“I have found that truly happy people have the capacity to distract and absorb themselves in activities that divert their energies and attention away from dark or anxious ruminations.”
From the The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubormirsky

I am starting to find that a whole lot of my personal happiness level lies in my ability to distract myself when I’m feeling sad or mad or bad.

Instead of saying something snarky or sighing heavily, if I can just get myself to stop thinking about it; to stop allowing myself the self-indulgent tendency to steep and bathe and wallow and squish around in it.

I think I remember using this knowledge to my advantage when my kids were smaller – not so much consciously – but just as a way of breaking them out of a funk. If the kid was a little upset, a good distraction was my best weapon.

When they were really little, I used to make an animal sound under my breath. “Quack, quack” or “moooooo,” followed sharply by my question: “What was that?” Pretty soon, they were falling all over themselves to play in my little game and they forgot that they were mad about something. It worked so often that I started to feel pretty good about myself.

Now that they are older, they see right through me.

But it still works for me, I find – sometimes. If I can somehow trick myself into not thinking anymore about what’s making me mad or sad or bad, it helps. Then I can come back later with a fresh head and work out whatever it is.

Sometimes, good hard runs straight uphill help the most because I don’t have space in my mind for any thought but “Good Lord. I’m going to die.” Other times, it’s enough to watch giggling babies on YouTube.

Susie Michelle Cortright is the founder of Momscape.
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Visit Susie’s personal blog: SusieMichelle.com

I could stare at my son’s profile all day. His eyelashes are long, and they sweep up, then down, as he blinks. He is sitting on my lap, teetering to one side and then another. He and his bony bottom don’t fit so well on me anymore, but he doesn’t notice this. He just balances there, birdlike – perched and attentive.

He’s going to be 7 in a couple of weeks and, for whatever reason, I have an emotional time with the odd years. These birthdays trigger emotions that the even-year birthdays don’t. Does a 7-year-old seem that much older than a 6 year-old? A 5 that much older than a 4?

I think so.

I hold on to those things he still does that are so babyish. I don’t correct him even when I know I should. He is starting to read much better as a first grader, but there are still things he gets wrong because he has only heard them said, never written. I mean, for a time, he thought we were saying “Bronco Bottom” and not “Barack Obama.” But those little details of life are starting to fill in for him. The lights are starting to come on and pretty soon, he starts to act, well, about 7.

At the end of a school day, he finds me on the schoolyard, waiting for him and for his sisters, and he starts toward me with this exaggerated run, elbows jutting out, head swinging side to side. I have to brace myself before impact so he doesn’t knock me on the asphalt. And then he leaps into my arms and squeezes me around the neck with his wiry little muscles.

He used to do this every single day. Now it’s only when he’s feeling particularly silly after a long day of first grade. I imagine, before long, he’ll stop doing it altogether.

He’s my baby after all. I do miss his baby-ness.

But happy birthday just the same, Little Dude.

Susie Michelle Cortright is the founder of Momscape.
Follow Momscape on Twitter.
Find Momscape on Facebook
Visit Susie’s personal blog: SusieMichelle.com

So I just started my facebook business page for momscape. I’ve had a personal facebook page for a little while, but I haven’t bitten down and created one for momscape, partly, I think, because I so identify with my business. It’s like it’s my baby, a member of my family, a fourth kid – and so the word “fan” sounds so presumptuous. It actually makes me giggle. Could I seriously look someone in the eye and ask them to be my fan?  We would both start laughing. I am not the kind of person who has fans. Friends, yes. Fans? no.

I have known for some time that I had to do it. I needed to join the social media world before it passes me on by, but I’ve been kind of resistant – for reasons noted above. Plus, I feel like I’ll lose my focus or something. But then, once I started, it was amazing. I felt like I did when I first started Momscape 10 years ago.

The world got smaller.

Suddenly, I can see the faces of you – my subscribers and friends – and we can talk back and forth about things. It’s like the Internet is growing up. It’s shaping into something earthshattering. Exciting. It gives me butterflies. Who knows what will happen next!

And then later that day, I was still kind of marveling about it all, and I was listening to the storm outside. It has been snowing like mad up here  in tiny flakes, the kind that come down only when it’s really cold. These flakes are so little they get caught by the wind and swirl around and skitter against my windows before settling on the ground.

As I generally do during those first big snowstorms of a long winter, I started to feel a little trapped and panicky. And then I heard a little tweet from my tweetdeck. And then I had a facebook conversation with a friend who moved away, and then I checked out photos of my friend who is currently off enjoying Amsterdam, and then I checked my email to see photos of another friend’s new baby. And then I researched some randonee skis and boots on backcountry.com. And then I listened to a TED talk while eating a reheated bowl of last night’s chili. And then I went for a walk in the wide, wide world while listening on my ipod to an audiobook that I downloaded from audible.

My word. What a world.

P.S. Will you be Momscape’s fan?

“You’re never satisfied. That’s what life is. It’s just this ongoing, neverending vacation adventure, you see. You can’t get it wrong and you never get it done—and we recommend that you have as much fun as you can along the way.” Esther & Jerry Hicks

I just love this. When the summer stretches long and the days stretch on and on and on, I try really hard to think of my life as this neverending vacation adventure.

Because sometimes it feels like a very long test. And sometimes it feels more than a little tedious. And sometimes I feel like vacuuming the floor again even though I just did it because that is when I am ensconced in noise – a peaceful, made-for-one cocoon to the noisy, clamorous, raucous world of sound where kids I don’t even know are asking to come in to play Power Rangers.

And sometimes I just really feel like I need to go for a good hard run straight up the mountain behind by house – but, alas, there is no way on God’s Green Earth that I can do that because my kids and most of the neighbor kids are home with me, sticking to me.

But I like to defy my reality and think of it as an adventure. And not just a neverending adventure, but a neverending vacation adventure.

That’s so much better, even, than a neverending adventure.

A vacation adventure. That’s good food at restaurants with twinkly lights in their windows. Long talks on hotel balconies talking and talking and talking with my beautiful husband late into the night because maybe I actually have the energy to stay up past ten because I’m on vacation.

It’s reading good books and running down the hallways to the swimming pool. It’s sitting in the sun under an orange brimmed sun hat and feeling my skin sizzle while watching other people who, like me, have no cares at all. It’s getting a little distance on our lives and so having an easier time remembering that all the things we worry about and obsess over are just elements of a game that we are choosing to play.

It’s that loose-in-the-middle feeling you get when you have just run really hard or belly laughed or finished a crying jag.

Just thinking of a neverending vacation adventure and the challenge of trying to make my everyday life into one. It kind of helps today.

I told my kids once that I love Ben and Jerry’s, but I adore Pens and Cherries. This, I had said, was all I need to be content: A new smooth pen and some ripe and juicy cherries.

And then my kids (uh, I’m sure with Ty’s help) go and put a bowl of them at my spot at the breakfast table yesterday. Along with something to write on, a newspaper, and a mix of lovely flowers.

It’s my birthday, see, and my kids like to stretch, draw out, and milk a celebration as long as possible.

Yesterday, we celebrated Mom’s Birthday Eve.

With the dawn of the day today, I am (gasp) 35, which means I now represent a whole new demographic.  Ty says that I am now, like him, officially, a “folk,” which is a word rarely paired with youth and vibrancy.

There are folk tales and folk songs. Folks might be hardy and sturdy, but the word doesn’t conjure much of anything chic or elegant. I am not sure how I feel about being newly classified in this way.

Despite all this, I’m feeling pretty good. For I’ve got two new smooth writing pens and ripe rainier cherries – nearly big as plums and juicy sweet.

Here’s a kind-of related Momscape article I think you might like:
Simple Secrets That Create Happy Family Memories, by Dr. Michele Borba

Or Things I Got All Wrong

So, yesterday, some friends and I were talking about things you thought were true your whole life and then you have this crazy, embarrassing and usually public epiphany.

So today I’m going to share with you one of those things I always thought I had right only to realize that, no, no, I had it all wrong.

Here you go:

When my kids were babies and they would pass gas, my husband would check their diapers and, if they were in the clear, he would occasionally say “Toots but no Maytals.” This meant, “False alarm. No need to change this diaper.”

So, in my mind, I guess I kind of made the word Maytals synonymous with, well, baby poop.

On this went, through three babies.

I would change the diaper and exclaim things such as “Oh, heavenly Maytals!”

For all these many years, I had no earthly idea that Toots and the Maytals was a reggae band. I was sitting in a café when I read an author (I think it was Anne Lamott) make a little mention about a Toots and the Maytals concert.

All at once, I tried to recall all of the times I had made a reference to “Toots but No Maytals” or “Toots and Mucho Maytals” in public, but I couldn’t. There were too many.

I’m comforted by the fact that it’s not the first (and definitely won’t be the last) time I have displayed my total ignorance of popular culture.