Tell Me Something Happy...

'Tell Me Something Happy'. That is the title of my very favorite children's book. It is the story of a little bunny named Willa and her big brother Willoughby. Every single time I read it (and I always would prepare my class the first time I read it) I cry. It is so sweet. In the story Willa is having a hard time falling asleep and Willoughby is doing his best to point out all the happy things around Willa so that she will feel comfortable and happy and be able to fall asleep. Sometimes I need to tell myself something happy. Sometimes I just feel like in spite of this move, and even though we are getting a fresh start, this is hard. It just is. It's new. It's different. It's so cold. It's so lonely. It's Christmas time and we are so beyond broke that I just want to take all the decorations down and blow the whole holiday off. We still have so many boxes and belongings stuck in our garage in our home in California that we need and we have no idea when or how we will get those things back and I realized last night that my Grandma's mandolin and my grandparents wedding pictures are there amongst our pots and pans, Chris's DVD collection and our other Christmas tree. It seems as though every day we realize one more thing that was left behind.

So today I tried to go to Starbucks and try something new. I took my laptop with me and attempted to log on to the Internet and get some writing done. I am attempting to write a memoir and I got some advice from a write friend of mine who said that I should go somewhere out of the house and write, it might make it feel more like a job I thought. Well I had assumed that I would be smart enough/savvy enough to be able to log on. I am not. I am challenged. I was too embarrassed to ask anybody so I typed a few pages on word and then I packed up and got out of there. On my way home I was thinking. I was thinking of things that are good here. Things that have made me happy. I decided I would go on a driving/walking tour of our little town here and take some pictures of things that make me happy and share them with you. So here we go...

First here is Main St. This street makes me really happy. It's so quaint. So Main St. USA. The architecture of the buildings, the pride of the town, the "local" feel of it all is just wonderful. I especially love the courthouse. It's the building in the lower left hand corner. To the right of it is the "old jail museum". We took a tour of it last week and it is really cool. Great stories, amazing treasures.

Next is the girls schools. I love the way Gianna's school is nestled in the hillside, which of course you can't really tell by this picture but it is. I also love the security of this school. I pull up in the morning and the principal or a teacher walks over, opens Gianna's door and says "good morning Gianna" and they take her out of my car and she has to walk straight into the building. It's wonderful, it's so personal and I love it.

Next is Allison's school. If you look close you will see that the building across the street is the Army National Guard. I don't know why but I found so much comfort in seeing this building so close to the high school. I mean I know this is silly, but hear me out... this is a small town, the idea of some student going Columbine at school one day is a very real thing. Not that it couldn't happen in Indio or anywhere else we looked to move, but for whatever reason her school reminded me of somewhere that this kind of thing could happen. And when those things do happen, who gets called? Yep, you guessed it, the National Guard. See? It all makes sense.

Then we have my favorite grocery store. It's Harris Teeter. We didn't have Harris Teeter in California. It's a wonderful store and everybody is super friendly. Allison and I have already made a couple friends in the Starbucks inside HT.

Finally I came home and took some pictures of things that make me happy around here. I am not loving this house if I am being honest. It's fine, it's a rental and it's getting the job done. But it just doesn't feel like home. I have stopped unpacking because I keep thinking 'why bother?' we are only going to be here 18 months and I am going to have to pack it up again. Last week the lady that used to live here, the last tenant came over to give me her forwarding address. She also had so much to say. She basically stood on the front porch and went off on how much she hated living here. She told me how expensive our heating bill would be, but the house would never get warm (which is totally true, as I write this my fingers are numb), how the dishwasher never works, how the backyard is a mess even in the spring time and no matter how many times I call property management they won't fix it. OH MY GOSH she would not stop. I already had figured most of these things out for myself but hearing her go on and on about them made it so much worse. Ever since that day I have been doing anything and everything to make me like the house more. I finished unpacking my scrapbook room and that helped a lot. You will notice one of the pictures is of our mailbox. I know it's weird but I love having a personal mailbox in front of the house. In California we always had a cluster box in our tract. In our last home the mailbox was down the street and it drove me nuts.

I also took a picture of my car. I love my car, I am so glad we bought it. It's old, it's got a ton of miles on it but I love it.

The Santa in this picture is one of my favorite Christmas decorations.

So there you have it. Happy things. Things that I am holding on to and counting on to make me feel good about this move. They are helping for sure and I know that soon we will figure out how to get our stuff here from Cali and even sooner I will be able to take these Christmas decorations down and celebrate the new year. Oh how I look forward to the New Year and all the promise it brings.