Blue skies and happy days (The Happy List)

Blue Yonder Mosaic II by Steffe

This week, it’s mostly about the weather. Finally, some sun, yesssss.

• Blue skies and warm sunshine
• Visiting Kate and her delightful partner in Castlemaine. It was SUCH fun, and I might have to move in under their kitchen table. That’s where the most sun falls. Will follow sun like cat
• Walks in the sun, yoga practices in the sun
• Feeling Kate’s baby move under my hand. It is truly truly miraculous, how our bodies can make another Life
• Coming out of sleep-deprived paranoia (an unfortunate but regular Sunday occurrence) with the help of my friends, specifically the lovely Jeannette, who ran the ten kilometre Melbourne Marathon event in under an hour, yay her!
• On the topic of sleepless paranoia, I spent some of last night (Saturday) awake and paranoid, but found I had a fairly new phenomenon going on: I could still hear the Voice of Reason, even in the paranoia. In such small steps do we measure progress. There was a time, not so very long ago, when I would have been certain the paranoid thoughts were reality. I mentioned this a while back. It’s an ongoing process, this
• Taking my asana practice everywhere I go! My weekends are often nomadic these days, as you will have noticed, and although that is wonderful, it can cause a disruption to routine. And if I don’t do my yoga, I get cranky, and my body hurts. But really, you can do yoga anywhere. You need no special clothes, no special equipment, not even a mat, although that does help, of course. Every time I re-experience this, it makes me happy
• Practising my yoga, feeling the strength and space in my body and my breath, the openness that results from even the shortest practice. It’s definitely a rewiring, every time. It’s why the paranoia doesn’t seem as solid somehow. I do my asana, and I feel the true nature of reality, even if only in the pause after my inhale
• Eight weeks till Fiji! Yessssss. Sorry, Linda. I will make it up to you when you come to Australia. And for those of you who feel like African yoga adventure, check out Linda’s upcoming retreat
• Food. Delicious food. Kate made an incredible fish curry on Friday night. I can’t cook fish, since I have been vego all my adult life, but I am willing to learn in order to eat that curry again. And pumpkin and feta flatbread accompanied by delicious chai at my local bar. Yes, ‘hotels’, as the are called here, have come a long way since the days of greasy fries
• Watching people enjoy their food. I am aware this is slightly creepy, but I love watching people eat when they are getting pleasure from it. And when people eat heartily. It’s a very visceral connection to our life force, food: second only to breath. So many people have conflicted relationships with food, and this seems to  me to be a way of not participating fully in life. Hurrah for those who do
• Nigella, and her lipstick-wearing, sexy finger-licking, food lasciviousness, for all the reasons I just mentioned
• Hanging out with the girls in my house. I have said this before, I will say it again. It could have gone either way, this uber-feminine house – five women and two cats, also female. It went well, very well
• Megon’s Smoke of Home. Still loving it
• Giving people handmade gifts. Now if I could just get myself back into a regular crafting groove. Maybe with slightly less nomadic weekends?
• Watching my friend Maria make incredible aprons without a pattern, and out of scrap fabric. She is a crafty genius
• Doing things for people that they like, or that make them happy,  just because I can
• Watching people blossom like, forgive the rather laboured analogy, flowers in the sun. New beginnings can come, no matter what preceded them

What made you happy this week? Lots of things, I hope!