Some marvelous things happened this week. One of my favorite parts about having a blog and sharing things online with friends (yes, I said FRIENDS) is that people read my words carefully and generally care for me. That’s a really nice thing to have in life anyway and I am blessed with some pretty fantastic friends, online and not.

First, my mom is feeling better and getting around nicely and losing lots of the water weight she’s been carrying around. Small blessings for health, I say. It’s made me far more aware of my own health and I’m exercising a lot and eating more vegetables and trying in general to be positive. Would you believe that I even tried a little bit of ice cream and that it didn’t make me violently ill now that I’m lactose intolerant? Weird. I can’t explain that one.

Next, I had some friends over this week for a movie night that was supposed to be outside on the projector but Mother Nature graced us with blazing heat so we settled for modern A/C  in my living room to watch  “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” and shared wine and guacamole and black bean & corn salsa and Hypnotiq. The only thing I will say about that is that it pays to be friends with really young people who’ve just come off the college scene because they know how to make The Incredible Hulk drink from Hypnotiq (mix it with Hennessey) and do you know what happens then? THEN, you have a real party where you do dramatic readings of Twitter streams and it becomes a hilarious event. (I would upload some pictures from that night, but my cord is missing that goes from my camera to my laptop) (there should be a word for what that cord is, but I don’t know it). We have decided that next time we will view that blockbuster chick-flick, “Spice World” which is supposedly a great film. Yes. Film.

This is a video from my friend Alex who started taping Patrick doing these dramatic readings of DeShanee‘s tweets. The background music is “Ashokan Farewell” because we were doing this a la Ken Burns.

You’ll also see friends Jeanette and Steve and Lynne as the camera (a la Ken Burns, remember?) pan slowly across the kitchen table. I spent most of my time finding new funny ones for Patrick to read and covering my mouth with my hands and laughing. Good times.

To cap off all the great things that are going on at Chez Mocha Momma I want to do a birthday shoutout to my friend Karen of Chookooloonks (you can tell she’s my friend because I mention her like all the time) who is happy to announce that she’s 43. I, however, am happy to announce that she wants nothing more for her birthday for you to go out in the next 24 hours and do something for yourself. Her words and an image from her book campaign below:

It could be having a great meal, taking a perfect bath, reading that book on your nightstand that you’ve been meaning to read, booking that holiday you’ve been tempted to book or just lying in the sunlight for 30 minutes.  Whatever it is that will make you happy today, please go do it.  In fact, I beg you to go do it.  I’d love to think that on my birthday, people all over the world are ensuring that they’re having a great day.

The comment I left for her was:

For your gift today I will do the following:

work on my book and devote a full 2 hours to writing

take a jacuzzi bath today now that I actually have a jacuzzi bathtub

give myself a pedicure

do one of those home facial kits that I’ve had in the bathroom cabinet for too long

read from one book on my nightstand (you caught me!)

and love the people in my presence with a fierceness (smothering with kisses, hugging, telling him pointedly that I love them).

So, Karen, my dear sweet, encouraging friend of a certain age, these are your gifts today. They are done in your honor. I love you. Happy birthday.

xoxo

Since I’ve moved, I now have a writing space where I am practicing daily to devote 2 hours to that craft. Devoting that much time to writing means that I can’t always put up a blog post and I’m willing to sacrifice that time. Many other things happen there like messing around with my colored pencils and organizing my bills and doing crafty workbook-y stuff in the book “How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything”. It’s a very Zen-y, Buddhist-y, self-discovery type thing that helps me work out some kinks and I highly recommend it since this is my second time through it. I like to think of it as my Artist’s Way with crayons and glue sticks.

My messy desk that somehow doesn’t contribute to my messy mind.

Besides that, I sit and look out the window where I have placed a photograph from Karen of a sunflower that she gave me years ago. It inspires me to see it and to read her words from time to time. (Maybe I’ve mentioned that? I’m not poking around in my archives to find out, though.)

The sunflower in my window.

Finally, a bit of good news that came for me from a friend I met in California years ago when I was there for work. Her name is Lara and she’s quite beautiful. Let me show you a picture of her she used for a post that makes me crack right up when I see it.

Anyway. Lara. Well. Remember how a few posts ago I was all woe is me? Well, this friend did something amazing. Lara sent me an email this week about a windfall of money that she received and she wants to buy me a plane ticket for BlogHer in August. It’s really hard for me to accept things like this especially since I resolved that I wouldn’t go and stretch my budget too far. After many conversations about her wanting to do this and how she didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it and how I just wasn’t sure about it, she convinced me. I usually hate publicly whining about things, but then I was talking to Karen again (REALLY. SERIOUSLY. I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THAT WOMAN.) and she said that for her birthday I must accept and she keeps teaching me to accept things, good and bad, and that all of those things contribute to the forward motion of life we’re in so, for whatever reason, I AM GOING TO ACCEPT AND GO.

Happy stuff, y’all. Accept and go.

Have something happy or positive to share? Please do. I can use all the goodness you can spare.