Sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate.

"It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously -- and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition." 

-Gretchen Rubin

To remember what’s important, step out of your life, take the long view, and then feel how good it is to come home.

My newest addiction is Pinterest. I’m in need of a Pintervention.

 ‘Nibble’ is a funny word, or any variation, such as nibbler, nibbling, nibbles.

Happy Dirty Book Day! On June 11, 1959 D.H. Lawrence’s racy novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was banned by U.S. postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield. This began a heated censorship controversy. June 11^th has been banned “Dirty Book Day” ever since. Shockingly I am sure girls all over the world will be celebrating with Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. Ugh. Although I don’t agree with book banning, If you want porn there are better ways of finding it.

 “Christian Grey is a 27-year-old ginger who likes white wine and using emoticons in e-mails and refuses to use contractions when he speaks. Anastasia Steele, sounded like Speedracer, mostly because she's always shouting her catchphrase, "Holy crap!" At 21, she's never given a blow job, but when she does, instinctively knows to use lots of teeth.  Fifty Shades dispenses with the supernatural plotline but also the main erotic draw of the Twilight books: the fact that the characters can't or won't have sex. Unencumbered by Mormon sexual ethics, pacing, or a YA classification, E.L. James is free to get straight to the “action”.

Here is why the f*#@ing is not very sexy:

The Prose: I'm sorry. I know, it's soft porn, and it's not there to better us. But the advantage of erotic fiction over a DVD of I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Team is that books will always at least FEEL more high-minded than movies. Besides, there are ways to write sex well. This is not that. This is like Tom Wolfe–bad sex scenes but punctuated by non-sex scenes that are gut-wrenchingly awful.

The Dialogue: As has been noted, our heroine Anastasia Steele begins most of her sentences with "Holy crap!" People say "shall" a lot and "fetch" things instead of get them. When Christian Grey "rips through" Anastasia's virginity, she actually says "Argh!" like Jon finding out that Garfield has once again shredded the curtains.

The Characters: It's evident that we're dealing with thinly veiled Twilight characters here. Fifty Shade's proxy for Stephenie Meyer's Jacob is a photography student named (wait for it) Jose. It's fun, because E.L. James is about as conversant with Latino culture as she is with BDSM. Jose likes to grope women when he's loaded on margaritas and begins every sentence with "Dios mio!" I only wish I were around for that brainstorming sesh: "Hmmm … Native American werewolf … Mexican … American … art student?" Also, Christian is a gorgeous 27-year-old (okay) "tycoon" (hahahaha, double "okay") who never seems to do any work, but he also doesn't bang models or do drugs. Disbelief unsuspended.

The Technology: I don't mean the fact that real, free, actually sexy porn and literature is available literally everywhere. Fifty Shades of Grey takes place in 2011 but is loaded with anachronism. Anastasia is a college student who doesn't have a computer or a smartphone. (And is a beautiful sex positive feminist virgin, but I guess we're letting that one slide.) In one scene, Christian tracks her down to a club by, uh, GPSing her cell. He flies a helicopter too? And has a butler? Oh! And at one point, the hip young kids all groove down to Kings of Leon.

The Kink: I get that this is supposed to be BDSM Lite for people with Aztec-pattern Kindle Fire covers, but the ideas about "alternative lifestyle" sex are kind of hilarious. It's like it was all filtered through that sexually precocious but ultimately clueless friend from Catholic elementary school: Oh, yeah, S&M is all burgundy leather dungeons and sub-dom contracts. Also, if you spray Mountain Dew in your vagina after sex you won't get pregnant.

I'm not going to condemn Fifty Shades of Grey because it's fan fiction, I'm not even going to condemn it because I've seen better storytelling in an evening news segment. What I do take issue with is that an author is making money off of people who are too technologically illiterate to find GOOD porn out there and are getting stuck with this nonsense instead because it's the one part of Computers they can't just ask a nephew about.

I guess if you've managed to familiarize yourself with your e-reader but not YouPorn, well-written erotica, or your own body, congratulations on "finding" Fifty Shades of Grey … but also for going one more day without stumbling into a zoo enclosure. Up top.”

Great Review courtesy of :

http://www.vulture.com/2012/04/fifty-shades-of-grey-the-thinking-womans-guide.html

Other complaints include: the literal cover art, the overuse of the words "inner goddess" and subconscious, the tampon removal scene = not sexy.

 Now that I got the negative out.

I have seemed to skip a couple months of my own personal “Happiness Project”, but I’ll attempt to get back on track this month. With that being said, although I veered off course several times since April, I have successfully lost 10 pounds, abandoned the happy pills, decreased my carnivorous ways, and feel much more like “me”. 

July: Think Positive

Thinking positively is something I have been working on a lot lately, and have gotten much better at the last few years. I use to be quite the ‘glass half empty’ kinda girl. My thought process went like this: If I always expect the worst, then I will always be surprised when good things happen.  However, the wisdom that comes with age has derailed this justification and I really do believe that attitude is everything. Good things are gonna happen, bad things are gonna happen; but I can make the good things great, and the bad things better by changing my point of view.

 “Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don't want to be happy, and that's okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.” –Eric Weiner (The Geography of Bliss)

So in attempt to be more positive on this 11^th day of July, here is my list of things I love about summer, even in Arizona: barbecues, early morning light, living sockless, the return of Breaking Bad and Damages, braids, food on sticks, ice cold beverages, and summer travels.

“I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.” –Audrey Hepburn

Because it's been awhile.

“You can trust everyone to be human, with all the quirks and inconsistencies we humans display, including disloyalty, dishonesty and downright treachery. We are all capable of the entire range of human behavior, given the circumstances, from absolute saintliness to abject depravity. Trusting someone to limit their sphere of action to one narrow band on the spectrum is idealistic and will inevitably lead to disappointment.....

At times living in the Pacific Northwest, people say the winters can be soul crushing. It's not the rain that gets to a person, it's the gray. Sometimes blue sky isn't seen for weeks. But on days in this sweltering Arizona heat I feel just as much defeated. I don’t want to leave my house, doing anything active outside between the hours of 9am and 8pm is out of the question, and I honestly feel like I’m melting. I imagine hell is just like this.

Maybe, that is because the last five days in Seattle were uh-maze-ing!

I have had a lot of weird dreams lately. There have been two common scenes in many of them... flat tires and losing teeth.

 "To see or dream that you have a flat tire indicates that you are feeling emotionally drained and weary. You may have been unexpectedly let down. Your goals are temporarily hindered and as a result, you are unable to progress any further.

Teeth are used to bite, tear, chew and gnaw. In this regard, teeth symbolize power. And the loss of teeth in your dream may be from a sense of powerlessness.  Perhaps you are having difficulties expressing yourself or getting your point across. You feel frustrated when your voice is not being heard. You may be experiencing feelings of inferiority and a lack of self-confidence in some situation or relationship in your life. This dream may be an indication that you need to be more assertive and believe in the importance of what you have to say."(courtesy of dreammoods.com)

 On a completely unrelated note, could someone please buy me this Madeleine hat for my trip to Montreal?

"Do you think things always have an explanation?"
"Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist."
- A Wrinkle in Time

Happiness is a funny thing. The older I get, the more I truly believe that happiness is a state of mind, or a choice. Everyone seems to have something they can blame 'unhappiness' on.

In my last blog I wrote about reading "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin, and by the end of the book Rubin had concluded (in my interpretation at least)  that people find happiness in feelings of accomplishment. Throughout the book she set monthly goals for herself, with the end goal of becoming 'happier'. Was she any happier at the end of the book? I don't think so. I think she felt
 a. A sense of achievement, b. She began to see happiness from a different perspective or c. Had kept her mind busy and therefore avoided over-thinking "happiness'. After all, happiness is somewhat relative, right?

Since the conclusion of "The Happiness Project" I have begun reading "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner. In Weiner's nonfiction novel he travels around the world in quest to find the 'happiest place on earth'. Thus far, he has made some profound, yet seemingly obvious notes about happiness.

"Humans, even nomadic ones, need a sense of home. Home need not be one place or any place at all, but every home has two essential elements: a sense of community and, even more important, a history."

"In the west and in the United States especially, we try to eliminate the need for compromise. Cars have 'personal climate controls' so that the driver and the passenger need not negotiate on a mutually agreeable temperature. That same pair, let's say they're husband and wife, need not agree on the ideal firmness of their mattress either. Each can set their own 'personal comfort levels'....I wonder, though, what we lose through such convenience. If we no longer must compromise on the easy stuff, like mattresses, then what about the truly important issues? Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use."

 "I've spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I am not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking but thinking itself.”

“Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”

I need to step my game up and finish the first one.... I love when a day at work turns into a new discovery....

I've just added eight more things to my bucket list:
 www.womansday.com/Articles/Life/Travel/Cool-Castles-Located-on-Cliffs.html

How many wishes can I make?

"..On the other hand, you can decide to trust that everyone is doing their best according to their particular stage of development, and to give everyone their appropriate berth. For this to work, you have to trust yourself to make and have made the right choices that will lead you on the path to your healthy growth. You have to trust yourself to come through every experience safely and enriched. But don’t trust what I am saying. Listen and then decide for yourself. Does this information sit easily in your belly? You know when you trust yourself around someone because your belly feels settled and your heart feels warm."

-Stephen Russel