#5: Pedicures

Reason to Be Happy #5
PEDICURES

(Alas, no manicures for me. Money wasted, with all my gardening...)

Reason to Be Happy #4

Reason to Be Happy #4:
The Statue of Liberty

Or, even better, meeting the Lady of the Harbor in person, particularly on a sunny, perfect day while with good friends.

Reason to Be Happy #3

Reason to Be Happy #3:
Joe’s Pizza

This pizza parlor, in Greenwich Village, serves up my favorite pizza in the world (well, besides my mom's).

Have you ever read Eat Pray Love (a reason to be happy in and of itself). In it (on page 79 to be exact), Elizabeth Gilbert says the following about a pizza in Naples. I feel the same way about Joe’s:

"These pies are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much in fact that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair."

#2 Dew on spiderwebs

Reason to Be Happy #2:
When dew hangs in spiderwebs and looks like diamonds.

Reason to Be Happy #1

Back when I taught middle school, there was a day when every school in the area was closed except for mine. The students who managed to get there were grumpy and felt cheated. The teachers were exasperated as plans couldn’t go forward with classes of only 3 or 4 students present. By the third class of complaining, sullen students, I said, “C’mon, you guys. We’re here. We may as well be happy.” A student said, “Give me one reason to be happy.” And so, the project Reasons to Be Happy was born on the fly. Students wrote lists of reasons we should happy—random, specific things (both big and small) that make life the joyful, interesting, fascinating journey it is. Needless to say, “snow days” topped the list for most students that day. You should try it. It’s a mood lifter.

Today begins my goal to list a reason to be happy every day for at least one year.

Reason to Be Happy #1: GOATS

Among my favorite animals, goats are smart, mischievous, and funny. They give us the words caprice, capricious, and caper. I now have written three novels that contain goats as central characters (two unpublished as of this date, but one, Reasons to Be Happy, coming out this October!). Oh, and I'm a Capricorn. Coincidence?

Cat Butt Cake

There’s a new specialty in my house. Cat Butt Cake. Just bake Nigella Lawson’s fabulous Chocolate-Espresso Cake from her book FEAST (one of my favorite cookbooks of all time). Ready for my own original twist on it? Once you pour the Kahlua on it, and the cake is cooling, just have a cat sit on it.

Yes, that’s right. I said, have a cat sit on it.

That’s what my cat did. My cat sat on my cake. (That's him, above, looking all innocent).

My cat is strange. Most of you know this already. If you don’t, then you need to revisit previous posts such as Sleeping With Joey, My Assistant, Why the Cat Has a Bald Tail, and The Culinary Cat.

This is a cat who takes Valium, sucks on blankets, drinks from the faucet, and loves a spatula. He’s not right. So this shouldn’t have surprised me.

But as I recall, when I discovered him resting his hind end on the already-flat cake, my words were, “Are you [bleep]-ing kidding me?!”

But really, he SAT ON A CAKE? Aren’t cats supposed to be fastidious? Joey is missing that trait. When I let him in the garage (because he sits at the door and wails to go in there), I will frequently find him sprawling in puddles like a dog. Or sitting in the recycling bin. Or cuddled up in an open bag of potting soil. Sigh..

It’s a good thing I love him so much.

I had made two cakes that fateful morning, for friends with birthdays. I walked into the kitchen to find Joey with his butt plopped on one cooling cake. Once I’d wrestled him down to wipe the sticky Kahlua from his backside (that was fun), I had to cut the other cake in half and deliver half cakes to my birthday friends.

What did I do with the Cat Butt Cake? I scraped a layer off the top and kept it for myself.

Of course.

Wouldn’t you?

A Horse, A Cat, and a Man

I recently wrote a guest blog for the lovely, talented Robin Antalek about how losing a horse, a cat, and a man inspired my last novel, The Blessings of the Animals. I hope you'll check it out.