Because I'm...

I am very sorry if this gets that damn "Because I'm Happy..." song stuck in your head.  That is the worst!
via

I've been noticing something over the past few days and it is this: I am happy. The sad thing about that sentence is that it really was something that I gradually noticed over the past few days and I feel like happiness is not something that it should take you any longer than a few minutes (not days!) to acknowledge. The good news is that it is a true, hard fact, inside and out. I am happy.

I don't know if it is cliché or not to attribute this seismic shift in attitude to a change in jobs, but it is what it boils down to: leaving one bad, stagnant environment for another that will push me to grow and development.

While this is funny now, there was a point where this quote almost made me cry with honesty
via

I love this quote from Parks and Rec. Mostly, I loved it when there was period of months upon months where it so concisely explained is how I constantly felt. Now a days, although I will admit that I still wake up tired like any normal human being, my day to day routine does not leave me mentally and physically exhausted.  Things once again get me excited.  Stuff matters.  Bed times have been less strictly enforced!  And I am attributing this all back to a slight shift in moods.  I am happy.

All that being said, I will admit to also being a little bummed because I think that for a chunk of time that Ben and I were supposed to be experiencing that "newly wed bliss", I was anything but blissful. Work honestly had me that down in the dumps. It was a bad situation all around and I'm not going to waste any of my new happy energy getting into it. Being out of that environment has made a world of difference. I am now one of those ridiculous "the sky is blue and the sun is shining and birds are singing!" happy people now. I am sad for losing those few months in between, where the stress and anger often made me unhappy. I wish we could have started out our married life as it is now. I also wish those sad months had not taken over all of my summer. Now, the days are shorter and colder and my happy dances are confined to enclosed, heated areas. What I am trying to say is this: it sucks to have lost such a chunk of time to being unhappy.  It is a very good thing that I got out of that situation.  And I am happy now and that is what I need to be focused on.  And not to worry, this is still plenty of the newly wed bliss to go around.

Currently, here the things I am very happy about:

1. Today I wore a skirt to work, for the first time ever. I loved every minute of it, even having to wear tights. I never was able to wear them before, skirts don't really go well with machine shop floors and steel-toed boots. So yay for office job with only occasional floor duties!
2. My husband built me a kitchen island. And it is beautiful. And when the sun comes streaming in through our 4 large sliding glass doors, everything in my kitchen suddenly gets a halo. Talk about a happy place.
3. I made my new favorite recipe last Sunday. And for 3 blissful days, we got to bring in the leftovers for lunch. Although it's all gone now, I am excited simply at the thought of making it again. And stuffing myself silly. And more leftovers, even after a dinner of stuffing ourselves silly. 
4. There is a hot water spigot about 12 feet from my desk. My tea consumption has increased ten-fold. Now that I think about it, maybe that is why I feel awake all the time… My new favorite tea is Tazo's Green Ginger, by the way.  
5. I've lost some weight. Ok, it's only like 2 pounds, but I didn't do anything to lose it. I didn't amp up my workout routine and, to be complete honest, that recipe I was talking about above had 2 sticks of butter in it…so... Happiness, the new fad diet! 
6. We live in a house, on a street, in a neighborhood with kids. THIS MEANS TRICK OR TREATERS ON HALLOWEEN. Since graduating, I have desperately wanted trick or treaters on Halloween. I have romanticized the idea to the fullest extent. The closest I ever got was my first Halloween, in McAllen, four years ago. Three teenage boys came around to my apartment and I gave them candy. They came around again, and since I hadn't had any one else come, I gave them more. And then they came around a 3rd time and called me names when I refused to give them any more candy. Needless to say, this was not the Halloween experience I had been idealizing. But I have a feeling that this year is going to be what I always hoped it would be! Accordingly, I have bought enough candy to not be the house that runs out of candy.

See, I told you I was an annoyingly, cup-half-full kind of person these days. I'm almost cheerful enough to get on my own nerves.. But, I do think the whole happy thing looks rather good on me.

What are you happy about these days?