Day Six, January 11th, 2010

There is nothing joyful about Mondays. When I was a kid, it would start with the Ed Sullivan show. You knew it was Sunday night and that the fun was over. Monday's are hard, but then I guess if we had Monday's off, Tuesday's would be hard. The common denominator is work, but as someone once said, if it was fun, it would be called fun, thus it is called work. So before even getting out of bed I knew it was going to be tough to kill the gloom today. What could there possibly be to bring joy to the day. Getting to work, I blew off the music. Yea, that did make me pretty happy the first day, but I was being a pollyanna then. This little project is not even a week old and I am out of joy. So I scanned my email, and realized that I had forwarded to myself at work the pictures from my camera taken on Christmas. I opened them, and shuffled through and came across this one of my adorable baby grandson, Marcus. Immediate warmth and joy flooded me. What can be more joyful than a baby's first Christmas. So I kept looking at it throughout the day, restoking the joy fire with that little face.

Day Five, January 10th, 2010

On Saturday, shortly after posting about my discovery of the magnetic wand, my husband noticed that my computer was "doing that thing again". This is going to be hard to describe, but try to picture this. You are trying to read The Guttenberg Bible, on a roller coaster, with a hangover and vertigo, each time you think you have focused on the words, the roller coaster dips and dives and you have an extreme case of the hiccups. The words start spinning and rolling, portions are light, portions are dark, and flash across the screen like bolts of lightning. I knew I was in trouble. So being totally non technical, I switched the surge protector on and off a couple of times, played with all the connections, plugged and unplugged stuff and then started to panic. I was having flashbacks to a year or so ago when I lost 3,000 plus pictures when my hard drive crashed. I thought maybe if I let it rest, it would feel better in the morning. I got up on Sunday, went to 7:00 a.m., Mass and after communion, I am ashamed to say, prayed for my computer. When I got home, I realized God was busy with other problems, real problems. I went on my husband's computer thinking maybe I could troubleshoot by googling a description of what the computer was doing and that brought me to the Dell website and a phone number for technical support. Okay, hope springs again. I grabbed the phone and dialed the number and after all the appropriate prompts and holds, I hear a voice that I immediately recognize as based in Mumbai. My heart sank. If you have ever had the fun of dealing with an outsourced call center in India, no explanation is needed . So we begin and I attempt to follow all the directions, but I have to tell you the accent is making it hard to understand. He starts saying something like forty dead leafy walnut trees, or more clay lace currants please. He keeps repeating, I just can't make it out. I handed the phone to my husband and all of a sudden, his face is beaming. Four days left on warranty! The computer is still under warranty for four more days! They will send someone out to fix it and it is all covered under our warranty. Yippee the joyful moment of the day!

Day Four, January 9th, 2010

Quiet day, hubby off to work for half the day, and a long put off project started, tackling my messy craft room. And I do mean messy, it could qualify for an episode of Hoarders. If the police came to my house they would think I was robbed, with my craft room totally ransacked. Try to picture it: A volcanic explosion of yarn, scrapbooking papers swirled and tossed as if they were in Hurricane Andrew, fabric everywhere, buttons and pins and needles and hooks and looms look like they were shot out of a Ringling Brothers Cannon. There is no order to this disorder, and that is mostly the reason I have been putting it off so long. It is downstairs, I can shut the door. If I have to get some yarn, I tie a rope around my waist, anchor the rope around the drain pipe for the washer and dive in. I leave post its with pleas to come look for me if I don't return in one hour. It is bad. Embarrasingly bad. So I was able to clear a small portion of the floor in about two foot increments so that I could put one foot in at a time through the clutter. Then I saw it, the sewing basket filled with pins and needles, open and upside down. I grabbed the handle and they sprayed the room, landing some up, some down. This is not going to be good. I started picking up the pins, I felt like St. Theresa, one by one picking them up. I know I have not been so good, but this much penance I don't need. And then I had an Aunt Alice moment. Bingo! Bingo! It was so easy to find it, Aunt Alice's old red plastic container with the magnetic bingo chips and the MAGNETIC BINGO RETRIEVAL WAND!! Tethered by the rope, balancing in the footholds, I whipped it out and swirled like a maestro! The pins were defenseless, drawn like moths to the light, bees to the honey, metal to a magnet, well you get the picture. I scooped them up, and into the trash they went. And that was the most joyful moment of the day!

Day 3, January 8th, 2010

Today's post is early and a no brainer! Lots of smiles here today! 30 years ago, at this moment I was in the labor room at the now closed Pt.Pleasant Beach Hospital awaiting the birth of my daughter! The trend of the day was natural childbirth, and by that I mean no drugs! I hee hee'd so hard I hyperventilated. I heard the doctor tell my husband, encourage her not to take any drugs! I told the nurse I had to push, and she patted my hand and said now now, the doctor just checked you, you have a long time to go! She took a look and screamed, delivery room now. My husband who said he wasn't going to watch, ran behind us, and we barely made it there. The baby was screaming before she was even delivered!!! The doctor was holding her and kept putting his finger in her mouth so she would stop crying! He finally said, don't you want to know what it is! Those days, we didn't know until the baby arrived, we were so excited, we forgot to ask! It was a girl, my precious adorable daughter, Lauren Nicole! What a wonderful 30 years it has been, and it only gets better! And she has blessed us with two beautiful grandsons! Happy Birthday Lauren, thanks for 30 years of joy!

Day Two, January 7th, 2010

The best part of today came before lunch when my buddy Lisa Fusco opened her desk drawer, shuffled through her snack stash and pulled out a ziplock bag with two of her famous cookies in it, and said "Want one?". There is not a chocolate chip cookie in the entire state or country for that fact that rivals Lisa's. It is her signature, her trademark. Every birthday boy or girl is the recipient of their own private batch, and some people, like Lou, don't even need a reason to get this very sought after prize. And this is not just my opinion, hands down, hers are the best. We try to pry the secret out of her, and she says, well maybe it is the dark brown sugar I use, or maybe it is the butter not margarine, or maybe it is the pan. I think it is that she puts her heart and soul into every morsel knowing how much joy each cookie brings. Eyes brighten, mouths water, you just have to experience it once in your life. Pure cookie joy, crisp bottom, soft inside, gooey chocolate chips, each bite dissolves slowly in your mouth as sacred as a first communion wafer. Pure joy, pure happiness, it doesn't get any better than Lisa's chocolate chip cookies.

Day One, Choosing to be Happy!

January 6th, 2010

Music. Today, I decided to turn on the music on my computer. I have not had it on for months. I always used to play classical music while I was working because the music was calming but not distracting. It was just a lilting sort of background which makes me feel professional and productive. It also brings back memories. When we were kids, my father had a victrola (record player) and lots of records. Many Sundays he would play the records because in those days there was little on TV or much to do. With our parents gone, I still have tons of records stashed in the basement. When my kids were little, I loved to play Beethoven's pastoral symphony and we would pretend we were ice skating in our socks on the wooden floors. Thinking of that today, and listening to my music at work, is making me smile. Day one, choosing to be happy, success.

Gingerbread house making day

My grandson Damien invited me to his school today to make a gingerbread house with his class. There are 11 kids in the class, and they are just adorable. The teacher set everything up so that each child had all the ingredients to create their own gingerbread house. Damien came up with an awesome building, and crowned it off with a horn of plenty filled with gumdrops and M&M's. I was really astounded at how creative seven year olds are. Damien even made a sled with a gingerbread cookieman riding it. This was such a fun day, and one I will treasure. Thank you Damien for inviting me, it was an awesome day and put me in the Christmas spirit!