Furred Love

"Think Positive" does work!

Apparently it at least is possible to improve one's attitude - actually making changes in the brain! I just spotted this article in US News & World Report which reports on research apparently showing that meditating on the positive can produce changes in the area of the brain in charge of empathy.

Now if we can just get some of those extremists to try this...

Love and Disappointment

One of the harder things in everyday life is coping with the disappointments of a loved one. My Most Loved One had some life-altering, disappointing news a few weeks ago and - not surprisingly - was in a real funk for several days.

I was helpless. If he is unhappy, I am unhappy but powerless to employ any of my own tricks for getting myself out of a funk. I simply had to wait for him to work his way through it on his own, while trying to avoid 'helping' by being either too solicitous or too cheerful. I found myself channeling my frustration at being unable to do anything to help him into maintaining a zen-like attitude for myself. I was so occupied with doing that, I did not have a chance to be too depressed by the actual disappointment.

As expected, this too did pass. He has regained his own balance. We are back on the track of exploring practical options to deal with changed expectations. Our lives not any less perfect than they were, we just have an altered set of circumstances within which to find our happiness.

Valentines Day

So. I have proven to be a pretty lax blogger - certainly insofar as regular updates are concerned. Excuses of medical issues, heavy work schedule and the like, seem pretty paltry when considering that it is only writing a paragraph or two, but it can be astonishingly difficult to put coherent (or worthwhile) words together when tired, or sick or sad - and we have had our share of those over the past several months.

However, I cannot let Valentine's Day slip by without an entry.

You see I am crazy-in-love with my husband. We have now been together for seven years - married for six - and he is still my best friend, dearest companion, lover and center of my life. I delight in every day spent in his company. I think my only complaint is that I no longer find male bashing jokes as funny - because none of them apply to My Sweet Babboo!

Our happiness is a sweet, everyday sort of happiness, a delight in small things - a bit of music; something amusing the cat did, meeting with friends, a hawk in the sky - all magnified by being shared. Even the stress involved in coping with the fact of aging, ailing parents is made bearable because we have each other.

Mind you, there is passion there still as well - not a flaring, burning sort, but the deep, hot, enduring kind, the kind that wells up from deep inside and warms you at unexpected times.

I love you, My Dear. I can never say it enough.