Dark Side of the Moon

On the twelfth day of Christmas, it was a better day.   Work went easily, there was a parking space for the SCA council meeting, people were there that I needed to talk with, people were there that I liked listening to, and the traffic lights were almost all in my favour when I left. 

But this made me laugh out loud: "Here's a trick you might try at home sometime: pick almost any recipe in the 'Moosewood' [Cookbook].  Now add bacon."

That's great by itself, but the context is what made it special.  It's in an article by Ariel Levy in this week's New Yorker magazine, in a review of the latest edition of "Joy of Sex."   Where the original "Joy of Sex" = "Joy of Cooking" (or rather, she says, a better analogy would be "Mastering the Art of French Cooking"), and "Our Bodies, Ourselves" = the "Moosewood Cookbook."   

Now, add bacon to -that-. :-)

May you get all the enjoyment you want out of life, and bacon, too. ^_^
  

The eleventh day of Christmas was not a bad day.  Good things happened: upgrading a cell phone, grocery shopping, playing with yet another variation on braised beef shanks, watching Monster, watching Planet Earth.  But I felt tired the whole day, my knee hurt, I splashed hot oil on top of my thumb to make a lovely burn right where it bends, and the beef shanks didn't come out as well as I'd hoped.  So, not a bad day (and certainly not a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day) but I can't honestly say there was happy.   And some days are like that, too, even in Australia.

May your days and mine be no worse, but we'll still hope for better.
  
 

On the tenth day of Christmas, I was happy meeting with friends for someone's birthday party, happy with my bowling score (especially when we switched to the lane the kids had been using -- with bumpers!), and happy (and surprised, yes) to find myself not at all distressed when a friend was mistaken for my daughter. The friend is about 10 or 15 years younger? Something like that. The daughter is 35 years younger. And so I took it as a compliment to my friend.

May you be at peace with the age you are, with whatever age others see you as being, and with the age of others no matter how it relates to your own.

On the ninth day of Christmas, it's very nice to be home.

May you find a place that you can call home, and if not, or not yet, may there at least be a safe resting place for you when you most need it.
  

On the eighth day of Christmas, doing card readings does make me happy.  It's not just the "doing things for others" happiness, either.   It's in exercising that part of my mind, in trying to pull out the empathy and insight that has little to do with what I objectively know and much to do with what feels right. 

May you notice and nurture and come to trust the insightful side of your own nature.
  

On the seventh day of Christmas, it made me happy to have an evening with good food, without drama or trauma, to leave under a beautifully clear night sky, to see Orion and even the Pleiades, and to arrive back online in time to wish a happy new year to friends farther away. 

May you have a very happy new year!
 

Sometimes it's very difficult to find the happy.  But that my son quietly and with compassion talked with me till I'd calmed down and was able to come back inside, was a very good reason.   He's a good kid.  And afterwards, my husband said that it was not all my fault, that she should have known the provocation.  (My sister had just told us how much she loved, no, worse, admired Sarah Palin, "the only one of the four running who was worth anything" with similar lines that I better not try to remember.  There are reasons I find it stressful to visit my relatives.)
   
May you find understanding and support even under stress.
  

Sometimes it takes very little to make me happy.  The (cheap/inexpensive but surprisingly nicely appointed) hotel has an actual physical 3-dimensional soapdish in the bathroom instead of one of those too-shallow indentations, or, like many  places these days, a perfectly smooth counter that makes no allowance for the soap at all.  I do not like having a goopy piece of soap sliding around on the same counter as my hairbrush.

May you be able to find a place for everything that makes it easy to keep everything in its place, or to whichever degree of chaos or organization most pleases you.  :-)
  

On the fourth day of Christmas, one thing that always makes me happy is when a idea about what might go well together in cooking, sans recipe, works well enough that it's worth re-doing and becomes a recipe. :-)

This is based, naturally, on the sort of Peking duck served in Chinese restaurants...

( ~ Peking Goose with Pan-fried Noodles ~ )
  
May you be comfortable taking chances, even if only little ones, because the safe and known may make you happy, but the unknown may make you happier.   And if not, dumping one inedible meal in the garbage won't kill you.
   

On the third day of Christmas, I was happy watching a movie for the first time and some anime episodes for the second time.  The movie was "Bride and Prejudice", a very fun Bollywood treatment of Austen that's even in English (mostly), and by the director of "Bend It Like Beckham".  All four of us watched and that was fun, too.  The anime episodes were the first four episodes of "Monster", a marvelous psychological thriller of a series that I finally got my daughter to watch with me (she's been reconnecting with friends after her first term at college, and her time at home is limited).   She loved them.   And it makes me very happy to  pass along something that someone has told me about because they loved it, and they think I'll love it too, and I do, and then I can find someone else to pass it to who'll also love it, to continue the chain.   

May you always find at least a few friends and loved ones to join you in appreciation of whatever you like most (and if you can find some who like all of the same things, then you're truly blessed!). 
  
 

On the 2nd day of Christmas, some of the things that made me happy were the lack of traffic on the roads both into and out of work, and the availability of parking spaces at work, and the beeping of my pager at 4 pm that said I was no longer on call for our group for the week so that the lovely evening with in-laws and now the whole weekend and the rest of next week are free of being suddenly required to FIX THIS NOW.

May you be blessed with a clear road to travel in your own direction at your own pace, and may you, at least occasionally, be released from all burdens of responsibilities.
  

I'm twisting the "seven days of happy" to something more appropriate to the season.  The original meme is to post each day, for seven days, about something that made you happy that day.

On the first day of happy, it's when people really like the gifts I've given them, and especially satisfying when it's something off-list, something they hadn't openly said they'd wanted (though I also gave those sorts of gifts :-)).

May you get not only what you want and work for, but unexpected blessings, too.