Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

Last week I wrote about Cape Cod houses and Federal houses.  This week Eddie is stuck at work so he called and asked me to post the diary.  It only made sense to move on to the next architectural periods.  I have to preface that by saying that I while I truly adore Victorian homes, the ones around here don't hold a candle to the first Victorians I ever saw.  There is really nothing quite like the Gingerbread Cottages on Martha's Vineyard.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

I've always lived in New England and our regional architecture is a familiar comfort for me.  Last fall I accompanied my son's 5th grade class on a walking tour to one of the local historic homes.  Along the way we passed many more.  It was a beautiful stroll as the leaves were turning.  This week the same homes have been surrounded by flowers in bloom and budding trees.  I live in such a beautiful area and I thought I'd share some of it in a few diaries.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

I have no major story to tell this evening, nor do I have a theme for tonight.  My 11 year old son has been on school vacation this week and we've been taking each day as it comes.  

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

I was talking with Eddie C on the phone yesterday and he informed me that 4/13 is the one year anniversary our reign with this diary series.  While I haven't been with Happy Story since its inception, once I found the series I commented regularly.  My first Happy Story comment was February 2006 and it was about my son.

spelling homework (4.00 / 6)
My nine year old had to write a sentence for each spelling word. The sentence he came up with for dishonest? "Richard Nixon told lies and was dishonest in 1974."

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

March is Social Work month and it seems only fitting that I recognize that in some way.  I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.  It took me 8 years of college courses at night, switching majors regularly, before I earned my degree.  Even then, four months into a new job at a Boston teaching hospital, I still wasn’t sure about a profession.  That was almost 20 years ago and I had no idea that the fluke of a job I’d landed would grow into a career.

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

Tomorrow I'll be getting together with my family and will once again be faced with the ghost of who I used to be.  While I have no problem accepting that there are no "do overs" in life, I wish that my family could accept that as well.  It's one thing for me to cringe at my old behavior, but it's something entirely different when my family continues to treat me as though I was still behaving in the same way.  It sets up this bizarre dance where I spend time with everyone but my siblings while they scour my every word and action for evidence that I'm the same person I was at age 6 or 16.  They always emerge victorious and I feel like crap.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

I've had a bit of a busy week so this will be a few odds and ends added together.  In my house if this diary were a recipe it would be known as "emptying the fridge," with the leftovers going into soup or casserole or sauced over pasta.

I'd intended to do a lovely little piece on the patron saint of Ireland but thought that might be better saved for Street Prophets.  So I'll pass along a few tidbits about St. Pádraig, share a few of my favorite holiday traditions, and cap it off with an Irish toast and blessing.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

One weekend a few years ago my brother sat my son down with his two boys and they watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  I didn't care for the show but my son really latched on to it.  Thus began "movie night" at our house.  We started watching the show every Sunday night, either snuggled up on the couch or in bed.  About 6 months ago my husband started joining us for Extreme Makeover.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

Here in the Northeast we are accustomed to school vacations in February.  In Massachusetts, February vacation has just begun.  New Hampshire claims the following week.  I was surprised to hear from a friend years ago that no such vacation existed in the Beltway area or in the South.

Teachers have always said that February vacation is the most important,  that the children would be animals without it.  I remember my childhood Februaries and I distinctly recall feeling irritable and listless in February and March.  The vacation week seemed to help since we spent much of it outdoors sledding and skating.  Usually, we also had, what was for us, a big deal event--typically the Ice Capades at Boston Garden.  When I was a teen I'd go skiing with friends for the day.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

This has not been an easy week for me on almost any front in my life.  I wish that so many things were different--familial, personal, societal etc.  But being part of a community or communities is how I keep on keeping on.  There have been times in my life when I was completely alone dealing with health issues, political issues, family issues, professional issues etc.  I don't allow that to happen any longer.  I surround myself with people who understand where I'm coming from, usually from personal experience.

I had some political disappointments this week but I know that as my sig line used to say, "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, and the dream shall never die."

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

I think timing is getting to me.  I'm approaching a sobriety anniversary this coming week and my son is the same age that I was when I picked up my first drink.

It is hard to imagine that age the age of 11 one's life could take such a rapid turn that everything once possible is erased.  And yet that was what happened to me; although it took me quite a while to see that.

I come from a long line of alcoholism on my maternal and paternal sides of both of my parents--alcoholism raised to the 4th power.  My parents drank socially and had hoped to leave their childhoods behind.  Their children foiled that plan.

The very first time that I attended a political protest it was accidental.  I was in first grade and my parents brought the 5 kids to the State House in Concord, New Hampshire.  We joined up with my father's 8 brothers and sisters, and all of my cousins, to attend a ceremony for my grandmother who was being awarded Mother of the Year.

While we were waiting, there was a sit in taking place with a group of college kids.  They were singing songs so I zipped over and sat down with them.  I remember singing Woody Guthrie's anthem This Land is Your Land.  I remember that they were kind to me and that my aunts and uncles were appalled.  I remember that my parents were fine with it.

I don't play an instrument and can't carry a tune to save my life but I have always loved political songs.  They have gotten me through bleak times and inspired me to keep hoping.  I have a long list of the songs I love and I'll bet that you do also.

So I was scheduled to do Happy Story last week but knowing that my son was having surgery the day before, Eddie said he would be available to take over if needed.  We both thought I'd be doing it.  It was on my to do list up until late Thursday afternoon when I was hit with the norovirus my brother's family passed on to us at Christmas.  Eddie had no idea until 24 hours later when I left a pathetic message begging, "I'm so sick.  Please do the diary."

And he stepped up to the plate posting a lovely diary that I never had the chance to read until Monday or Tuesday.  This wasn't the only experience of people going above and beyond that occurred this week.  But it was probably my favorite because it's so Eddie--just doing what has to get done without complaint or asking for notice.  

My son's surgeon also went way above and beyond.

I wanted to give people a sense of what it is like on the ground.  I'm writing about the Edwards campaign office in Nashua but I expect the offices for other candidates aren't much different.  If you want to volunteer, people would love to have you in any office.  And I'll put in a plug that the folks at the Nashua office are hard working and very cool.

Last week I worked in the office a little bit while soberboy and I were up for an event.  There is a real mix of people volunteering in Nashua.  I spoke with both staff and volunteers last week to get a sense of what brought them to the Edwards campaign.  What I found was a myriad of individual stories all adding up to a common choice.

Between noon and 8pm yesterday we received just over a foot of snow.  The towns in the area all had early dismissals so my 11 year old was home and ready to frolic.  Around here we make snowpeople and snow angels.  And soberboy likes to gobble up snow as if it were candy.  I haven't convinced him yet that shoveling can be fun.

This storm dropped light fluffy snow, the kind that is easy to shovel and that melts on your eyelashes.  We don't have any hills around here so we have to travel if we want to do any sledding.  In this one area I feel that my son is missing out on something special.  When I was a kid we only had to cross the back yard to slide down a hill on whatever contraption we could drag up the hill.

Got a Happy Story is a community gathering every Friday night where we share stories large and small that have put a smile on our face.  It is a time to acknowledge the joy and wonder we experience.  The Happy Story diary exists as a way to anchor the community in hope and comfort while we do the hard work of taking back our country. Everyone and all sorts of stories and pictures are welcome. May we find joy and strength here.

This is an anniversary of sorts for us.  soberboy was born prematurely and spent his first 6 weeks of life in the neonatal intensive care unit--the NICU.  On December 6, 1996 I got a call at 2 am from a NICU doctor.  He said that soberboy was gravely ill and had been resuscitated several times.  By the time I arrived at the hospital they had drawn blood multiple times and had more episodes where he needed resuscitation.

By the time the day shift arrived they knew he was septic and he was placed on 2 separate broad spectrum antibiotics.  He also needed a blood transfusion since 3 pound babies don't have much blood left after repeated draws.

He was O+ so he was an easy match.  Within a half hour of his blood transfusion I watched his complexion go from waxy grey cadaver to pink baby.  Eleven years ago today at about this time soberboy was able to drink a bottle of breastmilk.  After approximately 25 resuscitations, 5 of which I witnessed, he didn't have a single one after his blood transfusion.  We have no idea who donated that lifesaving blood.  But every year I spend these 72 hours focused on gratitude for those anonymous heroes who give the very essence of life.

This is the gratitude season and I've started thinking about small things, one time interactions with strangers that have made an impact on me.

This spring I was in a hospital waiting room while soberdad was having surgery.  I was half knitting, half waiting for C & J (yay wireless in the hospital) and an older woman told me that there was a simpler way to deal with my yarn.  She showed me how to roll the ball so that the yarn came out from the center and the ball wouldn't fly across the floor.  I thanked her and she said, "a woman showed me that one day in the park and she told me to teach it to someone else.  And now I have."

A few hours later there was a woman in the same waiting room on the verge of an anxiety attack.  I had seen her trying to buy Tylenol in the hospital gift store but they didn't carry any over the counter drugs.  She begged the women at the info desk and was directed to drive to a store 2 miles away.  I offered her the ones I was carrying.  She took them and the women at the desk thanked me.  The older woman explained that she was worried about her husband's surgery and that Tylenol helped with her anxiety.  I'm sure she would have been fine without the placebo effect but it was nice to be of service.

Eleven years ago at 11:41 in the morning soberboy made his entrance into the world, two months ahead of schedule.  He arrived in time for the opening kickoff in the BC-Notre Dame football game.  He weighed 3 1/2 pounds and was sent directly to the NICU breathing on his own.

soberdad and I were laughing last night about those early days.  I was tired from picking soberboy up at After School Athletics and then bringing him to CCD.  After that he wanted to head to Dolphins Swim Club but I said he needed to do his homework and eat dinner.  He spent 6 weeks in the NICU and we watched baby after baby be discharged wondering if he would ever go home.  Now we wonder if he will ever slow down.