My on-again, off-again week of knitting

I made some good progress over the snowy weekend. Then I managed to drop one of my needles Sunday night. When I went back to look for it, I found it with my foot and the crack it made underneath. I thought I could tape the needle together, but it felt wobbly. Then I tried using super glue, but that made things worse and it cracked even more. I contacted my friend who owns the yarn store to see if she could bring home a new set and I'd pay her back. In the midst of the chaotic weather situation, it slipped her mind, but she loaned me a circular set in the meantime. It's interesting to use. I don't mind borrowing it, but I don't know that I'm ready to purchase such a set for myself yet. My friend thinks I'll be spoiled by this set, but I still have a longing for the ones I've been using up till this point. My knitting has gotten a little sloppy with the circular set. I totally appreciate that she loaned it to me so I could continue on this scarf, but I'm glad it's just a loan for now. And call me crazy, but I hiked to her house in the snow last night, just so I could get going on the scarf again while watching "American Idol." That's usually my main knitting time!
I'm sure my BFF will find this blog hilarious, but that's okay. I'm happy to have picked up a new skill this year and even happier that someone wanted me to teach them before knowing how inexperienced I am. I definitely gave her the Facebook link to my friend's store. I now want to share this Facebook link with my loyal readers and anyone else who comes across this, lives in Maryland and is interested in knitting: The Yarn Spot. Even if you don't live in Maryland, definitely check it out!

Put on a happy face

Through a friend from our community, I was recently introduced to "The Happiness Project". It is a blog that recently became a book. The author is our friend's client. Recently, she spoke at B&N in DC about her book and stated the top 5 ways to make yourself happy. This was filmed and broadcast on Fox News here. I watched the video today and wrote down the Top 5 list for myself, to measure my own level of happiness against it.

5. Shed the clutter in your life: I recently blogged about how I am a hoarder and how I am working to give away stuff I don't need. One of my close friends e-mailed me in regards to that and said that not having clutter around was making her happier. I definitely agree. I like giving stuff to people if I feel it would be more useful to them than to myself. Today, I gave a friend some tablecloths that would fit her table better than ours. She was happy to have them and they will get to be used again, instead of crammed in our buffet cabinet.

4. Be a good and reliable friend: I also recently blogged about this. I realize that I am not perfect about always staying in touch with people and something today made me realize that I am missing out on things in that respect. I sometimes focus all my energy on one set of friends and then get to the others when I have time. I should be more attentive to my friends no matter how much I see or hear from them. In the long run, my friends know I love and care about them and they know where to find me if they want to catch up. The friendship still works both ways. I'm doing the best I can, given how many balls I have in the air.

3. Learn something new: Knitting. Enough said! :) Oddly enough, a friend e-mailed me today to ask if I could teach her how to knit. I was honest about my knitting experience, or lack of, and pointed her in the right direction.

2. Get more sleep and exercise: As Elle Woods says: "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy." I have gotten back to exercising this year. I've blogged about it a few times too. This week hasn't been as good for me on an exercising standpoint. I'm off my routine. However, I have been able to sleep in this week, thanks to my older son's inability to tell time (5 minutes stretches into 20 every time he asks). I plan to get back into my exercise routine when life gets back to normal again (in regards to the snow situation here). I did trudge through a thick tundra of snow the other day while carrying my younger son. That was a major workout! I also realize that I don't go to bed all that early. I need to get back into that routine. Knowing I can sleep in this week has caused me to stay up even later than normal. Every night feels like Saturday night!

1. Make your bed: I don't do this at all. It looks cozier when it's all unmade. I don't know why. I've NEVER been good about making my bed. My mom is probably reading this right now and laughing about it. When we have a cleaning service, they make the bed and it looks pretty, but more "model home" like. The other concept I thought of was "You made your bed, now lie in it." It could be coined as a phrase similar to "you dug your own grave" or anything that is a metaphor about making a mess for yourself and having to deal with it. However, it could be twisted in a good way...as in you created your own path or set your own life standards. I "made my bed" to be enjoyable and fun and now I want to participate in that fun and enjoyment. I'm not trying to sound cheesy. I think life is whatever you make of it. This applies to all individuals. There's a thing called "self-fulfilling prophecy," that could definitely apply to the concept of making your bed and lying in it.

Overall, I think I'm generally happy. I have my mood swings, but I can't complain overall. I am thankful for many things in my life and feel that I am finally in a good place overall. I have my own list of ways one can make themselves happy. While the list above makes complete sense, I have to wonder if these five concepts are anywhere on her list, as well:

5. Have something to look forward to, even if it's as simple as your favorite TV show coming on.
4. Laugh whenever possible. Find the humor in unlikely situations.
3. Eat lots of chocolate. (Okay, I'm biased here, but chocolate always makes me happy on the simplest of levels.)
2. Treat yourself to things, even if it doesn't cost anything (such as a bubble bath).
1. Love yourself. (Or at least like yourself enough to not be your own worst enemy and get to a point where you'll love yourself eventually.) No need to be conceited though.

This list was just the top 5 things that popped into my head and I feel they do matter on the path toward happiness.

So, as the Partridge Family says: "C'mon, get happy!"

Where the Heart ALWAYS is

I first connected with Billie Letts when I read "Where the Heart is." I even had dreams about being stranded in Wal-Mart long after I read that book. Then the movie came out the year after I read it. I liked it the first time and then fell in love with it the second time. I felt it totally surpassed the excellence of the book. It's still my number one favorite movie.
After WTHI, she came out with "The Honk and Holler Opening Soon." I thought the title sounded strange so I overlooked it. However, I went right for "Shoot the Moon" when it came out a few years later. I really liked it and shared it with friends afterward. In 2008, I read "Made in the U.S.A.," which was impossible to put down. It was a dark story, but so well written that I knew it would leave me smiling somehow. Then my mom told me that I'd love "The Honk and Holler..." so I finally gave it a chance and was not disappointed at all. It was such a good and moving story that I was sorry I didn't read it sooner. I hope Billie Letts will continue to write more winners as wonderful as these past four have been.

No more kaynehores! (Part Two)

Before we moved out here, everyone told us that it rarely ever snows in Maryland and if it does, they get just an inch and schools close because they don't know how to handle that much snow. That being the gist of things, we didn't make an effort to buy new boots for the kids (thankfully the ones they have still fit). We had a shovel and a huge bag of salt locked away in our storage shed, thinking we'd never need them. Then we got dumped on in mid-December, during a weekend we had a friend visiting from Chicago. I figured this wasn't anything new for her, but it was annoying that we couldn't take her downtown before she had to head back. After that huge storm, you'd think the affected communities would get a wake-up call about how to prepare for such situations. However, that was not the case, aside from closing schools for longer than necessary. I guess everyone thought that would be the last of the snow. However, we got even more dumped on this weekend. It's like being in a snow tundra! There are people naming this "blizzard" all over Facebook. I have to wonder if we got the kaynehore for making fun of all the snow in Chicago or for letting people tell us that it didn't snow much here and clinging to that belief. In any case, while it's an annoying inconvenience, it hasn't sent us running to Miami and we got to bond with our next door neighbors a lot this Shabbos (and afterward too). There's now a path between our kitchen door and their laundry room door for easy access between houses. :)

My grandma has a doppelganger!!!

There was "doppelganger" week on Facebook recently, where we could post our celebrity look-alike. (Mine was Jennifer Grey, pre-face lift.) I thought about doppelgangers again tonight, when I was watching "Casablanca" and noticing how closely Ingrid Bergman resembles my paternal grandma when she was younger (which would have been around that same time). It's really uncanny and I couldn't stop thinking about it the entire time I watched the movie. I even told my neighbor about it (since he brought over the movie in the first place). Then I was telling him how my late paternal grandpa looked like Nicolas Cage when he was younger and my late maternal grandma looked like Madonna did at the beginning of "Evita" when she was younger. I just based this all off pictures I've seen of them.

Get your Bosco at Jewel-Osco

A lot of you might not know this about me unless you knew me back in 2001. During my post college single girl days, I decided to take improv comedy classes. I've always loved theater and thought it would be a fun way to express myself. It started when I went to a couple of Comedy Sportz shows. They offered improv classes and I thought it sounded fun. So...I started out in early spring with a beginner's class. I went into it being all giggly about the concept of having to make up something on the spot. Then I got really comfortable with it. At the end of the 8 week class, we got to put on a show for family and friends. It was a LOT of fun! I loved the class so much that I decided to take it again that summer and fall.

The second week of my summer class, I had lost my voice but still decided to go because I hated to miss out! There was an activity to make up advertising slogans about a product of the "audience's" choosing (this audience was mainly the teacher). So they chose Bosco and in my "Marge Simpson" voice, I went with "Get your Bosco at Jewel-Osco!" The "audience" loved it and that made me feel strangely confident for some reason. I had a lot of fun during the summer session and at the class show, I got to witness a marriage proposal. It was to one of the girls in the class and her soon-to-be-fiancé got on stage and did it in front of the whole audience. I only knew the girl through class, but I thought she was really nice and I knew how much she wanted to marry her boyfriend. Anyway, I got so emotional about watching that proposal take place. Maybe because it was my first in-person proposal and it had such a "chick flick" feel to it. I still get verklempt when I think about it.

The fall class got to explore some games that they did in the professional shows. My favorite was "da doo run run." It was based on that same oldies song and people would have to make up rhymes based on someone's name. There were a few catches to the game though. I just knew I was good at it, as I would practice with one of my friends over the summer (after we saw it together during a show). However, my group didn't get to do it for the final show. I would have loved to though. The fall class experience was interesting for me in a few ways. I got to pay for it by ushering at weekend shows (back when I wasn't observing Shabbos and would go to the city every Friday and Saturday regardless) and would also hang out with people from the class after the class had ended for the evening. They got to know me in a different light and that prompted me to make some decisions about my life when I went to Israel that winter. After the fall classes were done and we performed our show, I slipped away from the Comedy Sportz scene a little bit. However, I thought I would audition for the troupe that February.

Side note: I put a note in the Western Wall regarding changing some of my single girl habits if I could either have a really good love relationship or become part of the Comedy Sportz troupe. Needless to say, I am not performing right now and I married an amazing man!

After the audition, I went to the show every so often (such as for shows my friend was in or if I was in the city anyway) and eventually didn't make it there anymore until my bachelorette party in 2004. Oddly enough, my spring and summer teachers were in that show and I got to go up on stage and perform with them. It was nice to see them again and it was kind of a "Where are they Now" thing for them (about me). I did see my spring teacher in another show the first summer I was dating my husband and we still talk about one of the funny things he did in that show. I talk to my summer teacher via facebook sometimes. I haven't seen or heard from my fall teacher since, but I didn't really have the same connection with her as I did with my spring and summer teachers. She was nice though.

Overall, I have fond memories of my year of Comedy Sportz classes and all the interesting people I met that way. They stay with me almost 9 years later!

Making progress

I got a lot of knitting done this week while catching up on "American Idol." I can definitely see that it has gotten bigger since a few weeks ago. I'm starting to get more comfortable in the process and not hitting snags like before. My older son is very excited that I am making this for him! I find it relaxing overall, but still feel overwhelmed about all the knitting options available these days. It makes my head spin to even think about it. So I'll just keep knitting, just keep knitting... (Think of Dori when you read this last line.)