Friends
They make me happy
This one can make me laugh until we both have tiny eyes
That’s a #100happydays moment for sure
Category: #100happydays
I would never have described myself as an animal person
I liked cats but that is mostly because they don’t really give a shit
I have had animals on and off for years but have always been the one saying that animals are not people too, they are animals.
i would never spend thousands on treatment etc etc – they are just animals
aaah that old me had some funny ideas, didn’t she?
This cat was the start of the change in me, the change into a much for humane human being, a kinder person, frankly just not such an arrogant twat
We adopted her from Cape Town when I was on a business trip, and flew her and her sister back to Durban. She is wasted on us really – she belongs to a 6 year old because she is the cat that would let a child dress her up and push her around in a pram. She is so loving and gentle and docile it is impossible not to feel your heart strings twanged by her
so she is my #100happydays day 15 moment today, sunning herself at our front gate, making me smile with a love i didn’t even believe in, as I came home
I am finding it quite interesting to notice what it is i find that makes me happy every day, to look at what each image represents beyond what it actually is
So day 14 is this photo
it’s a lentil salad. it is a lovely salad indeed, but alone is not a moment of happiness worth recording necessarily.
what it is is one of sixty meals my less than a year old company sent out yesterday. we have gone from 2 weekly menu clients to 23 just since January.
what it is is a salad we made for only one person because she is a vegetarian and requests extra meals every week outside of our menu. so we make them for her, to her dietary specifications.
what it is is a salad for a customer who has already referred other customers to us. they placed their first order this morning
what it is is a salad photographed on top of a freezer filled with our home-made stock, and roasted tomato sauce and pasta and all the other real food we make and use in our business. we started out with the idea of using as little processed stuff as we could, and we are sticking to that decision.
what it is is a salad that shows how far we have come and how far we can still go
a good salad may make you happy, but a salad with that backstory is a #100happydays moment
The only way UP could be used to describe the walk I just had was if you put a four lettered word before it. The god of comedy of situation was out in full force today.
Getting the dogs out of the car is always a tricky one – I have to block the door, attach them one at a time to their leads, and then let them out. So at any stage I have a number of dogs in the car desperate to get out, and a number out of the car desperate to get into the park. So that’s always good for a laugh.
Today as I got them all out Dorothy managed to slip out of her harness, and feeling the lack of restraining leash, went a gambolling. I called, her. She heard. And promptly ignored me. Ideally I would have gone straight to her, been very stern and reattached her. Only Ozzie and Pippa had by then discovered delicious smells in opposite directions. Thank goodness I have orangutan arms and got to her before she ran into the road.
Untangle the leads and off we go. Only other people walk their dogs with no leads and my dogs are always super excited to see other dogs and run at them. I am trying to train mine not to but we haven’t got there yet. So three times this walk I had three dogs I was pulling back towards me as they wriggled and tried to sniff the new dog, the uncontrolled dog! They clearly did not go to military school because there is no controlled advance. No, there is jumping and running and leaping and coming back to me to make sure I have seen the other dog, and falling over each other and generally being fools. All while attached to leads I am holding. Expectedly, the three leads look like a bowl of spaghetti trying to learn to break dance.
After sitting trying to control dogs who want to walk while I untangle a knot of epic proportions, I finally gave up and let them walk together in their tangled mess. At which point another unleashed dog came past, mine ran with joy to say hello, and both girls broke their leashes. Mayhem ensued with the owner of the other dog doing precisely, exactly, absolutely nothing.
My glasses flew off my shirt, my dogs ran around, my brow sweated and I sat on the ground laughing at what it all must have looked like from afar.
Once I had corralled them all I tied the girls remaining lead bits to Ozzie’s collar and we tried to get back to the car. Only the dogs don’t walk in straight lines so poor Ozzie kept getting leash between his legs, across his nose and around his ears. Poor chap just kept sitting down and looking at me imploringly to release him for the fresh hell he was enduring.
Into the car we get, home we drive.
Yay – it is all over
Only it isn’t. As the dogs jump out of the car I see a pile of regurgitated dog breakfast bigger than any one of the actual dogs in the back of the car.
Bloody brilliant
Frustrating as it all was – it has made me laugh and smile for ages. so its a #100happydays moment – even if a ludicrous one
People often tell my boyfriend he is living the dream – he gets to live with a professional cook, one who feeds people for a living.
‘aah, the wonders you must taste’ they sigh
‘i bet you eat like royalty’ they muse
‘all those experiments, in your face’ they lament
‘i wish it was me, can i come live with you?’ they ask
Well ha ha ha I say, the joke is on you
We eat a ridiculous number of packets of pop corn, a lot of niknaks, a fair amount of bread and many many meals from our local pub. Because after 8 hours on my feet cooking for others, and after we have spick and spanned the kitchen, there is NO WAY IN HELL i am making a mess again . Uh uh – not ever.
How many of you get home from work and then do it all again for fun? Maybe the two or three hookers I know, but no one else, let’s be honest.
Spreadsheets for fun before dinner – I think not.
(well, unless you are one of the hookers obviously)
Aaaaanyway, the point of all this rambling is that today I decided to make a breakfast of sorts. I do try on the weekend and muffins dirty only a few things so i can cope.
I made bacon and cheese, with cayenne pepper, muffins – and they were delicious
Served with a mint pickle I get from an Auntie in Stanger – they made me happy
#100happydays happy
I feel like I have stepped into a really weird movie as an extra at the moment.
Just an extra mind you, this is not my life but the lives of people in my circles.
A friend of mine is missing in the Bahamas. Literally missing. Like in t movie only this is very very real. And unlike the movies, CSI or Missing Persons Inc don’t sweep in and solve the case in 45 minutes, returning the missing person to the loving arms of his family. In real life I cannot image what his family is going through. As a friend, and an historical rather than hugely active one, I am worried enough. I wish there was something I, or any one else, could actually do. But what can be done is being done by those best suited to do – and so everyone else waits for news.
In addition to this, another circle entirely are also looking for a missing man. I don’t know this man, but people I do know are posting on FB that he is missing and they are searching mountains and trying to trace movements. Again, how his family and friends function during this stressful time is beyond me.
And then there is the friend who had her twins ridiculously early (like 25 weeks) and is some how managing to live hour by hour as her boys face unbelievable struggles just to breath. Where she is finding the strength she so obviously has I have no idea.
And here I am, taking photos of flowers that make me happy.
Day 5’s photo is a screen shot from my FB timeline
Life is an unbalanced and unfair bastard
And all we can do, when ours is good, is appreciate the flowers that make us happy.
And when ours is bad, we can only hope we find the strength we need, and have the support we require
I dunno – it all feels very hard for lots of very good people right now
May 17th is not an easy day for my family and others. It is a day that, sadly, commemorates death. It is easy to say that a person’s life should be celebrated rather than their death, but the day they died will always have power.
In my attempt, not to diminish my loss and the waste of a life, but rather to recreate happy memories to share the sad ones n this day, I try, when i can, to make May 17th a day with some joy in it too.
It is one of the dates included in a most epic weekend I had years ago with friends; a weekend that still has a name
It is the birthday of a friend of mine and she deserves it to have happy energy
It is the birthday of a friend of mine’s child – and he too deserves good energy
Last year it was the day we got Ozzie, my little canine game changer
And this year I decided to make it about our relatively new home. We went to the nursery, bought flowers and seedlings and soil, and i spent a happy afternoon in my front garden
When I drive in and out of the property it makes me smile
So on this happy day I say cheers to Stephen, I miss you, I love you, I wish you were still here
But cheers also to a happy day – cos he’d kick my butt if i simply wallowed
when i reinvented myself at 45 and decided to cook for a living, one of the decisions I made was to use as few processed items as possible. To this end, we make our own stock, our own breads and even our own ‘tinned’ tomatoes.
We hardly ever use our tin opener at all
Tomatoes have been stupid expensive of late so it was with great joy that I saw this when shopping
We also have a new freezer so trays and trays of tomatoes are waiting to be roasted, blitzed and turned into ‘tinned’ tomatoes with nothing other than tomatoes in them.
Delicious
So, I have decided to do this #100happydays thing
I initially decided to do it using words not images because words come more easily to me, but then I thought about it and thought easy shmeasy
so now i plan to do a bit of both
Day 1 – walking the dogs
In a relatively short time I have gone from a complete cat person totally not interested in dogs to owning 3 dogs around whom a lot of my life revolves.
I love owning dogs, I love my dogs and I love how they love me. I really am a better person for owning dogs. I remember reading once that everyone thinks they have the best dog, and everyone is right. ‘Strue.
But I miss my cats too – they remain aloof and cat-like but because I am so often buried beneath dog, they seldom get to come and demand attention.
This photo is as much about my dogs, the city you can see in the distance in which i love living, and the fact that after months of pain i am actually able to walk on the beach again
A very happy start to #100happydays
kim's scrapbook 