One of the beauties of Kaizen is that the steps can be so small that you don’t mind doing them over and over again, until they become habit. Once established as habit, you don’t have to think about them anymore. Kaizen encourages the practice of starting with something easy so you’ll see immediate benefits to encourage you to continue. I’ve got several ongoing projects/issues that are not going as well or as quickly as I’d like. In addition to trying to keep myself from feeling overwhelmed, I’ve been casting around for ways to make some small changes that I hope will jump start me. For example, I want to get back to sketching, and I’d like to take off a few pounds. My plan is to replace some of the time I spend watching TV at night with doing yoga, or with sketching. Not for hours, and not every night—maybe just 15-20 minutes three times a week to start with. To make it easy, I’ll keep my yoga props handy in my bedroom, and a few sketching supplies in a basket in the family room so that I don’t spend time searching for what I need to get started.

I find Kaizen comforting. Changing small things doesn’t scare me, and I believe I’ll make more progress by doing a little every day (or most days) than if I become too harsh a taskmaster for myself. I already regularly use a kitchen timer for short timed-writing sessions (it’s amazing how much you can write in 15 minutes if you just keep the pen moving), so I know this can work.

What small, incremental steps can you take on your way to your dreams?

For a much more thorough and inspiring exploration of Kaizen in regard to goals and dreams, visit Kaizenvision.com.

Visit Healthy Head 2 Toe to read my most recent health articles:

Top Ten Healthy Habits of Fit Women

5 Full Body Exercises You Can Do At Home

5 Full Body Exercises You Can Do At the Office

10 Tips for a Strong Immune System

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Diet

10 Time-Saving Ways Women Can Relax

10 Healthy Living Tips to Boost Your Mood

10 Natural Ways to Stay Energized All Day

Why Busy Women Need to Relax

Funny how good health boils down to a few simple principles. Why are they so hard to follow consistently?

 The book, 168 Hours, by Laura Vanderkam, explains that everyone is given the same amount of time per week: 168 hours. What we do with that is up to us. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but already I’ve had my thinking about time shaken up a bit. The point of the book: “You can choose how to spend your 168 hours, and you have more time than you think.”

I have to admit I was initially a bit resistant. Was this another attempt to get me to pack more into my days? And didn’t sleep matter? I mean, I need seven to eight hours a night and that only leaves me with about 119 hours a week… (Can you hear me starting to make excuses?)

Vanderkam states that for various reasons we overestimate the amount of time we spend working and doing chores. She recommends keeping a time log for a week to see where your time goes (you can download and print your own time log here). I absolutely know I squander a lot of time fooling around on the Internet (while calling it research…) and I watch more TV than I should, but mostly when I have the TV on, I’m doing something else at the same time—like cleaning the kitchen, making dinner or folding laundry. I also suspect that I do certain things than don’t actually need doing, or maybe, don’t need doing by me. I feel like I’m packing my days full with activities…and I am. But am I packing them full of things that are meaningful and important, and that I can do better than others? As one of Vanderkam’s interview subjects said, “Every minute I spend is my choice.”

One of my “Twelve Commandments” is There is time enough. I’m hopeful that 168 Hours will help me remember that, and use my time in a more meaningful fashion.

I’ll continue to read 168 Hours this weekend and I’m excited to learn more. I may find that the nuts and bolts of her approach don't suit my personality, or that her suggestions aren't practical--but even if I don't agree with her 100%, I'm sure I'll learn something.

How will you spend your time this weekend?

Here is one of my favorite mother-daughter poems, by Marie Howe, who lives in New York City and who has a charming little girl. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Hurry
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Marie Howe, and reprinted from "When She Named Fire," ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009. First published in "The Kingdom of the Ordinary" by Marie Howe, W.W. Norton, 2008. Used by permission of Marie Howe and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation.

How are your reading challenges going? I’m plugging along on my “Off the Shelf” challenge, now having read nine of the 15 I’d committed to (see complete list of books read here) and we’re only about halfway through the year. I’d feel better about that if I could just stop myself from buying more books! At the rate I’m going, I’ll have refilled my “to read” shelf with 15 (possibly more!) new books. Oh, well. I guess if I keep reading significant numbers of books I’ve stockpiled, they won’t actually take over my house, and eventually I’ll clear out the piles. (A girl can dream.)

Anyway, despite the problem of the magically refilling to-read shelf, I’m happy with my progress. A couple of highlights:

I bought Treasure in a Cornfield: The Discovery and Excavation of the Steamboat Arabia after I visited the Arabia museum in Missouri (see my account of that visit here). Written by one of the excavators, it’s surprisingly readable and gave a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges of the excavation. And believe me, there were challenges.

Some of the Arabia's cargo

Traveling With Pomegranates, by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, delighted me from start to finish. I fall somewhere in between them in age and stage of life, and can identify with both. They alternate telling the story of two trips they took together to Greece (and one to France). I fell in love with Greece when I visited a few years ago, and deeply identified with something Sue wrote: “…I was a little shocked at how displaced I felt inside. So much of my sense of self had been altered in Greece, far more than I realized. Old understandings of myself as a woman, a mother, a writer, and a person in search of the spiritual were unraveled by my experiences over there, by the places themselves.”

The other challenge I signed up for was the Vintage Mystery Challenge, and I could have completed that one in about two weeks…but I have chosen to spread it out over the year. The vintage mystery (think Agatha Christie) is one of my favorite genres, and I’ve already read three of the 4-6 I signed on for. Since I last checked in here, I’ve read The Norths Meet Murder (Frances and Richard Lockridge) and 13 Clues for Miss Marple. The Norths are new to me, and this book was the first in a series. I didn’t like this as well as the first Campion book I talked about, but the characters were interesting enough that I have the second book on reserve at the library. 13 Clues is a collection of short stories featuring Christie’s fluffy old lady sleuth Miss Marple. Even though I’d read it before years ago, I didn’t remember the stories and chose it when I needed a comfort read.

Now that school is out, I’m making summer reading plans. Since we spruced up the lanai. I plan to plop myself down in the chaise with a good book every chance I get. I just watched Ken Burns’ documentary on Mark Twain, and I think I’ll pick up MT’s autobiography. (I may put it down again just as quickly, but I want to give it a shot!) I’ve also got “Off the Shelf” books Sullivan’s Island (Dorothea Benton Frank) and The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins) lined up.

What are your summer reading plans? Do you have a theme like some bloggers I know?

This week, my husband and I were simultaneously seized by the desire to redo the planters that surround our pool—a dangerous occurrence resulting in much spending, digging, sweating, planting and neglecting of other activities.

And chaos.

Two trips to the nursery and six hours (apiece) later, we’ve achieved our goal. What do you think?


We rearranged our container plants to blend in with the planters, replaced soil, fertilized, and topped off the beds with pine straw. I even have a tiny containerized herb garden:


We’re ready for some serious lounging outside now that we’ve cut down on the “Oh, that needs to be fixed,” items. Time to pour that cold drink and pick up that book…

Today is an ordinary Monday, and I couldn’t be happier.

Monday is one of my favorite days. After the weekend, I’m usually refreshed and ready to tackle a new week. On Mondays, I walk with a neighborhood friend for exercise. Our subdivision’s four-mile paved trail takes us just under an hour to walk, and we usually spend that time talking so it seems quicker. I love getting in a good walk on Monday morning—I feel like I’m starting my day and my week off right.

Walkable

On Monday, I usually spend time reading emails and blogs, getting back in touch with my virtual friends and acquaintances. If I haven’t already done so (and despite my best intentions, I probably have not), I plan my own blog posts for the week, writing, researching and choosing photos.

Usually, Monday offers me time to read a book on writing or an issue of Poets & Writers, which contains so much good stuff that I’m usually behind by several issues. I also like to read books and articles that might help me with blog posts, or with my own still-in-the-infant-stage book. If I have freelance assignments, I devote a block of time to working on them.

On Monday, I take a few minutes to tidy up our family room. I change our sheets, and today I also replaced our comforter with a cooler, matelasse coverlet. I water plants, pause to pet Scout, work on the accumulated mountain of laundry, and so on.

Huggable

Monday is a puttery day—full of pleasant tasks that make me feel I’m contributing to a smooth and happy home life, while still exercising my body, my mind and my creativity. It’s probably the most balanced day of my week. I don’t schedule appointments if I can help it, and I love the swath of time before me, mine for the filling. Monday helps me remember I have choices. I can choose with what attitude I view my work and activities; I can organize that work to follow my natural energy patterns. It reminds me that work can be as enjoyable as play.

Monday shows me that I can control what I do with my time. I can relax into it, flow from job to job, and things go smoothly. I can, for at least one day, quiet the voices in my head that tell me I’m not doing enough. Maybe soon Monday’s gift will spill over into other days of the week.

What’s your favorite day of the week, and why? What does your “perfect” day look like?

I love a good adage. You know—a pithy little combo of words that sums up a principle for living in an easily-remembered fashion. To make things interesting—or confusing, as the case may be—adages can be contradictory: “Birds of a feather flock together” vs. “Opposites attract,” or “Many hands make light work” vs. “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” Since I love playing with words, I tweaked a few adages to see if I could come up with some new ones. Here are three for your consideration:

“Money is time.” Actually, I stumbled on this phrase in the book A Writer’s Time, by Kenneth Atchity. While it’s true that time is money, it also works the other way round. Sometimes convenience is worth paying for. Paying someone to do errands or chores, for example, can free us up to do other valuable and important things.

“Bloom where you aren’t planted.” We’ve all heard we should “bloom where we are planted”—accept our circumstances and allow ourselves to blossom and grow, even if our situation isn’t ideal. But what if you know your circumstances are temporary? Maybe you’re two years away from an empty nest, you know you’ll be transferred by your employer, or you’re a student about to graduate and move into a new stage of life. Are you putting off really living until your circumstances change? Don’t wait for that change. Start blooming right now.

Do you see trees or forest? Or both?

“Can’t see the trees for the forest.” The original adage (“can’t see the forest for the trees”) reminds us it’s possible to overlook the big picture by being distracted by the details. However, sometimes looking at the whole can be overwhelming, making us unable to see the individual small steps that can take us to our goal.

Do you have any favorite adages? Which one(s) would you alter?

Wishing you a peaceful, free Memorial Day weekend.

My grandfather, when in his nineties, wrote me a letter in which he listed everything he and my uncle had eaten in the past week. That was the news. I love this poem by Nancyrose Houston of Seattle for the way it plays with the character of those letters from home that many of us have received. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

The Letter From Home
The dogs barked, the dogs scratched, the dogs got wet, the
dogs shook, the dogs circled, the dogs slept, the dogs ate,
the dogs barked; the rain fell down, the leaves fell down, the
eggs fell down and cracked on the floor; the dust settled,
the wood floors were scratched, the cabinets sat without
doors, the trim without paint, the stuff piled up; I loaded the
dishwasher, I unloaded the dishwasher, I raked the leaves,
I did the laundry, I took out the garbage, I took out the
recycling, I took out the yard waste. There was a bed, it was
soft, there was a blanket, it was warm, there were dreams,
they were good. The corn grew, the eggplant grew, the
tomatoes grew, the lettuce grew, the strawberries grew, the
blackberries grew; the tea kettle screamed, the computer
keys clicked, the radio roared, the TV spoke. “Will they ever
come home?” “Can’t I take a break?” “How do others keep
their house clean?” “Will I remember this day in fifty years?”
The sweet tea slipped down my throat, the brownies melted
in my mouth. My mother cooked, the apple tree bloomed, the
lilac bloomed, the mimosa bloomed, I bloomed.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from Wake Up In Brightness: Poetry & Prose by Students 2008-2009, Writers in the Schools, 2009, by permission of Seattle Arts & Lectures. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

If you’re like me, you know what makes you happy. You probably sprinkle those things through your days, like chocolate chips in a cookie (speaking of things that make me happy…) to make life sweeter. But what about things that make you unhappy—your happiness busters?

Photo courtesy D. Sharon Pruitt, Pink Sherbet Photography

Some happiness busters you can’t do anything about. Unpleasant situations and tragedies strike us all from time to time. Fortunately, there are some you can change, and thus boost your level of happiness. Here are three to think about:

Comparisons. I can be feeling perfectly fine about myself and suddenly crash and burn because I started comparing myself to someone else…my neighbor, a fellow freelancer, a friend, even my husband! I look at my personality and accomplishments and feel inferior. How does she achieve so much in the same time I have? It sure looks like he is having a great time while I’m over here tongue-tied and sweating. You get the picture.

This is where my shaky self-esteem reveals itself. I tend to denigrate what I’ve done—“Oh, it’s not that hard to do such-and-such (because if I’m able to do it, anyone can)”—or compare what I perceive to be my weakness with someone else’s strength.

Comparisons in which I come out ahead can be dangerous, too. I become less empathetic—because, once again, if I can do it, anyone can! It’s easy to become critical of others when you “compare down.”

Guilt. I must have some sort of overactive guilt gene, because I fight guilt feelings all the time. Even when I’m occupied in something “productive” I find myself feeling guilty about not doing something else that’s productive. Crazy, huh? And the guilt alarm bells really go off when I do something just for me, which I do quite frequently despite the guilt. I may do whatever-it-is, but the guilty feelings shadow my happiness. It’s far too easy to let guilt become too large a part of the emotional landscape.

“What people think.” How many times do we do things—or avoid doing them—because of what other people think? Women especially have a hard time with this because we’re often raised to be people-pleasers. We want to be liked and we want to fit in. That’s not bad unless it causes us to give up essential dreams and parts of ourselves to do so.

I wish I could say I’ve conquered these happiness busters, but I’m still working on it. At least I’ve learned to recognize when they appear, and sometimes I even manage to banish them. It helps when I remember my belief that we’re basically all doing the best we can. Sure, we fail and make mistakes, but we’re human. At times, failures and mistakes are the best we can do while we stretch outside our comfort zones.

What are some of your happiness busters? How do you handle them?

I like to apply lessons I’ve learned working with Tank and taking riding lessons to other areas of my life. One lesson I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is “It takes the time it takes,” and the corollary, “go slower to go faster.”

I’m not particularly patient. I want to get things done, and I want them done Right Now. However, especially with a horse, I’ve learned that some things absolutely cannot be rushed. They take the time they take, and you’ll be much less frustrated, not to mention safer, if you relax—and sometimes throw out entirely—your expectations. For me, when I’m learning something new (or teaching Tank something new), things go better when I take baby steps. Sometimes to my embarrassment, I’ve become the poster child for baby steps at my barn as my trainer often uses me as an example of someone who takes things slowly. I am not naturally athletic, and frankly, I’m also a big chicken, so yes, I do take things slowly. When I take a step forward too quickly, I often end up taking two steps back. What works for me in riding is breaking down every new skill into small parts, then practicing those parts until I feel completely comfortable with them. Then I can move on.

Baby steps work great for other pursuits, too: cleaning and reorganizing the house, learning to draw and paint, changing diet and exercise habits and so on. The beauty of baby steps is that if each small step is solid, you’ll find yourself making steady progress. You’ll be less likely to stagger forward then backward in fits and starts. In this way, you will go slower to go faster.

Of course, this is what works for me. Each person has his or her own best method for personal growth—my baby steps may drive some people absolutely mad with frustration. This is where you must listen to your heart for direction. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa, so please ignore this advice if you’re more like a hare than a tortoise. Few things make me crazier than to have someone tell me my way is wrong and I should do things differently!

Sometimes I get frustrated, and wish I could progress a bit faster than I do and I have to remind myself that it takes the time it takes. Overall, this slow and steady method works for me. It works for Tank, who gets anxious when he’s not sure what he’s being asked to do. We plod along, tortoise-like, but we’re going forward. And that’s what matters.

Just so you know, this is not a self-portrait...

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” --Confucius

One of my greatest simple pleasures is one I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to: words. I love words. Fat ones, skinny ones, juicy ones, sleek ones that say just what you want them to say. I love them in prose, in poetry, in crossword puzzles and song lyrics—even in dictionaries and thesauri. Though I’ve never read the dictionary, when I look something up, I find myself wandering through the opened pages looking for gems. For instance, did you know that thingummy (an alternative of the earlier thingum) is in the dictionary, and is defined as “thingamajig”?

I love words that sound like what they describe: buzz, hiss, murmur, boom, clank, sniff. I love words that conjure up images and emotions: ephemera, molten, doppelganger, begrudge, noodling.

Photo: manumohan.com “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”—Mark Twain

I jot down favorite words, words I don’t know the exact meaning of, and phrases that capture my imagination. My favorite crossword puzzles feature plays on words, and there is a certain feeling I get when I know I’ve got the right word for the clue, even when—especially when—it involves an unusual usage.

I count myself lucky to work and play with words every day. There’s nothing quite like the little frisson that runs up my spine when I read or write just the right word. The perfect turn of phrase (and isn’t that a lovely, artisan-like expression?) feels completely satisfying. Words are more than my tools. They are my friends.

What are your favorite words?

When we're young, it seems there are endless possibilities for lives we might lead, and then as we grow older and the opportunities get fewer we begin to realize that the life we've been given is the only one we're likely to get. Here's Jean Nordhaus, of the Washington, D.C. area, exploring this process. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

I Was Always Leaving

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Jean Nordhaus, whose most recent book of poems is Innocence, Ohio State University Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from The Gettysburg Review, Vol. 21, no. 4, Winter, 2008, by permission of Jean Nordhaus and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

I finished a large (for me) writing project late on Wednesday, and when I shared that information with a friend the next day, she said in an email, “That must feel good to have those articles done and delivered! Hope you're taking time to savor that feeling.”

Uh, not really.

What I did instead was rush right into the next things on my to-do list. Because other areas of my life had been neglected while I concentrated on my deadline, instead of taking the time to feel good about what I’d just done, I felt I had to leap into action and get those areas back in line. Instead of focusing on what I'd done, I focused on what was left undone. It wasn't until after I read and thought about what my friend wrote that I began to allow myself to savor a feeling of accomplishment.

To savor is to take delight in something. Accomplishing something you set out to do, like meeting a challenging deadline, is something to savor. I write frequently about slowing down and appreciating what we have—probably because these are lessons I’m still learning. These concepts are important to me. Perhaps through reading and writing about them, I’ll finally learn the lessons for good. Or maybe those lessons don’t get learned “for good”—rather, each time I revisit them, I explore some new nuance or facet of the concept. I think I do a pretty decent job of appreciating the good things in my life...maybe it's now time for me to learn to take delight in my own accomplishments.

Maybe you can help me with this process. How do you savor your accomplishments and the good things in your life? Whatever you do, I hope you have much to savor this weekend.

Something to savor

I'm up to my eyeballs in article writing (thanks, Michele!), so I'll just share this photo with you:

Sometime in our lives my husband and I must have angered Poseidon, mythological god of the sea. We’ve been on three cruises together, and all three have featured the unexpected, if not the downright awful.

It all started on our honeymoon. My father had given us a four-night cruise as a wedding present. After embarking from San Pedro (CA) the day after our wedding, we were to visit San Diego, Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico. We’d endured a wild rainstorm on our wedding day, but the next morning dawned sunny and bright. The sea was a little choppy, but nothing Dramamine couldn’t handle.

Our first shore excursion, to the San Diego Zoo, provided us with a clue that the storm had left lasting effects. Many of the animal habitats lay strewn with tree limbs and other by-products of the wind and rain. We saw quite a few bewildered-looking animals exploring their “redecorated” homes.

The zoo was a bit messy, but otherwise fine, and our stop at Catalina was uneventful. But when we reached Ensenada, we were told the port was torn up and we weren’t able to dock. Our planned horseback-riding-on-the-beach excursion was exchanged for a day at anchor in the harbor where my new husband tried to teach me to play chess.

Two years later, we braved a second cruise, a more ambitious one: from Venice to ports in Turkey and Greece. Our troubles began before we even boarded the ship. We flew from our home in California to New York City, where we planned a couple of days’ sight-seeing before flying to Milan. A medical emergency on board forced us to make an emergency landing in Denver, where the size of the plane and the shortness of the runway destroyed our landing gear. The airline had to fly parts and mechanics to Denver to fix the plane, and an eight-hour unplanned layover—spent entirely in the airport, waiting for news about when we would fly out—ensued. 

Next, when we disembarked in Milan, I left our contact lens solution on the airplane. After we moved on to Venice before our cruise, it rained constantly as we tried to explore the beautiful old city. Pictures from this trip feature us wearing chic green plastic bag slickers—and glasses!

When we finally boarded the ship, our cabin was situated next door to crews' quarters where they argued constantly and loudly. It featured a wall-mounted toilet-flushing button so stiff I had to use my foot in order to press it hard enough to do the job. Another storm delayed the cruise so that our shore excursions took place at night. We “saw” Greece from a bus in the dark. On the trip home, which took more than 24 hours, I came down with a cold. While waiting for our connecting flight at JFK, we were reduced to eating out of vending machines and drinking our souvenir Greek Metaxa out of a paper bag.

One thing we did see: Corinth Canal

Our last attempt at cruising occurred about seven years ago. We sold our business and to celebrate, decided to take a cruise to Alaska, a dream of my husband’s. This time, our son, my mom and step dad and my husband’s mom joined us.

While we were on the land portion of our tour, news reports of a “sick ship”—our ship!—reached us. The illness, Norovirus, was described as “a mild gastrointestinal illness,” but the cruise before ours had to head back early because so many passengers became ill, and so the ship could be disinfected before our cruise began.

We were a little nervous about boarding, but all seemed fine. Aside from industrial-sized containers of hand sanitizer on every deck and not being able to serve ourselves from the buffet, there seemed to be no sign of the previous passengers’ illness. The ship was lovely, our stateroom comfortable (with an easily-flushed toilet) and to our son’s joy and our eventual thankfulness, two TVs. We enjoyed the gorgeous scenery and cushy shipboard amenities. Our son gloried in the freedom of the kids’ programs, and roaming the ship with new friends and a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with us.

It was just after a stop at Glacier Bay that I started to feel a little queasy. I popped some additional seasickness medicine, but it didn’t help. I quickly went from sipping champagne and eating chocolate-dipped strawberries to being confined to my bathroom. My son didn’t even make it back to the cabin—he threw up in the elevator. My poor husband had to take care of him while I collapsed in bed. “Mild” illness? I've never been so sick in my life.

A “cabin call” from the medical staff distributed shots and other medications to battle the virus. Just as I started to feel a little better, my husband began to fall ill.

Aside from feeling so bad, between the actual illness and quarantine days, we missed two out of three ports of call, including our helicopter/glacier/sled dog shore excursion. (We couldn’t have been sick or quarantined during one of our days at sea, oh no.) When we finally staggered off the boat, we vowed never again. The only bright spot in this horrific trip was that our parents, who were all in their late 60s, did not get the virus, and by all accounts, had a marvelous time.

So when it’s time to plan our next vacation and one of us says, “Hey, let’s go on a cruise,” we laugh ourselves silly and make different plans. Land plans.

“Feeling good”
Increase sources of happiness. This is probably the simplest and most obvious way to feel happier. My greatest sources of feeling good include spending time with friends, playing with Tank, reading and sketching. What gives you joy? What do you like to do? How can you have more fun? To feel happier, we should include one or more of our favorite pastimes every day.

Watercolor sketch from Laure Ferlita's class

“Feeling bad”
Decrease sources of unhappiness and bad feelings. Maybe that means tackling some unfinished business or dealing with a difficult situation. Since I’ve found the importance of mindset in how I feel about my life, I’ve been examining some of my feelings and attitudes, and banishing the ones that aren’t true or are bringing me pain or discomfort. Replacing old ways of thinking with new ones can feel a little unsettling, but getting rid of the sources of nagging bad feelings frees up space in our hearts for happiness.

“Feeling right”
This means feeling as if you are doing what you are meant to do. I ask myself frequently, Am I the person I want to be? Do I respect myself? Am I doing work that feels “right”? These past few months I’ve questioned whether or not I really want to continue to write, and wondered if I still have anything to say (that anyone would want to read). For now, I still keep returning to the keyboard because writing is too much a part of who I am for me to easily cast it aside. It still feels “right,” even when it’s hard. How comfortable are you with who you are? Sometimes “feeling right” makes us happy in the face of frustration and obstacles.


“Atmosphere of growth”
Deep and lasting happiness comes more easily in an atmosphere of growth. That is, when you’re learning something new, increasing your skills, stepping outside your comfort zone, or challenging yourself. Yes, there’s definitely a time for simple relaxation, for “noodling,” for “fun” fun that doesn’t put too many demands on you. But that shouldn’t be the extent of your fun. Owning Tank is a perfect example of this. There is a good deal of “fun” fun to be had in horse ownership—but I’d be lying if I said everything about it was easy. I’m pushed outside my comfort zone nearly every time I get on his back, because correct English-style riding is challenging. It’s not simply sitting on the horse’s back and letting him do the work. Being the leader in our herd of two requires vigilance, consistency, patience and firmness. However, I don’t believe I would find horse ownership quite so deeply satisfying if I was not being gently challenged to grow. If you consider the times you’ve been happiest, chances are you’ve been engrossed in something that was just the tiniest bit challenging.

Whaddya mean, it's not all easy?

I found Rubin’s way of breaking happiness into these four sections helpful in looking at my own level of happiness, and seeing where I could make changes to improve it. What about your happiness level? Can you bump it up a notch? What will you do (or stop doing) to increase your level of happiness? Which of these areas do you need to address?

If you haven’t already, check out Gretchen Rubin’s blog here.

Photo courtesy stock.xchng.com

In this endearing short poem by Californian Trish Dugger, we can imagine “what if?” What if we had been given “a baker’s dozen of hearts?” I imagine many more and various love poems would be written. Here Ms. Dugger, Poet Laureate of the City of Encinitas, makes fine use of the one patched but good heart she has. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Spare Parts

We barge out of the womb
with two of them: eyes, ears,

arms, hands, legs, feet.
Only one heart. Not a good

plan. God should know we
need at least a dozen,

a baker’s dozen of hearts.
They break like Easter eggs

hidden in the grass,
stepped on and smashed.

My own heart is patched,
bandaged, taped, barely

the same shape it once was
when it beat fast for you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by Trish Dugger. Reprinted from Magee Park Poets: Anthology 2007, No. 18, Friends of the Carlsbad City Library, 2006, by permission of Trish Dugger. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

While I vacuum, I like to listen to music on my iPod—it muffles the noise, and the right songs keep me moving and make me feel cheerful. I usually just put the iPod on “shuffle,” but certain songs slow down my rhythm. I like to vacuum to something a bit more upbeat, so I decided I should make myself a “vacuuming playlist.” The songs on it would be the ones that make me feel like dancing around the vacuum cleaner, like Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music,” or Rob Thomas’ “This is How a Heart Breaks” and MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”

Wouldn't it be fun to make a playlist for all my activities, like writing or driving, or just sitting and thinking? For writing, I prefer instrumental music, so I can hear my own words without being distracted by others’. My favorite writing songs come from guitarist Billy McLaughlin’s* album, Out of Hand.

When I’m driving, I want words and lots of them, because I like to sing along. Songs like Evanescence’s “My Immortal,”  and show tunes like “Good Morning Baltimore” from Hairspray and “For Good”  from Wicked are fantastic for belting out while driving down the road.

For sitting and thinking, there’s always Carbon Leaf’s “What About Everything?” or classical music, or something by Josh Groban.

You could make playlists for all kinds of experiences and emotions: feel-good songs, I-need-a-good-cry songs, revenge songs… you name it. My friend Marianne just made a playlist of hockey songs in honor of our local professional hockey team’s presence in the Stanley Cup playoffs! (I didn’t know there were that many songs about hockey!)

Does your life have a soundtrack? What’s on your favorite playlist?

*While checking the spelling of Mr. McLaughlin’s name for this blog post, I learned of his remarkable and inspiring comeback story—read about it here.)

Take time to smell me.

I don’t know about you, but this is what happens when I rush:

I break things. Dishes, fingernails, even, recently, my laptop monitor because I rushed to pick it up. I nearly broke my new mini book light when at first I couldn’t figure out how to open the battery door. (Hint: it helps to look at the clearly labeled diagram.)

I hurt myself. I bruise my leg on the open dishwasher door, or the footboard of my son’s bed. I whack my forearm on the doorknob in the hallway, or the back of my head on a fence I’m leaning through.

I hurt others. Being in a rush means my mind is often elsewhere. When this is the case, I’m not looking at or listening to the person right in front of me. (And if I’ve done this to you, let me apologize right now.)

What's your hurry?

“Rushing blinds you to the obvious. Rushing comes from fear and is designed to keep you from looking down into the canyon and seeing how tenuous your perch on the wire is,” writes Heather Sellers, in Chapter After Chapter. She’s talking specifically here about rushing while writing, but I think it’s one reason so many of us rush through our own lives. We’re afraid. Afraid of letting someone down, afraid we’re not accomplishing enough, afraid life is passing us by—when it’s really us passing life by. It will not matter how much you “accomplish” if you’re not paying full attention when you accomplish it.

In order to slow down, I have to make some hard choices. I limit my activities, even, alas, the fun ones, so that I truly experience the ones that remain. I also cut the daily to-do list in half, and I don’t compare what I can get done in a day with what my friend down the street accomplishes. I lower my standards in certain areas. I’m not always successful—but I’m working on it.

Do you find yourself rushing through your days? What have you done, or do you plan to do to slow down?

Last week Laure Ferlita and I took a field trip to the University of South Florida’s Botanical Gardens. Laure’s preparing an online class, “An Imaginary Visit to the Garden,” and I haven’t been to the gardens since last year’s trip to the spring plant festival.

The USFBG is a relaxed and friendly sort of garden. Mostly cared for by volunteers, it’s the perfect place to wander aimlessly, forgetting the world speeding by on the major streets that run on two sides of the garden. The carnivorous plants bloomed

and this lovely gentleman

But of all the areas of the garden we visited, my favorite this time was:


Faery (or fairy) houses, musical frogs, gnomes and fairies of all sorts peeked out from the plantings of impatiens, violas, ornamental cabbage and other magical plants.

After last week's power outage, I've been thinking about how dependent we are on electricity and technology.  While I’m grateful for the technological advances we take for granted—I’m typing this on a laptop computer instead of a manual typewriter, and don’t know how I’d cope without the internet, for example—sometimes I long for a simpler, quieter, less electronic atmosphere. So this weekend, I'm going to unplug and do some of the following:

Chat with my visiting mother-in-law.
Cuddle with my dog.


I'm snuggle-icious!

Lean into Tank’s body and feel his warmth and strength.
Sip a cup of tea.
Take a walk for pleasure, not for exercise.

This looks like a good place to walk.

Play a game.
Hug someone.
Put together a jigsaw puzzle.
Take a nap.
Work a crossword puzzle.


Sketch.
Watch birds in the backyard.
Write in my journal.
And, of course, read a book.


These are some of my favorite low-tech pleasures. What are yours?

To get you started, here is a poem from American Life in Poetry, introduction by Ted Kooser:

So often, reading a poem can in itself feel like a thing overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis of Virginia describes the feeling of being stilled by conversation, in this case barely audible and nearly indecipherable.

From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city.
They sat (so I thought) perfumed in their hats and their silks,

in chairs on the grass amid flowers glowing and swaying.
One spoke and the others rang like bells, oh so witty,
like bells till the sound filled up the garden and lifted

like bubbles spilling over the bricks that enclosed them,
their happiness holding them, even if just for the moment.
Although I did not understand a word they were saying,

their sound surrounded me, fell on my shoulders and hair,
and burst on my cheeks like kisses, and continued to fall,
holding me there where I stood on the sidewalk listening.

As I could not move, I had to hear them grow silent,
and adjust myself to the clouds and the cooling air.
The mumble of thunder rumbled out of the wall
and the smacking of drops as the rain fell everywhere.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Mary-Sherman Willis. Reprinted from The Hudson Review, Vol. LX, no. 3, (Autumn 2007), by permission of Mary-Sherman Willis. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation.