{"id":2096,"date":"2010-08-05T12:17:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T17:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=2096"},"modified":"2010-08-05T12:17:52","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T17:17:52","slug":"finding-pollyanna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/finding-pollyanna\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Pollyanna"},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel like I’ve done a lot of complaining lately. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this feeling might have something to do with all of the complaining that I’ve been doing lately<\/em>. Considering the fact that I’m usually one of the first people to get annoyed when someone starts to use social media for the sole purpose of bitching, I’m feeling like a bit of a hypocrite. I also feel like I need to add some positivity back into my life.<\/p>\n

I went to the gym yesterday. I forgot my headphones at home, so I had a lot of time to spend in my own head. It can get a little scary in there sometimes, but it’s not a bad place to be. You could make jokes about all of the open space, but I find that it gets pretty cluttered up in there. I thought a lot about resiliency and optimism and the best way to see all of the good things in my life that I have going on for me. And there are a whole lot of them.<\/p>\n

In a little over a year, I’m going to marry this guy.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5219\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If there was nothing going well in my life, I would still consider myself to be lucky, just because I have Kristian in my corner. He’s been doing most of the work around the house since I hurt my foot (I can’t remember the last time I walked the dog). He brings me flowers when I’ve had a bad day. He brings me flowers “just because.” He makes me laugh. Out of every person that I know in this world, I can’t think of one<\/em> who doesn’t absolutely love Kristian. Perhaps people are lying to me because of my blatant and obvious bias, but I choose to believe that it’s just because he’s that awesome.<\/p>\n

When I’ve had a bad day, I can curl up on the couch with this cutie.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6907\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t think I ever realized how much joy a dog could bring into my life. Gracie drives me crazy sometimes, but you can’t spend five minutes with her and not be completely charmed by how sweet and hilarious she is. She’s always happy to see me. She instinctively knows to come over and snuggle up to me when I’m in a bad mood. And she is keeping the neighborhood skunk-free, one skunk at a time.<\/p>\n

(Ok, that last one is not so great.)<\/p>\n

(Especially for the skunks.)<\/p>\n

I got to spend a good chunk of the summer with these two.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8496\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When Dmitri first came into my life, it stunned me how much love I had in my heart for him. Then a few years later, we found out that Ruby was on the way and I wondered where I was going to find the room for her. I shouldn’t have worried. Like the Grinch who attempted to steal Christmas, my heart grew 6 sizes that day (rate of heart growth is approximated). I asked my doctor if I should be nervous about my enlarged heart, but she just told me that it’s customary to love your nieces and nephews like this. And to be prepared for further growth when we have little ankle biters of our own. When it comes time for that, I may find that my center of gravity has shifted appreciably.<\/p>\n

I consider myself lucky if I get to see my sister and her beautiful family a few times in a year. I’ve seen them four times since Memorial Day. And I loved each every moment of every single visit.<\/p>\n

This fall, I’m going to be the maid of honor for these two.<\/p>\n

\"Half<\/a><\/p>\n

Not only has my sister been the complete and utter opposite of a bridezilla, she’s made helping her with wedding family a lot of fun. It doesn’t hurt that I take every opportunity to express my joy at “roasting” her instead of the wedding. “Toast,” she says. “Roast!” I says.<\/p>\n

(Shhh, don’t tell her, but I have already thought of at least two whole<\/em> nice things to talk about.)<\/p>\n

I could go on and on about the people (and animals!) in my life who bring me joy and contentment. They can’t take away the foot pain or fix my gum recession, but they make all that crap fade into the background. I think that’s all we can ever really ask for. Life can sometimes suck, and things are never perfect. But it’s our job to find happiness in the good moments and to let the bad ones simply wash over us. You can focus on the things that go wrong (something I’ve gotten quite good at doing lately), but it would be a shame to let it distract you from all of the things that are, quietly, unassumedly, going very, very right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel like I’ve done a lot of complaining lately. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this feeling might have something to do with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grumble","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-xO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2102,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions\/2102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}