Grace and her Uncle Lloyd show their form at Garrison Lanes
One of our favourite family outings is to the bowling alley. This weekend, Dave’s sister and her family visited and we spent Saturday afternoon at Garrison Lanes, our favourite bowling alley on the Base in Kingston.
Reasons why bowling is the best sport ever
You can bowl when you’re 9 or 90
You can drink beer while bowling
The shoes—need I say more?
The cool tunes from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s
The glow in the dark lanes
The smash of the pins when you get a strike
Those big wooden ramps for kids that basically let you cheat
Choosing the perfect strike ball (solid or pattern?)
You get to knock stuff over and no one yells at you
Is there any greater sport on earth? I think not. This week’s Happy Act is to bowl me over with your best bowling story. Spare me no excuses and strike a chord with your fellow Happy Act followers. In case you missed it, check out this post on 8 things to make you feel like a kid again.
A few weeks ago my husband sent me an email at work. The subject line was “The Crappy Act”. It was three short lines that went something like this.
“Car wouldn’t start. Looked down while having my morning coffee and saw dog puke that needed cleaning up. Get to work only to have to deal with three burning issues. Think you should rename your blog.”
There are days when, let’s face it, life is crap, days when it feels like the entire universe is conspiring against you. If you’re lucky, they are few and far between and the good days outweigh the bad.
We all have bad days. The main thing is to not take it out on the people around you, but find a way to blow off the steam and hopefully salvage what’s left of the day.
This week’s Happy Act is to be kind to yourself the next time you have a bad day and indulge in something that is going to make you feel better. Go to the gym, drink a glass of wine, eat a tub of ice cream, or escape from life’s daily grind and see a movie on the big screen. Do whatever it takes to make you feel better while remembering this too shall pass and tomorrow will be a brighter day.
What do you do at the end of a crappy day to destress? Leave a comment. A note about this week’s graphic: I’m a big fan of the retailer Life is Good. They make great t-shirts, clothes and dog products, but I love the Life is Crap brand even more. If you’re into writing or websites, check out their website, it’s hilarious with menus like, “Guy’s crap”, “Join the crap community” and their blog, “From the Crapper“.
Clare and I curled up for a nap on our bed, with Murphy looking on
I love sleep, so I hate this weekend when we lose an hour’s sleep. Personally, I don’t understand why we need Daylight Savings Time. This Hour Has 22 Minutes did a great spoof on the time change this week portraying a sleep-deprived Saskatchewaner.
Winter and sleep just seem to go together. One of the greatest luxuries in the winter is curling up for a long winter’s nap. It’s just so decadent, lying under the fluffy duvet, looking out at the trees while the afternoon suns streams through the window and letting your eyes slowly close as you drift off to glorious slumber.
I wasn’t much of a napper until I had kids when it became a survival tactic. My husband comes from a long line of nappers. Growing up on a farm, they’d be up early doing chores, have their main meal at lunch, then have a short afternoon siesta before going back to the barn.
In today’s hectic age, I think napping has become a coping mechanism. Last week was a perfect example. I was travelling on business and hadn’t slept at all the first night in the hotel. On Friday night, I was up in the middle of the night, and by Saturday I was an exhausted wreck. A quiet day at home and a long winter’s nap was just what the doctored ordered to make me feel like myself again.
This week’s Happy Act is to take a long winter’s nap. You’ll need it after losing an hour’s sleep and if you’re lucky, when you wake up, maybe winter will be gone for good.
The nominated songs in the Best Original Song category in the Oscars have been hit and miss over the years. But tonight I’ll be watching anxiously to see if Pharrell Williams’ song Happy from the Despicable Me soundtrack wins the Oscar for Best Original Song. Pharrell will also be performing the song live on the show. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week.
I love the lyrics to this song , lines like “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof”, but it’s the tune that’s contagious.
This week’s Happy Act is to watch his Happy video and join me in clapping along when Pharrell wins Oscar gold tonight. Before you know it, you’ll be snapping your fingers, clapping your hands and feeling like a room without a roof.
It might seem crazy what I’m about to say…clap along because happiness is the truth.
It’s the end of the second period of the Olympic gold medal hockey game and the scene unfolding in my living room is the same one that is being played out in every living room in Canada—our entire family in our pajamas, cheering on our Canadian men to Olympic gold.
The success of our Canadian Olympian team in Sochi has been inspiring. As Don Cherry said to the millions of children watching this morning’s game, if you work hard, and have a dream, you can be a future Olympian.
My children were able to hear this message first-hand two weeks ago when they skyped goaltender Mike Smith, just before he went over to Sochi with the Olympic team. Mike graduated from our little country school and is a bit of a local hero. He told the kids as long as you try hard, and work hard, you can do anything.
There’s a term for this that our school has been focusing on to encourage the students to succeed. It’s called Growth Mindset. There’s a great Teds Talk video on growth mindset and the power of belief and its impact on success. Watch it. It reminds me of the line from one of my all-time favourite Canadian bands, Hedley, “I can do anything”.
On this final day of the Olympics with Canadians dominating, this week’s Happy Act is to take a line from Hedley and believe “I can do anything”. If you hear a voice in your head that says, “I can’t do this”, add the word “yet” to the end. Our Canadian athletes have shown us the way. Let’s follow their lead.
I was watching Modern Family the other night, still one of the best sitcoms on TV, and there was a great line. “You fall in love with this extraordinary person, and then after twenty years of marriage, find yourself married to an ordinary person.” I think this is so true.
I have some friends who aren’t particularly happy in their marriages. Actually, the funny thing is I’m not sure they’re unhappy, they’re just not enthralled with their partner any more. Chock it up to boredom, or just 20 years of living with the same person, but somewhere along the way, they’ve stopped seeing the things that attracted them to their partner and have forgotten why they love them.
Part of the problem is we’re sold a bill of goods when we get married. According to movies and magazines, the fairy tale romance is followed by a storybook wedding and the happy ever after ending. It’s no coincidence that romantic comedies end when the couple kiss, instead of on their tenth or twentieth wedding anniversary.
Other cultures don’t subscribe to this fantasy view of marriage. Last year we visited Tanzania and had some interesting discussions about true love and marriage. Our guide told us he didn’t believe in true love and that in Tanzania, marriage is seen as a partnership. Other cultures believe in arranged marriages.
Crosby Stills Nash sang, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” This week’s Happy Act on Valentine’s Day weekend is to love the one you’re with. Look at your partner and make a mental list of what made you fall in love with them. Kiss them like it was the first time you kissed them. Tell them all the reasons you love them. Love the one you’re with.
My Montreal colleagues compete in the pairs chairs spin event
I work for a large financial services company and my office is as Dilbertesque as they come. I swear some days it’s like Scott Adams is in the same meeting as me. But I also work with some of the nicest people you’d ever want to spend 7.5 hours a day, 37.5 hours a week or 1,800 hours of your waking life with each year.
One thing we started in my office a few years ago was an Office Olympics every Friday afternoon in February to beat the winter blahs. It’s a great way to have some fun and destress during a very busy time of the year.
My favourite event was a William Tell archery competition where we used elastics to shoot a stress ball off of one of our manager’s heads. You know stress balls, the “incentive item” and thank you gift every project team member gets to celebrate a product launch and which are completely useless except for hurling at people because you’re so stressed by the end of the project —or for fun stuff like Office Olympics.
So with our eyes glued to Sochi and cheering on our Canadian athletes, this week’s Happy Act is to hold an Office Olympics and have some fun with your co-workers. (If you don’t work in an office, you can also do this with your kids with items around the house, or with friends at a party). I was in our Montreal office this Friday for our first competition of 2014, which was a Pairs Chair Spin competition. Here’s a pic of my Montreal colleagues in action (au revoir, Rene-Pierre!) and to get you really inspired, a 9 second video of a cubicle hurdles competition (hilarious but make sure you get insurance for this one!)
Special note: My blog celebrated two milestones this week: 500+ followers and 1000+ views in just a few months. Thanks for following and keep sharing your comments and posts on your Facebook and Twitter feeds if you like what you read. Thanks for helping make the lives of those we care about hopefully a little bit happier.
Bella in her apron ready to take on the fur balls she created
The other day, my youngest daughter Clare looked down at her fleece pants and said, “It’s like a big fur ball exploded all over me.” We looked down and her pants were half white from the mounds of white fur from our Great Pyrenees Bella.
This week, Clare was studying Chinese New Year in her class. One thing I learned about Chinese New Year is you aren’t supposed to clean your house on the Lunar New Year’s Day itself because it is said it will sweep away your good luck for the year.
I think North Americans have become obsessed with cleanliness. I’ve been in people’s houses where after they’ve cleaned off a few crumbs from their kitchen counter, they spray it with some kind of antiseptic. I’m not sure how we got to this state where we can’t even live with a crumb on the counter. It’s crazy.
What’s wrong with a bit of dirt and dust anyway? Personally, I think it’s healthy. Anyone who knows me knows I have these crazy theories, and one of them is cleaners and the uber-sterilized environments we’ve created in our homes have contributed to a higher incident of allergies amongst children. I know there’s all sorts of studies on this, but think about it, how can you build up any kind of immunity to the normal germs and dirt that surrounds us if you antiseptic it away?
But my biggest issue with housework is it just takes too much time and cuts into the things I really want to do on my weekend, like skate on the lake, toboggan, play the piano, and hang out with my family.
So this week’s Happy Act is to take a break from the dust and dirt. Hang up your broom and don’t worry about housework for one weekend. Enjoy the free time and feel good knowing you’re not sweeping your luck away for 2014.
Note: Not all Happy Acts I blog about will make you feel happy, so feel free to take a pass the odd week. I know some people who absolutely love cleaning. If that’s the case, roll up your sleeves and clean away—tackle a closet you’ve been meaning to clear out. Whatever makes you happy (or call me, seriously, call me—the fur balls are multiplying).
TIP FOR THIS WEEK: If you live in the Ottawa or Kitchener-Waterloo regions. Frank Warren from postsecret.com is speaking at Carleton on Feb 5, U of O on Feb 6, and Wilfrid Laurier on Feb 7th. You can read a bit about Frank’s blog on my About page, which I’ve just updated.
When you become a parent, you expect to experience newfound joys in your life and you do. But there are many things they don’t tell you about parenting. The statement parenting is hard work is probably one of THE biggest understatements of all time. One unexpected but wonderful and surprising benefit of being a parent is it gives you an excuse to do things that make you feel like a kid again.
This week’s Happy Act is a bonus 8-Happy-Acts-in-one. It’s my personal list of top eight acts that will make you feel like a kid again that will transport you back to a time when you lived life in the moment and didn’t have a care in the world.
Eight acts to make you feel like a kid again
Play a game of laser tag
Have a cannonball contest (might want to wait for summer for this one)
Fly a kite
Go toboganning
Make a snow angel
Eat ju jubes
Catch a snowflake on your tongue
Spend the afternoon in a water park
For those of you who don’t have kids, here’s a secret: you don’t need to have kids to do things to make you feel like a kid again. Go toboganning anyway, or better yet, offer to take a niece or nephew or friend’s kids for the day—it will give you an excuse to be a kid again and give the parents some much needed adult time.
Have fun being a kid again! What’s your favourite thing to do that takes you back to your childhood? Leave a comment.
Some tips for this week: if you live in the Kingston area, there’s nothing better to beat the mid-winter blahs than to spend the afternoon at the Ambassador water park. For just $8 a person, you can wash away the winter blues screaming down the water slide, doing laps in the pool or luxuriating in the hot tub as you watch the snow fall outside. Our absolute favourite family winter getaway is Great Wolf Lodge. While it’s a bit pricier, it’s definitely worth it. We find one night’s lodging and two days in the water park leaves us with a water-logged grin on our faces and I never get tired of seeing the 70-year old grandparents giggle like 7-year olds as they squirt their grandkids with the huge water guns. Back in Kingston, an afternoon of action-packed laser tag at Putt ‘n Blast in Frontenac Mall is SO much fun.
There’s an incredible story circulating on the internet about a seven-year old German Shepherd in Italy and its devotion to its owner (watch this one-minute video).
It made me think, what makes us so devoted to our dogs and pets? I think the answer is simple. They are devoted to us, and like children, they give us unconditional love. They also instinctively know when we need comfort or companionship. Whether we’re laid up in bed sick with the flu, in tears after an emotional day, or curled up on the couch enjoying a coffee on a snowy Sunday morning, they are always there by our side. (Even now as I write this, I say Murphy’s name and he starts thumping his tail, raises his head, looks up at me with his big brown eyes and groans in contentment.)
Studies show that pet owners tend to be happier people. Pet owners exhibit greater self-esteeem, are more physically fit, less lonely, more conscientious and socially outgoing, and have healthier relationship styles. I swear that my father lived longer because of our old dog, Bailey.
Most hospitals or long-term care facilities have programs where they bring dogs in to visit with the residents, and there have been some inspirational stories about the positive effects dogs have with children with autism. From a practical standpoint, they are also one of the best home security systems you could ever have (I used to work for a home and property insurer, and I can unofficially tell you we’d rarely get claims of stolen goods from houses where there was a dog.)
Yes, dogs are incredible creatures.
This week’s Happy Act is to hug a dog (or cat if you have one). If you don’t have a dog, offer to take a neighbour’s dog for a walk, or better yet, drop in to your local animal shelter. Most animal shelters are looking for volunteers to help exercise their clients. And when you’re finished, don’t forget to give them a big hug and a pet. Leave a comment, what do you love about your pet?
Happy Act 