So here’s the long story about how I wound up responsible for mowing the lawn:

Last time the landlord’s dad (Mike) went away for a few months, he asked the neighbor to mow the lawn in exchange for using the lawnmower on his own lawn. The neighbor seems like a nice guy. He also seems like a person who has kind of an overwhelming life. Four kids, (maybe), a couple dogs (the bigger one of whom is clearly not trained at all, and not exercised, either), and more yelling at the house than I would ever be comfortable with. Recently Mike repaired three broken windows at their house, because he was worrying about their AC bill and because he is a super, super nice guy. Me, I was curious about how three windows get broken. One, sure, accidents happen. Three?

But moving on… also last time he went away, Mike texted me regularly asking me about the lawn. Had it been mowed? Was it getting too long? And the answer was usually, “Well, no, and, ah, maybe.” But I hated being the lawn police. Really not my style. And, to be blunt, there are no circumstances under which I am ever, ever going to tell that neighbor that he needs to get his a$$ in gear and mow our lawn. (Incidentally, he is not the one doing the yelling, although he is sometimes the one being yelled at, so this is not because I’m afraid of him. That would be a different issue.)

When faced with the question of how the lawn was going to get mowed while Mike was gone, I therefore volunteered to mow it. It’s not a big lawn, nor a major chore. I can tell you from personal experience now that it takes 25 minutes to mow. Even in Florida weather, that’s a reasonably trivial amount of effort, not exactly hard labor.

But, OMG, do I hate lawnmowers. As you may recall, the first time I tried to mow the lawn, it took three tries, because the lawnmower kept dying on me. Mike replaced that lawnmower with another lawnmower — not a new lawnmower, but the one from his own house. I’m kinda gonna guess now that in order to transport the lawnmower in his car, he took the handle off. Just a guess, I don’t know that for sure. It could be entirely random that the screws holding the handle in place on one side were so loose that they fell out, making the lawnmower impossible to steer.

Urgh. I spent about ten minutes struggling with it, before the problem became excruciatingly clear to me. I then spent another ten minutes, maybe more, carefully retracing my steps over and over again, looking for the lawnmower part. Did I mention that it’s not a big lawn? It’s not a big lawn! (I know I told you that already: the question was rhetorical.) But I couldn’t find the piece at all. The best I did was to find a chopped up piece of black plastic that might have been part of the handle cap. So, so, so annoying. It was, of course, 90+ degrees outside while I was doing this, so I finally gave up, put the lawn mower away, and went back inside to start researching the problem.

I did what people do these days when confronted with such a problem: two minutes of research and then a quick purchase of lawnmower replacement parts from Amazon. Then I waited for the parts to be delivered. In the interim, I did the things one does, including taking the trash out. Lo and behold, sitting next to the curb, a black plastic thing that was clearly the missing lawnmower part. ARGH! I hadn’t had the lawnmower over there at all — on that specific day — but it was where I’d finished mowing a week earlier. It hadn’t even occurred to me to look on the street.

Still, the handle was missing the piece that would hold it in place (a black plastic piece that presumably got chopped up) so I comforted myself with the knowledge that I needed my Amazon order after all. It arrived with all due speed, and I tried to put it on and… No. Maybe the universal bolt wasn’t so universal as all that, or maybe I just wasn’t strong enough to screw it into place on a handle that was slightly corroded from a week sitting in the sun and rain, but there was no way I was getting that handle back on with that handle top. Also, the two pieces that needed to be held together — the actual lawnmower and the metal handle — needed to slide smoothly into place, and also, No. I just could not make that happen. Jamie tried to help, but he couldn’t get it, either, and the frustration level was rising dangerously high, so I finally just said, the hell with it, and did a crappy job. Will it last until Mike gets home? Probably. Is it good for the lawnmower handle to be kinda loose and wobbly? Probably not. Is it good enough? Yes.

But at that point — remember, 90+ degrees — I was not going to mow the lawn.

So this morning, bright and early — although not too bright and early, because I do like to be kind to my neighbors — I set out to mow the lawn. I managed two rows… and the lawnmower died.

All this to say, next time around, I will be the lawnmower police and nag the poor neighbor whose life is already overwhelming. Because I’m fine to mow the lawn, but I am really not at all fine to manage lawnmower maintenance and repair.

As for the dead lawnmower, I didn’t think it should need gas, because Mike filled it right before he left, but I added gas anyway and lo-and-behold, it started up again just fine. I spent my time mowing worrying that maybe gas was leaking and maybe the whole thing would explode, because yeah, that’s where my mind goes, but eventually reconciled myself to the idea that maybe all the times I started and stopped it yesterday while I was trying to figure out what was going on with it just used a lot of gas.

And now my lawn is mowed and I get to feel all triumphant and tough. Shine on, self, shine on. Go, me! A good start to a hopefully productive Monday.

My July has continued on its trend of delightfulness. Although I just got thoughtfully stuck on that line for about ten minutes, because perspective is everything, isn’t it? But my perspective is that my July has continued to be delightful, and the small bumps along the way are just that, bumps.

Delightful exhibit #1:

A terrible picture of a very happy dog. I’m going to upload some video to Instagram, because the video shows the happiness in action. There’ll be a link in the sidebar on my actual webpage or if you follow me on Instagram, it’ll probably show up in your feed. Hmm, maybe I’ll try to include a link here for those of you who read via email.

Puppy Play Date at Gemini Springs

Anyway, over the course of the past few months, as I’ve chatted with other dog owners on my morning walks, we’ve more than once mentioned that it would be nice if our dogs could romp. After a recent solo visit to Gemini Springs, I decided it should happen, collected people’s numbers, and invited four or five other dogs to join Sophie and me for a morning adventure at the dog park.

She had SO much fun! Her friends — Ariel, Bella, Jorgi, and Riker — had a good time, too, but Sophie was definitely in doggie paradise. I did say afterwards, somewhat wryly, that if the dogs were graded on energy levels, Sophie would have gotten an A++. Her desire to move, explore, chase, run, and play is… well, to be fair, that of a border collie, not a more mellow dog. She’d make a great working dog. Her friends are content to be relaxing dogs, ha. I do love her just the way she is, though!

Other delightful activities of the week: wandering around downtown Mount Dora one day, checking out the art galleries and gift shops; swimming at my dad’s swimming pool another morning (the water was perfect); the Spellbound Writer’s Group and an exercise on dialogue using tarot cards; and some delicious meals, including really good Mexican for lunch one day as well as an excellent GF sandwich and fries another day.

An entertaining, although maybe not quite delightful, activity: mowing the lawn. The background is a long story, with tedious details, so I won’t bore you, but I’ve taken over the job of mowing for the next few months while Mike, the person who usually mows it, is out of town. I suspect that after a couple months, I’ll be happy to give the job back to him, but after three tries, I successfully made the yard pretty. Shine on, self!

The three tries were not my fault. Try #1: the lawnmower died. Mike had to take it apart and filter the gas tank to discover that a dead spider was blocking the line. Try #2: the lawnmower died again. Mike took it away with him and returned with another one and a new gas can, one with a cap over the spout. Try #3: success! It was 95 degrees out, and our AC was dead, so my sense of satisfaction was high — yay, me, persisting in the face of adversity — but boy, was I grateful for the delights of running water afterwards. Not, for once, hot running water, which is a pleasure five years of van life has engrained in my gratitude center, but cool running water, which is also awfully nice at the right moment.

Speaking of things nice to have — air-conditioning. Another long saga, and I won’t bore you with the details, but I spent a day sitting in the house watching the temperature rise and hoping the AC repair people would appear. I wasn’t happy about it, but mostly because it was interfering with my plans for the day, which could have been a lot more fun. The no-AC part was fine, though — I closed the blinds, turned on the overhead fans, and tried to pretend that I was living in the tropics somewhere. Thailand, maybe? Vietnam? Somewhere where life would just be lived a little slower when it got hot and sticky. Jamie was a lot more unhappy about it than I was. He bailed and went to stay with Christina, who offered the same for me, but I was actually quite content in the toasty house. And now the AC has been repaired, albeit with warnings and caveats, so we’ll see what happens. It’s good to be reminded to appreciate the things we take for granted.

I’m expecting this week to be quieter, which is probably good news, because I really do have lots of work that I’d like to get done. I spent a few hours working on a piece of my first chapter/module the other day and then threw it all away. It was actually useful work, in that writing helped me organize and process my thoughts, but I basically decided after I’d done all that writing that I was wrong about the central statement I was trying to make. So, yeah. I changed my mind. Which is good, really, better to change my mind now than later, but it was still somewhat vexing.

Super short version: do you have to change yourself in order to change? I started out saying yes, you have to be willing to change yourself if you want to be happier/choose happiness, but by the end of that writing session, I’d argued myself out of that opinion. You’re fine just as you are. So am I. Choosing happiness may mean that you have to change your habits, of both body and mind, but you — your core self, the person you are inside, the one you’ve been as long as you can remember — you’re great. You’re exactly who you’re meant to be. Our habits & thought processes don’t define us, they just determine the quality of our lives. Which is plenty, really. And hey, that was maybe not the super short version, but so it goes!

Amazon has been sending me reminders about Amazon Prime Day for weeks, since my blog is still an Amazon affiliate site, even though I don’t often use affiliate links, so I spent a little while browsing my recent purchases, wondering if I had anything to recommend for you.

Honestly, of all my recent purchases, this is my very favorite: Off clean feel insect repellent

And it has apparently been so long since I posted an affiliate link that I no longer know how to post the ad style links. Weird! But I’m not going to spend any longer looking for it, because… well, because it feels like a waste of time. But if you need insect repellent, this stuff is great. If you need anything else on Amazon & you have Prime, right now (or possibly tomorrow) is probably a good time to buy. And if you follow my bug spray link, you’ll be making a tiny, tiny donation to the Sophie Treats & Toys fund.

Thanks for reading!

 

I had a rather delightful 4th of July. It started, really, on the 3rd of July when instead of writing with my friend Joyce, which we do most Wednesdays, we went thrift-store shopping. Have I raved about the thrift stores in Sanford yet? Obviously, if you’ve been reading my blog for longer than a few months, you know I like thrift stores, but Sanford has particularly great ones. The cute little local one, just down the road, is probably my favorite, but on this specific day, J & I went to the big thrift stores first.

I was looking for light capri pants, because all my pants are denim and denim is heavy when it’s 90 degrees outside. I found a pair, in a nice light blue, $5, with the $36 Kohl’s tags still on them. I have no idea why the person who bought them didn’t just take them back — even if they didn’t have the receipt, Kohl’s would have given them a store credit! But I am not complaining. I am complaining even less about the silvery tank top from Banana Republic, also with its tags on, ($8), or the rose-colored Simply Vera Wang ruffled shirt ($5) or the other $4 shirt I bought.

A slightly weird picture, because I was looking at Jamie instead of the camera, but I love my new thrift store outfit. So comfy, so cute, and so satisfying when worn to my stepmom’s birthday lunch the next day. It’s not often that I want a picture of myself because I like my outfit so much, but I did this time. Sorta dressy, sorta casual, very very me. (And I adore my pink shoes, and am always happy to find an occasion to wear them.)

So 4th of July then was a lovely lunch and good conversation at the birthday celebration over in Mount Dora, then a return home for a quiet afternoon. Around dinner time, though, I was hungry and had no plan for what I was going to eat. Bah. Fortunately, I had plenty of ingredients. I’d picked up frozen mahi-mahi at Costco earlier in the week, I had fresh tomatoes and spinach… and voila.

It was so delicious! It’s tomatoes, sautéed with capers and pine nuts, then the mahi-mahi seasoned with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, with spinach added at the last minute. Then I discovered that I’d forgotten to add the diced red onion while cooking, so I just threw it on at the end. Yum, yum, yum. The pine nuts (more or less toasted, I really just cooked them in the pan with the tomatoes, because I was not going to turn the oven on for any reason, much less to toast pine nuts) went so surprisingly well with the sharpness of the red onion. Hmm, I’m making myself hungry.

Anyway, post-dinner, Jamie & I had talked about going down to Sanford’s 4th of July celebration, but we were both feeling too lazy. Until 8:45 or so, that is, when we could hear the local fireworks starting. We hopped into the car, with Sophie, and drove down. Parking and traffic were insane, of course, but we stayed away from the center of town and parked on a side street that was a straight shot to the waterfront. We walked down to the water and got there approximately 20 seconds before the fireworks started. We stood on a grassy hill on the inside part of the street, comfortably away from the crowds, and watched as all the communities around the lake lit off fireworks, some in the distance, some up close. They were quite impressive!

I got a few dirty looks, I think for bringing a dog to a fireworks show, but I ignored them, because I was exactly right about how it would go for Sophie: she was uncertain at first, definitely worried, borderline distressed, but once she’d seen the fireworks with Jamie and I being relaxed and interested, not tense, she was fine. Not particularly interested in fireworks, more interested in the people, but not at all worried about the loud noises.

We left a few minutes before the end to avoid the crowds, and the above photo was taken on our walk back to the car, timed pretty perfectly so that the grand finale was happening as we got there, and we beat all the traffic home. A perfect fireworks show — I think we were back at the house by 9:20, which is exactly how much time I’m actually willing to give to fireworks. Less than an hour!

I had a quiet Friday, working on various things, but Saturday I drove to Merritt Island and spent the day with my friend Lynda. We usually claim we’re going to write, so I did bring my computer, but it had been a couple months since we’d seen one another and she has a lovely swimming pool, so we didn’t write. We talked, talked, talked, floated in her pool, talked, talked, talked, ate lunch, talked, talked, talked.

Sophie was with me and very well-behaved: we stayed outside on the back porch and she explored everything, then found a comfortable place to sleep and napped. I’d hoped she’d come in the water, and maybe if I’d brought a ball, she would have. But I forgot to bring one, so she had no motivation to try swimming and therefore didn’t. Still, she did an excellent job in that new situation: no barking because her person was in the water (a habit Bartleby needed to overcome), no running around the pool frantically, no stress. She found herself a nice patch of grass where she could see the front yard and waited patiently for something interesting to happen.

Today, I spent the morning puttering through my course notes. So many notes! I have such a variety of things that I’ve written, things that I’ve learned, and I’m starting to put them together. So I think I will get back to that, maybe after some lunch and some outside time with Sophie Sunshine. Summer is really not my favorite season in Florida — it’s easy to love it here in winter, but harder in July. But we’ve really been managing surprisingly well. Sophie’s not getting nearly as much exercise as she used to but, as I probably should have expected, she seems fine with it. It turns out that a dog with a heavy fur coat doesn’t actually want to spend 30 minutes at a time running after a ball when it’s 90 degrees outside. Who knew?

On Sunday afternoon, I went with Christina & Co. to see Ordinary Boys, a Smiths cover band, at a bar in downtown Sanford. Actually, we thought we were going to see two cover bands, the first called New Dawn Fades, a New Order cover band, and then Ordinary Boys, but it turned out to be one group of musicians with two identities, a concept that I appreciated. So first we had New Order music, then The Smiths music, and interspersed at the end — in a move that had most of the bar crowded onto the dance floor and singing along — a few random 80s songs, including Tears for Fears and Simple Minds.

So much fun!

I am really glad that people don’t smoke in bars anymore, because in the midst of my nostalgic trip, I did notice that key difference to the bars of my early 20s. I’m also glad I don’t drink anymore, because we got there around 2:45, left at around 6:45, and four hours of drinking in a fun, boisterous, musical environment would have killed me even back then. Instead I got to thoroughly enjoy the music, then come home and play with my dog and eat a healthy quinoa bowl for dinner: win-win. And a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

It was not the only nostalgic event of the weekend. On Saturday, we went to see a live version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local Sanford theater. Wow! I’ve only seen Rocky Horror once previously (hmm, maybe twice, another memory just popped into my head of a movie theater on Castro Street in San Francisco), and never a live version, and that was back in my Clarkson years, eons ago. That show is so weird! There was no throwing things at the actors, fortunately, and the audience was quite tame, but the cast was energetic, enthusiastic, and looked like they were having a great time. Also really good. I did wonder about auto-tune, tbh, because the voices were so great and the technology — lighting, video, music, mics — was all top-notch for a small theater, and it’s certainly possible that technology was helping the musicians a bit. But the acting and the dancing and the having fun was all real people doing a great job.

Watching people perform always leaves plenty of room for my brain to wander, though, so it spent a lot of time wandering through the past. As it happens, I’d done a fair amount of that on Friday, too, and much less happily, because on Friday, I went to Costco.

You might think, Costco?! Nostalgia? And you’d be right. Except this Costco was achingly familiar, from a period so long ago that it hurt. I used to drive near that Costco 5 days a week, taking R to-and-from school, back when he was in a private middle school for kids with learning disabilities. It was not the happiest time of my life. I was commuting two hours a day (half an hour there, half an hour back home, 2x a day), working hard and entirely remotely while trying not to think about how much I hated my job, and living in a place that was more house than we needed in a neighborhood that would never feel like home.

But oh, how I loved my boy. Every day we listened to the Zombie Survival Guide on audiobook in the car — over and over again, multiple times, we just got to the end and started at the beginning again — and discussed our own zombie survival strategies. Of which Costco was a huge part, actually! We’d decided that the best plan was to move into the top shelves at the Costco aisles. Use height to our advantage in fighting the zombies, with plenty of supplies right next to us.

He wasn’t happy there either — neither one of us were happy — but I had decided that my priority in life, our priority, was for him to overcome his learning disabilities. That was how we wound up in Florida. The public school in California, where we’d been living, had made it clear that middle school was going to be a sink-into-mediocrity experience for him. He couldn’t go to the middle school where most of his friends would go — an excellent charter school — because they didn’t take kids with learning disabilities. And even though he wasn’t “remediated” to the extent his intelligence suggested was possible, he was no longer far enough under grade level to qualify for support. Our options were limited. The one private school in CA was insanely expensive, nothing I could remotely afford. I looked at schools in Washington, in Massachusetts, finally in Florida. Florida won. But we didn’t love it here, especially back then.

But, oh, I loved him. I would have done anything for him. Giving up my cute house within walking distance to the beach so that he could learn to read was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Giving up my career ambitions, the possibility of achieving the kind of corporate success I’d unthinkingly expected, was a no-brainer. He was my everything.

And now, of course, he is not a part of my life. I think of him with love, I try to only send the typical loving-kindness energy his way (may he be well, may he be happy, may he be loved) when his name crosses my mind, but I also think of him as someone lost to me.

I don’t think I’ve ever shared this story here, but I actually had a major breakthrough in coping with our estrangement when I started thinking of him — the real him, the R who still exists in the world — as a zombie. Someone who had been bitten by zombies, hopefully against their will, and was no longer the same person. Because no one wants to become a zombie. No one chooses to get turned into a zombie! And yet once they’ve been bitten, you have to say good-bye. You can’t keep trying to get someone who wants to hurt you, who will eat your brain, into your life. You have to let go, and let go with love and grief and sorrow, but also by choosing to save yourself.

So yeah, I went to the Costco we used to go to, back in the days when we listened to the Zombie Survival Guide every day, and planned to save ourselves by moving into the Costco, and my heart just broke. All the pieces so painstakingly held together with the duct tape of my choices for happiness and health, just… broke. It was not a good afternoon.

But I did my best to breathe and to let myself feel my feelings, to remember that young R with love, and to forgive the zombie R who exists in my imagination, and to get through. And I did. And the next day I went to Rocky Horror, and remembered the me that existed when I was 17, wide-eyed and confused, and the day after I went to Ordinary Boys and remembered the me that existed at 21, the smoking-drinking-dancing me, and I remembered those past selves with love and amusement and compassion.

And it made me remember that 30-something self with more love, too. I tried so hard. If I had known where trying so hard would take me, I would have done things differently, no question about that. But there is no rewriting the past.

Anyway. Today I’m going to choose to be happy, and that means it’s time to walk my poor patient dog and live here in the present for a while. I’m grateful, though, that I got to have some really good nostalgia this weekend. Two thumbs up for live music and time with friends.

 

I decided this weekend — after messing around with innumerable variations of coaching website designs — to just keep my Choosing Happiness site ridiculously simple and use the template from this website on that address. A new name, of course, and maybe a front page, rather than the main page being the blog, but as basic as possible, using a design I’m already familiar with. It turns out, however, that the theme for this blog is no longer included in the wordpress theme collection and so my “simple” plan immediately got complicated. I swear, that is the story of this career concept. If it is possible to overthink a word choice, I’ve been overthinking it. If it is possible to take a straightforward idea and turn it into a ridiculously complicated plan, done.

Last week, during my meeting with my accountability partner, I mentioned that I’d decided to make business cards with the job title, “Happiness Consultant.” The title amused me, mostly because breaking down the job descriptions of counselor (requires a license!) vs coach vs consultant sort of goes like this:

• Counselors help clients develop a deeper understanding of their own history and how their past affects their present. Counselors aren’t supposed to offer advice or guidance; they should ask questions that lead clients to self-discovery, letting them find their own answers.
• Coaches focus on supporting their clients as they make changes in the present to improve their futures. A coach can be like an extremely reliable accountability partner.
• Consultants give advice. They listen, but their focus is on solutions to problems. They don’t assume that the client knows everything that they need to know in order to solve their problem or reach their goal.

Part of the appeal for me of coaching (and counseling, when I started graduate school eons ago,) is that good conversations fascinate me and I like talking to people. A job that involves me listening intently as people tell me their stories sounds great to me.

But I also very strongly want to say, hey, if you’re not sleeping 7-8 hours/day, that’s what you need to work on first. If you’re not eating a solid mix of vegetables and protein, we’re not going to talk about gratitude, we’re going to look at the ways food fuels mood and how before you can be happy, you have to have energy, and that means providing your system essential nutrients. If you’re not getting enough Vitamin D, preferably through sunshine, than trying to find a happiness boost by listening to music from your childhood is not going to do much.

All of that = advice. All of that = probably bad coaching. But probably good consulting.

Back to the point, I decide to call myself a Happiness Consultant.

Greg said, “you need a tag line or something succinct to explain that.”

Cue so, so, so many hours of over-thinking. Really, what I need is a website, a contact email, a course, and to start actually doing the WORK instead of thinking about the work. But maybe something like, “shaping habits for a happier today,”? Or “helping you shape habits for a happier now”? I don’t know… ugh.

Meanwhile, I am about to run late for this week’s accountability meeting, so quickly…

Yesterday was a delightful day: it included no work whatsoever, but a very nice trip to the beach.

My new beach umbrella was sadly ineffective — it kept blowing away — but I layered on the sunscreen, went in the water multiple times (always watching for sharks, yes, I’m paranoid) and appreciated my day.

Poor Sophie was less appreciative of her day.

I checked in on her through the blink camera regularly, and she was almost always lying in this exact spot, looking out that window. I was watching when we turned into the driveway coming home and her head went up in a flash, and she was off the bed and at the door before the car even stopped. So happy to see us!

But the good news for her is that my accountability meeting = her playdate with her best buddy, so today will be a much nicer day for her. Starting now!

 

If you had asked me two weeks ago if I had ever owned a red raincoat — or indeed, if I had ever worn a red anything, anytime in my life — I would have laughed and said no. Red is not my color. I never wear red, I’ve never worn red.

I would have been wrong. Apparently sometime in my long-forgotten past, I DID own a red raincoat, and I was super cute in it, if I do say so myself.

The picture is part of a collection that my brother sent me — several hundred incredibly small jpgs, most about 150K, that my mom had probably scanned sometime decades ago. The vast majority of the images were what you’d expect: snapshots, blurry, unposed, with scattered artifacts like dust and even the occasional hair from the scanning process, often too dark or too bright. But they were also the record of a childhood I mostly don’t remember — picnics, pony rides, petting zoos. Swimming in Lake George, visiting Niagara Falls, Easters at my grandparents. I had fun browsing them, and then I spent a probably ridiculous amount of time trying to enhance some of them to make my dad a Father’s Day movie with highlights of the past.

Along the way, I discovered the fun of using apps inside Canva to turn photographs into drawings. Of course I’d done that before, many years ago. Wow, that technology has come a long way.

Behold, anime me:

And sketched me, looking far more solemn than original me, with the addition of a city backdrop quite unlikely in my own childhood:

And another sketched me, this time with people and cars in the background, and honestly, just crying out to become a kids picture book somehow. There is clearly a story that goes with that cute little pudgy-faced girl in the rain. I suspect a puppy should be involved.

I justified all that playing with Canva as learning, of course — figuring out how to make presentations and graphics so that I can use them as I work on developing my Choosing Happiness site and course and other products. I keep reminding myself that it’s okay to be in a building/learning stage, as long as someday I move on to a creating/sharing stage, and I will. Soon. Someday. Eventually. Really.

Meanwhile, I have far too many goals for this week. Update this, work on that, finish the library books I’m reading, organize my notes, create a link tree, write the damn content for the landing page on the other site so that I can start blogging over there, design a pretty infographic, decide on the image style…

But the actual goal on my to-do list for the day? Have fun with Sophie. She was alone for a big chunk of the past two days, on Sunday while I had a lovely Father’s Day brunch with my dad and stepmom, and yesterday while I had an entertaining summer day at Epcot with friends. While I don’t feel like I’ve neglected her — believe me, my dog is not neglected! — I do want to make sure she gets some entertainment in her days, too. Does she care? Probably less than I do, tbh — more than once recently, when we’ve been playing ball in the backyard, she has let me know that hanging out in the air-conditioning would be fine by her — but still. Goal for the day: do many useful things AND have fun with Sophie.

 

 

I spent much of last week doing the kind of ridiculous “work” that isn’t really work, it just feels sorta like work.

Evidence #1:

Yes, I changed the icon on my Projects folder to a typewriter icon. Why did I think that was necessary? I don’t know, and it obviously wasn’t necessary exactly — it was just fun. I was on a big organizing, re-structuring of information binge and that was part of it. I also thoroughly cleaned out old files, with the exception of one dumping ground labeled The Archives, into which I put everything that fell into the category of “haven’t touched this in years, probably don’t need to ever touch it again, but not quite sure I should throw away…”

I had to call that folder “The Archives,” not just Archives, because I didn’t want it showing up at the top of my folders list, which was super annoying. And very much in the wheel-spinning category of non-productive. It seems so obvious that I should be able to decide how my files are organized, and I should be able to drag and drop them so that they are positioned the way I want them to be positioned. That shouldn’t be hard. And yet nothing I did seemed to convince the Finder that my whim should over-rule its alphabetical or otherwise order in the list view. How much time did I waste on that? More than enough.

My one other un-organized folder is the Pictures folder. I started organizing that one — it shouldn’t be too hard — but it turned out I wasn’t really in the mood to look at photos. There’s a mindfulness exercise that I’ve been playing with recently, where every so often, you pause and look at what you’re thinking about. You consider the thought that’s been spinning around in your brain and you decide where it should be filed. In my own visual model, the files are mostly the round kind :), but sometimes there are other options.

For example, say I’m driving the car, and I’m on my way home from the grocery store, and I’m obsessing on having spent $15 more than my weekly food budget. That’s the thought: $15 over budget. But what kind of thought is it? What’s it connected to? When I’m thinking that thought, what emotion is it rooted in? In this example, it’s money -> worry -> fears of the future -> future round file. Drop it in that trash can of silly fear and move on. (In my own mind’s defense, though, I have to mention that I usually enjoy the game of getting pretty close to a precise number on a weekly shopping trip, and if I’m more than $10 over, I always try to figure out where I spent extra, because it’s a fun math puzzle. Figuring out and obsessing, however, are not the same experience.)

Anyway, back to my pictures folder, looking at images from the past invariably stirs up memories, feelings, emotions, reminiscences and ruminations, and I just did not have the time or energy for that last week. So that folder is still a mess and will undoubtedly stay a mess, although I am hoping to use some of the many, many, many beautiful photos I have taken over the years on my Choosing Happiness blog.

I’m also hoping to start writing that very, very soon. I’ve got so much great content that I’m trying to make sense of right now. One of the ideas that I’m holding on to — lest I drown in a sea of ideas & information — is from a book called “Building a Second Brain,” about personal knowledge management. The author, Tiago Fuerte, has a concept that he calls “intermediate packets.” I hate the name — honestly, really, just cringe at it, I am not a computer to be delivering packets of data — but the idea is that you create “value in small bits.” Like a blog post about one cool thing I’ve learned from a book on sleep, instead of the dozen cool things that I’ve learned which I’ve organized into a complete online course, and a book and a coaching signature program and… well, here’s a direct quote from Building a Second Brain:

Intermediate Packets are really a new lens through which you can perceive the atomic units that make up everything you do. By “thinking small,” you can focus on creating just one IP each time you sit down to work, without worrying about how viable it is or whether it will be used in the exact way you envisioned. This lens reframes creativity as an ongoing, continual cycle of delivering value in small bits, rather than a massive all-consuming endeavor that weighs on you for months.

So yeah, I’m thinking small. Small-ish. Moving forward one step at a time, and understanding that I’m looking at a long-range plan that will be fulfilled with the same persistence that got me through that Master Wellness Coaching certificate. One piece at a time!

Meanwhile, last week was also very much a recovery week for me. Somehow, I was thinking “as soon as I get home, I will feel well again.” Why did I think that? No idea. Obviously, 100% magical thinking. But my level of intestinal upset was such that I changed my seat on the plane going home to an aisle seat, just in case, and that intestinal upset did not stop when I arrived at my own bed. Alas. But I’ve been drinking my kombucha and eating my yogurt and I’m feeling better. Thank goodness, because sauerkraut or kimchi are the next step for me — fermented foods feed your intestines healthy bacteria — and I’m not really a fan of either.

Last week also included a walk with Sophie to see the osprey babies, still in the nest but probably not for much longer; watching The Fall Guy with Jamie (not a perfect movie, but definitely enjoyable); a really lovely beach day with Christina — we went in the water multiple times, because it was definitely hot enough, and then had a delicious lunch on a new (to us) rooftop patio; the farmer’s market where the micro greens guy recognized me and knew that I’d been gone for a while (yay for loose neighborhood connections); and taking the dogs out to live music at Celery City on Saturday night, which ended too early because it started to thunder but which was fun for the time we were there. The band was playing covers from people like Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Dire Straits — not music that I listen to regularly but so familiar, and thoroughly enjoyable.

As well as working and reading and writing, and doing my best to live a good life.

There was a bench outside my hotel room in Costa Rica, overlooking this roof and the canyon beyond it, and I took so many pictures of the beautiful skies from it. I didn’t manage to get much work done while sitting on that bench, but I did eat quite a few meals there. This shot, with the clouds actually in the canyon, is one of my favorites.

So, I’m home from Costa Rica and glad to be here. Overall, though, two thumbs up.

The hotel I stayed at is called the Vista Canyon Inn, and I would absolutely stay there again, especially if I was visiting Costa Rica for future dental work. Along with the room, they provide a ride to and from the airport, and a ride to and from the dentist’s office for every single appointment you have. In my case, that was six appointments, on six separate days. They also give you a ride to the grocery store one day, and if you stay at the hotel for longer than a week, a load of laundry. Plus breakfast every day, including a fruit cup of papaya, watermelon, pineapple, and banana, which I really loved. Plus, really, really nice people. Every single morning, the concierge, Paola, asked me if I needed anything (new towels, room cleaned, help of any kind) and reminded me about my appointment schedule. It was a level of personal care that no big chain hotel could ever come anywhere close to emulating.

I also adored the pool. I swam every single day, sometimes two or three times a day. The earliest was on my last day, at around 5:30AM; the latest was after dark, more than once. I say “swam” — really, I mean floated, watching the sky, admiring the clouds, daydreaming and feeling peaceful. It was lovely. About 95% of the time I had it all to myself, too, which is a great advantage of a small hotel.

The dentist I went to was Goodness Dental, and I would go there again, too. The office was busy, clean, professional and completely geared toward Americans there for dental tourism. Most of the customers seemed to be having major work done, as in full sets of dental implants, with repeat visits required. One gentleman told me that he’d been quoted $40,000 for the work in the US, and it was costing him $11,000 in Costa Rica. He said the nice part was that he and his traveling companion were having two really luxury vacations, but it was still costing him less than half of what he would have spent in the US. I think my costs — mostly because of the need for expensive gluten-free food — ended up being a little more than I would have spent in the US, but it was totally worth it. ($2740 for the dentist, $1300 for the hotel, $350 for the flight, $530 for food & tips for a total of $4920, compared to a quote of $4700 for the dentist here. Oh, and I got a cleaning and a night guard, which would probably have put me over $5K here, so yeah, just barely cheaper, although I probably wouldn’t have been willing to get the night guard here.) Anyway, I would rather not need anything major done to my mouth anytime soon, but if I do, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back.

In other news:

Whew.

This certification was a lot harder than the Master Life Coach certification that I got earlier in the year, because the Master Life Coach overlapped with a lot of what I’d learned in grad school (for a counseling degree that I didn’t finish). I didn’t have the same base of knowledge for the elements of “wellness,” ie diet, nutrition, exercise. I definitely feel accomplished for having made it through all the required courses.

Once I was done, I spent a little time looking at the other classes: intuition development, spiritual coaching, forgiveness coaching… and then I stopped myself. At a certain point, more learning just becomes procrastination. I’m not quite at that point yet — I’ve got a bunch of books to finish reading before I start creating the online course(s) that I so over-optimistically thought I’d have completed by now — but I’m getting there. Goals for the rest of the month: get my website up, get my mailing list started. I don’t really imagine that the day I officially open my doors as a life-coach, people will be knocking, but that day is finally getting closer.

On the last question that all people have asked: was Sophie happy to see me? She was, to exactly the right degree, which is to say, happy enough to show that she missed me, and not so happy to show that my absence bothered her much. She said hello, gave me kisses and tail wags, then immediately showed me where the ChuckIt was resting and invited me to play ball. I declined the invitation, so she brought out all her toys, one at a time, but within ten minutes, she was inviting Jamie to play with her toys instead of me. Or along with me, I guess. She is pleased to have me back, I think, but not being clingy or needy. Perfect!

I gluten-ed myself on Saturday.

Ugh.

I ordered Korean sweet potato noodles with vegetables, including shiitake mushrooms, from an Asian place, as well as a poke bowl for later. I took a couple bites of the sweet potato noodles, then looked at the menu again. The description listed the ingredients, but it didn’t list oyster sauce. But I was tasting oyster sauce. At least I thought I was.

I sighed, then shrugged. Too late, anyway, so I might as well enjoy the noodles, right?

NO! Wrong!! Bad, bad, bad idea!

I am so good at avoiding gluten that I’ve become complacent about my reaction. So in a couple of days, I’ll be sick for a couple of days, so what, right?

NO! Wrong!! Bad, bad, bad idea!

I’d had a sneaking suspicion for a while that my gluten reaction might have evolved. Some people eliminate gluten from their diet and later discover that a break from gluten was enough to let their bodies recover and they can begin eating it again in moderation. Other people eliminate gluten and their bodies say, “Whew, now we know that stuff is poison,” and the reaction gets bigger and stronger. I am in the latter camp. Which means no more waiting around two days to develop a flu-like set of symptoms (an immune system response) that include fever, sore throat, aching muscles and fatigue. Nope, I’m classic celiacs now, which means very soon after eating gluten, my body is doing its best to eliminate all traces of that poison.

The worst part — well, no, not the worst part, because that is definitely the physical symptoms. But an unpleasant part is the emotional response of feeling stupid and incompetent and sorry for myself.

In this case, in particular, the “sorry for myself” was irksome to me. Because I’m actually incredibly lucky and somewhat surprised by how many gluten-free options are available to me here. And not the kind of gluten-free options that I would have expected, which is the, “well, those are corn tortillas, so it’s probably fine, I guess I’ll take my chances,” option.

No, Costa Rica — or at least, San Jose — has a veritable plethora of gluten-free restaurants and choices. A mile away from the dentist’s office is a place called CeliHouse: a dedicated GF bakery and pizza place. About five miles to the north of the hotel is Cafeteria Rita 3 GF, also dedicated GF. Four miles to the NE, Ambroxia7, also dedicated GF. Now, it’s a little true that all those places look like the burgers & pizza kind of GF, which is not my favorite type of food, but the place I ordered from on my first day here, Raw To Go, with the spicy poke bowl and the papaya salad, is also mostly or perhaps completely gluten-free. At the very least, they clearly label some of their options as GF.

My problem is that it’s so much more fun to look for variety. Well, and also that labeling something gluten-free doubles the price, I think. My sweet potato noodles were actually a reasonably inexpensive Korean dish that I’d never heard of before, japchae, and I wanted to try something new. I did, it was a mistake. Oops.

Did I learn my lesson? Probably, at least for today.

And I did eat breakfast today, so I’m feeling enough better that I’m not going to spend anymore time moping about the miseries of life with an over-active immune system. Instead, I’m going to count my blessings.

Blessing #1:

A beautiful sunrise.

Blessing #2: Raw to Go has gluten-free brownies! As soon as my stomach promises to behave itself (not quite yet, it’s pretty unhappy about that breakfast I ate), I will be giving one a try.

I’m not sure I should be calling this trip a vacation, tbh. Here’s how it’s gone so far:

Day One (Tuesday): arrived.

Day Two (Wednesday): went to the dentist. To my pleasure, the dentist said she didn’t want to do five crowns. Two, definitely; two others, she would prefer to do a partial crown (an onlay) and save as much of the tooth as possible; the fifth, she felt could just be filled like an ordinary cavity. Oh, but also, there was another cavity that needed filling. (My CA dentist had told me that, my FL dentist hadn’t mentioned it.) So the new plan: two crowns; two partial crowns; two fillings. And did I want a night guard to help with my TMJ? And a cleaning? Yes, I did. To both.

Day Three (Thursday): went to the dentist. Ugh, it was grueling. I mean, I always expected it to be grueling, but… yeah. It was grueling. Surprise: it is really uncomfortable to lie still on your back for hours and hours. Hey, ‘ya think that’s why the FL dentist wanted to take months to do this job? But also, while they’re drilling, they’re spraying water in your mouth, and while the tech is suctioning it out, some of it is going down your throat. Fine for forty minutes. But after four hours, I thought I was going to explode. I had to get them to stop for bathroom breaks for me three times! By the time I was headed back to the hotel, I felt like I never wanted to eat or drink again.

A little bad news: one of the teeth that she thought she could do a partial crown on was worse than she expected, so it turned into three crowns. And some potential bad news: two teeth were borderline for root canals. She told me if it was painful at all when the novocaine wore off, they’d want to do them, but we’d wait and see before deciding. My last three dentists have been warning me about those teeth maybe needing root canals, so it wasn’t unexpected, but it wasn’t thrilling, either.

Day Four (Friday): went to the dentist. Not grueling! Got my teeth cleaned, and the two cavities filled and all was fine, especially because those borderline root canal teeth weren’t hurting at all, so I’d dodged that bullet, yay! Getting the cavities filled was interesting, too — she asked if I wanted novocaine, and I asked her if I needed it. She shrugged and said, we could see, and if it hurts, we’ll do it. It didn’t hurt at all. It really made me wonder how many times dentists just use novocaine automatically. I haven’t had a lot of fillings but getting the novocaine shot has always been the most painful part. This wasn’t painful at all.

Up to this point, end of Day Four, all of my food had been either breakfast at the hotel (Costa Rican food — a delicious fruit starter with pineapple, banana, papaya, and watermelon, followed by scrambled eggs and either an empanada or a tamale or something similar) or UberEats. Good UberEats — poke bowls, a spicy chicken bowl, a crunchy Thai bowl — yes, I like bowls — but still, not very… vacation-y? Not that I’ve ever once ordered from UberEats at home, but when I’m on vacation, I would much rather go out and see places than eat my meals in my hotel room.

But I’m staying at one of the hotels recommended by the dentist, and it’s extremely delightfully low effort: the dentist tells the hotel where I’m supposed to be and when, the hotel arranges for someone to take me there and then picks me up when I’m done. The hotel itself is terrific, but it’s in the suburbs — it’s a place for peaceful recuperation after misery, not a place for taking great walks. Literally, they recommend that you hire an Uber even to go to the nearest restaurant because the streets are not pedestrian friendly — narrow, winding, hilly, blind corners, and traffic. Obviously, I could hire said Uber, and go to that restaurant or somewhere else, but my dental visit days did not leave me so inclined.

Friday afternoon, though, I was ready for lunch and still in San Jose, so I texted the hotel and asked if I could get picked up a little later, maybe in an hour or an hour and a half? My pick up driver that day was actually the owner of the hotel, and he said sure, so I wandered down the very urban street to the nearby shopping mall.

When I say “very urban street,” I am not meaning ghetto or city center, I am meaning the kind of street that runs next to a highway, with some big chain-type stores, all with parking out front. Basically I was strolling by a bunch of parking lots. Car-friendly, not people friendly. The mall had an Outback Steakhouse on one corner, a Starbucks in the center. You could figure out pretty quickly, of course, that it was not American — all the signs are in Spanish — but San Jose is not the charming, exotic city of anyone’s vacation dreams. At least not the parts of it that I’ve seen. It’s a real city, not a destination city.

But it also had a seafood restaurant with a menu out front, seats outside, a note on the bottom of the menu that mentioned allergies, and a friendly waitress. Their speciality: ceviche. We had a little discussion of gluten, and she started showing me through the menu, but it was, of course, all in Spanish. And it was 2PM, I was hungry, so I pointed to the trio of ceviches, said “Your choice, pick the good ones,” and handed back the menu with a smile.

She brought me back the above and told me what they were: on the far left, the “typical” ceviche with sea bass; in the middle, her personal favorite, a spicy mango ceviche with tuna; and on the right, a Caribbean version with coconut milk, red onion, and lime. Also chips, made of taro root and plantain, I think.

It looked great to me, so I was delighted, but the table next to me — well, the three men seated there — immediately started hassling the waitress. They were speaking Spanish, and it was obviously friendly, but also dramatic. I didn’t understand a word so after a little bit, I looked away and started eating. It seemed like the waitress knew them, she was arguing and laughing with them. Like I said, completely friendly, and probably none of my business.

Except it was my business, because a few minutes later, she brought me another bowl of ceviche. Their argument had been about her ceviche choices for me. The one man did not agree that she’d picked the best one. In his opinion, the best one was the one with passionflower juice. He’d ordered me an extra bowl, so that I could try it out. I think he said that it was a Peruvian ceviche. I’m not sure which one it was on the menu, but he was right, it was the best of a very, very delicious set of ceviches. (Edited to add: and really a delightful moment for me, experiencing the generosity of friendly strangers — I was seriously charmed.) 

That has been, however, my ONLY vacation experience on this trip so far. Well, apart from swimming in the very lovely pool, which I have done every day. Oh, and eating breakfast every morning with a fellow traveler, who’s making a solo move to Costa Rica when she retires in two months and is spending her days managing those details. So I guess a little more vacation than I was thinking, but still, so far the dentist has very much outweighed any sense of exploration and adventure.

You know what, though? That is very much okay with me. I have always had a “do ALL the things” mentality about vacations. I want to take advantage of the opportunity to see everything I can, do everything I can. But I’m finding this hotel relaxing and peaceful. When not at the dentist, I’ve been working, writing, learning, reading, doing all the things I usually do in my life, just doing them in a truly lovely place. Well, most of the things I usually do in my life. I obviously miss Miss Sunshine (“absolutely adorable,” according to Jamie, so doing well!) and being able to cook my own meals. Otherwise, though — I might make it home from this vacation without having touched the sands of Costa Rica, but I suspect I will finally have finished the Master Wellness Coach certification. How long have I been working on it? Since the end of February, I think. It’ll be good to be done. As long as I’m also happy with my teeth and have swum every day, I’ll call that a win.

It’s the rainy season, now, too, so every afternoon has been torrential rain. Really impressive torrential rain! I thought it would be like Florida storms, over in twenty minutes, but not so much. I won’t swim if it’s thundering, but I swam in the dark and the rain two nights ago and it was so, so peaceful and lovely. I remember wondering during my last night swim in my own pool if I would ever get to have that experience again. Answer: yes.

Life is good. Dental “vacations”, also good.