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!