Get your very own happiness toolbox!

I have discovered Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Toolbox, and it's been the highlight of my week.  Not the only highlight of my week though.  I have also been happy to hear a few sweet somethings from my former boyfriend who is being deployed to Iraq in two weeks.  Our mutual appreciation for the other is music to my soul.  I have missed talking with him.  He was so easy for me to talk to (when we weren't arguing), and I miss our unique connection.

Back to Gretchen's happiness toolbox ... if you have any resolutions, lists, inspirations, personal commandments or the like to keep track of, this is a great site http://www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com/. 
You may also keep a one sentence journal there, or share your secrets of adulthood.  I would love to hear all of your secrets of adulthood ... if you have any to share. 

I am totally motivated by the resolutions chart where I can check off my good deeds to self.  Maybe this is too girlie for some of you.  I confess to being a total star chaser ... I love gold stars for things I do consistently and for things I do well.  The resolutions chart allows me to earn check marks which to me are substitute for gold stars.  I am a doer in need of apprecation.  Patting myself on the back doesn't seem to go very far, but the checks are visible reminders of my resolve, and the blank boxes silently goad me.

You could at least check it out to see what other people have resolved to do, or what their secrets to adulthood are.  But hey, no pressure.  Just because I dig it, doesn't mean you have to ;)

I didn't spellcheck this, so save me the lip.

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I'm in love forever and ever

I'm totally in love ... but not with any man.  I am totally in love with all the good things that the deep south has to offer.  Live oaks dripping with spanish moss and mingling with palms, ferns and swaths of cast iron are among my personal favorites.  My beloved deep south is currently bursting azaleas and dogwood trees into beautiful blooms.  It looks like the south went to Hawaii on vacation.  The colors are magnificent and the skies are true blue.  If you have ever read about the south, some of it may or may not be true.  But, what is true is that we are some very hospitable and talkative folks, although our manners are showing a bit of decline.  We have been known to curse your ass out and then beg for your forgiveness, because we run hot and sweet like that down here.   But, one thing I know ... is that we are friendly.  We wave at strangers, talk to fence posts and give you very detailed directions if you ask us how to get from here to somewhere else.  We stop for funeral processions and ambulances and will give you the dirtest of looks if you don't do the same. 

I thought all people were like this, but after I spent a week in London, I practically kissed the blazing hot asphalt when I landed in my beloved south.  I could not believe how starved I was for idle chit chat with strangers.  The guy helping us with our luggage chatted, the girl at the fast food restaurant chatted.  It was music to my ears.  I thought to myself ... oh my God, I have died and gone back to heaven.  Home!  I'm home!!  And I wasn't even "home" I was just Home!  Down here in the south, you get chit chatted with -- at the slightest drop of a humidity inspired bead of sweat on any dog day of summer, and to think, I took that wonderful everyday experience for granted.  I can assure you, I never will again.  I just got home from the local bookstore, where a very lively conversation ensued with the young man who sold me my book.  Two strangers engaging in a bit of humanity.  Ahhhhhh ... its sweet love to mutually understand the accent.

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