to the halfway mark, and leave it at that.


I loved doing this challenge, and am not upset that I didn't finish it, but I think I will give it another shot some time in the future.

This challenge touched the lives of several people in my FB family and prompted them to try it as well.  I'm glad.  It makes you think about the meaning of 'happiness' and just exactly who it is that is responsible for our own happiness.

In case you're wondering... YOU are responsible for your own happiness.  Not your parents, or your partner, or your boss, or your kids... it's just you who gets to make the decision to be happy.

Day 43:
Last week I told you about the photo album I bought in which to keep my race bibs etc from any of the fun runs that I do.  One of my nearest and dearest suggested that I include all of the milestone events that I do now, like when I climb Burning Mountain next week - arrgghhh  because they are all milestones, and are all deserving of being in the book.

I printed off some photos, gathered all my bits and pieces, and put together the first five pages.

I'm going to keep it to a page per event, or it'll just get completely out of hand, I can't wait until I need to buy more pages for it!

Now I just need to figure out what to call it, and design the title page...


Day 44:
Following QPS on FB is one of the best decisions I ever made.  Their daily updates are so funny!  I'd love to meet their social media person - they have the most twisted sense of humour, the traffic updates are the best.

So imagine my surprise when this pic popped up on my newsfeed - it's my Uncle Geoffrey!

QPS & Rotary had some sort of family open day at MtGravatt (a suburb of Brisvegas) and QPS were showing off one of their newest puppies, bred by the canine unit, and there he is, posing with the puppy.

My Uncle Geoff is very involved in Rotary and regularly sponsors and billets kids on the Rotary exchange program, he is also heavily involved in Variety Club, a charity that ensures disadvantaged kids get the same opportunities as other kids.  Every year he goes on the Variety Club Bash to raise money for them.

I'm so very proud of him, so it was lovely to see him pop up unexpectedly like that.

PS:  Uncle Geoffrey is the very colourful one... not the blue one... 


Day 45:

A spare set of drawer runners have never looked so good.

BM has never been one to rush into things.  He likes to take his time, to think about things, to plan them out... so stuff tends to be half done, or not done at all.

For example:

• Our carport was bought as a do it yourself kit, it was delivered to our front yard on pallets.  Where it sat for around 2 years before being constructed.
• The built in robe in our bedroom has never had doors on it(we've been in the house for 10 years) - he was getting around to it...  BFF found a set of 3 mirrored doors with the tracks, for only $100, which I snapped up.  They're currently in the shed.  Waiting.
• He demolished a solid concrete 3m x 2m patio at the front of the house so he could put up some guttering - don't ask - then re-concreted the place where it used to be, and it stayed that way for over a year before I was able to use my front door again.  Why?  Because he stacked 3 cubic metres of firewood there instead of building steps to replace the patio.  My dad made him build the new steps and patio when we got married last year.

So on to the drawer runners.  The chest of drawers I'm using belonged to DS before he left home around six years ago, and one of the runners has always been a bit dodgy.  I had been asking him fairly constantly for a few years to fix it.  The reply was always 'yeah, I'll get around to it', and so eventually I stopped asking.  I suspect that was always the plan.

On this particular day I decided to clean out my drawers, and the dodgy drawer - having also lost both it's handles many moons ago - was being particularly difficult.  So I cracked the shits with it, and threw it on the floor, with the full intention of leaving it there until BM came home from work, at which point I was going to fill him in on just how shitty I was.  Then I realised that he wouldn't care, would leave it where it was, and I would be the one to trip over it and break a leg.  So I picked it up and put it back in.

There must have been something in my tone, that, when relating the tale to him, suggested axes, shovels, and deep dark holes in the backyard, because the next day the drawer had two new handles and a set of new runners!

And for reasons known only to BM, a spare set were left inside  the drawer... I suppose because they'll come in handy...

I stood there for quite some time just opening and closing the drawer over and over...

See?  Joy is in the simple things...

Day 46:
I grew up moving from one end of the country to the other every couple of years, so never really had the opportunity to get to know my cousins.  The ones on my Dad's side of the family are all around my age, in fact one of them is only days younger than me, but the ones on my Mum's side are all significantly younger than me.  But not having had them around me when I was a kid and a young adult makes me sad, and I feel like I've missed out on something special.

When I was old enough to get to know them, and lived in the same city once more, I married a soldier and moved away to begin the vagabond life again.

Then FB came along, and as I've found them on FB I've been able to get to know them in small ways.  We'll never have the relationship that we could have had, but we can make the best of the one we're creating now.

I was online the other night, and up popped a message from my cousin, Therese, she is the closest to me in age, and has a family of men.  I'm also the only one in the family with kids of a similar age to hers, so I can share my experiences with her, and she knows that I can understand what she's going through with her boys.

We chatted for over an hour, and old cousins became new friends.


Day 47:
A brand new day is so full of possibilites isn't it?  Will it be sunny or rainy?  Will there be a storm?  Will I meet someone special?  Will I win the lotto...

A brand new bolt of fabric is like that - it has so many possibilities, what will it be?  A dress? A skirt?  Trousers perhaps?  What about soft furnishings?  Cushion covers, curtains, placemats, tablecloths...

My bolt of fabric is destined to become custom made slipcovers for my couches.  I've had them for several years now, and while they are still in excellent structural condition, they do need cleaning, but I am really over the pattern on them.

Knowing that the cost of having them reupholstered is out of our budget, and knowing I'll just get sick of the new look again in a few years anyway,  and having them custom made by someone else is almost as expensive, I decided to do it myself.

I went to the op shop and got a couple of old doona covers, which I unpicked an used for a pattern, then a trip to Spotlight for the fabric.  It's a milk chocolate linen, which doesn't shrink even when washed in super hot water,  and will fade and soften beautifully over time as its washed.

Taking the plastic off that bolt of fabric was almost as thrilling as unwrapping a beautifully wrapped gift.


Day 48:
I love books.  I love to read.  I'll read pretty much anything, and my favourite genre is fantasy.  Not sci-fi, but fantasy, witches, wizards, imps, fairies... that sort of thing.   It's a genre that has come into it's own in the last few years, what with Twilight and the like... which by the way I have not and will not read... but has been around for much longer than that.

There are several authors that I really like, but the one that is my all time favourite is Sir Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld series, the first of which was published in 1983.

He has the most amazing imagination, which I feel that all fantasy writers do, as they not only write a story, but they create entire worlds, populate them with creatures and people, and even invent languages in order to bring their books to life.

Very few of Sir Terry's books have been adapted to film, so the news that another one has made the cut is very exciting to his fans.

The Wee Free Men a tale about a young witch and a tribe of small blue pictsies  is currently being adapted into a screenplay by Sir Terry Pratchett's daughter, Rhianna, and is bound to be ridiculously good.

The excitement mounts!


Day 49:

Some are workin', some are partyin', but we're just kickin' back, chillin'.

BM was at work this night, and DD was at a fancy dress party, the theme was Cops & Robbers so she went as a burglar because everyone else was going as a copper - she looked pretty good actually, a black beanie, a mask, black and white stripey top, and a bag of Monopoly money.

So the fur-babies and I just kicked back in front of the fire for the evening... life is hard...

Day 50:
I was cleaning up the top of a bench in the kitchen - you know the one we all have, the one where everything gets dumped because it doesn't have a home anywhere else - and there was a recipe book for juices and smoothies that BM had given me years ago.  It had never been used before because when he bought it we didn't have a blender.  Because I never wanted one.  Because I knew I wouldn't use it.  But now I have a Magic Bullet.  That sits in cupboard. Not being used.  Because he liked the ad on the tele...

Anyway.

I asked DD if she wanted it for her 'this is the stuff I'm buying for when I move out' stash  that has been alternately growing in size and stagnating for the last 3 years,  so she had a look through it, and the answer was a resounding YES!

But then we had to try it out.  No biggy.  The recipe she wanted to try out was a watermelon crush.  It was really really complicated and involved the blending of watermelon and strawberries, and pouring it into a glass.

I suggested adding a bit of a nice slightly sparkling pink moscato to it, but was refused permission.  Some people just have no sense of adventure.

After we finished and were cleaning up, she told me it was supposed to be frozen, and we should have ended up with basically a slushie.

As there was watermelon involved, that was never going to happen.

I have no boundaries where watermelon is concerned.

Watermelon is basically the chocolate of the the fruit world.