Let’s recap for all the new folks, shall we?
Back in 2007 I was having a totally crap filled year. (Who? ME? Impossible! I’m queen of sunshine and roses!) We moved away from everyone I loved, I’d just lost the baby I’d waited seven years for, we were trying to buy a house and fulfill my life long dream with little success, and then when we did buy it we launched a prolonged and unpleasant renovation. It was not exactly a banner time.
I was horribly sad and depressed and I was not coping very well. Do you remember that episode of Friends where Ross starts dating Janice until she dumps him for being too whiny? And the thought of *Janice* thinking he was too whiny made him straighten up and get himself together? That’s kind of where I’d gotten. I was so whiny that even the whiniest of teenage emo bloggers would have looked at me like, “girl, please.”
Not that I didn’t have cause of course, but I was just not getting over anything very well. And that’s when I read A Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg.
I explain it in detail there in the link, but in a nutshell, the main character has to grieve through some losses of her own and decides to give herself a year of pleasures instead of a year of grief. So she spends more time with girlfriends, she buys extravagant soaps and plush new towels, she eats dessert even when she’s alone, she treats herself well and seeks out things that are pleasurable and restorative to her soul.
After reading the book I launched into a similar journey, and I shared some of that here on the blog. So now, without further ado, let me share the very first pleasure for 2009.
Time in my studio with a cooperative baby.
My kid is so sweet tempered. He is patient and content as long as he’s being cuddled. It was just before Christmas and I had a million homemade presents to make, rain was pouring down outside, and Atti was babbling to himself while he played with his toys right beside me. It was perfection.