The pumpkin patch

(superb photo by Kathy Moyd at psaphoto.org)

We went to the local pumpkin patch today (this isn't it, though the appearance is similar.) We park in a field. Buy tickets to do a variety of things, among them an 8 acre corn maze, a corn cannon, various games for little ones that we skipped, and the hayride out to and from the pumpkin patch.

The kids are getting older so gone are the days when I had to carry every squash. We all picked out pumpkins weighing between 14 and 21 pounds. We're going to have a lot of toasted pumpkin seeds this year. Back when I had to carry the pumpkins for the kids, they weighed more in the 8 to 10 pound range. So what I no longer have to carry makes the wallet a bit lighter.

We also had some good pork barbecue. You can also grill hot dogs over an open pit with long metal 3-pronged skewers. (Forget the health implications, and enjoy.) A DJ was actually playing music from the '50s thru today that wasn't blasting us from under the tent, but was upbeat enough to have everyone dancing or singing along.

We'll talk about corn mazes later and we'll be talking about pre-teen music concerts and state fairs tomorrow. I can't wait for Monday when I can post something about autumn foliage or watching squirrels play in the driveway.

I ask you, what about your fall rituals? Any special pumpkin carving templates? You can send me photos and, if they fit the tone of the Happiness Notebook, I'll post them with a write-up.

Happy Birthday, Alex.

The Secrets to Happiness: Secret #3

The Not-So-Secret Secrets seem to be all about the physical aspects of life. Well, we're only on the third one and I can't bring myself to talk about emotional and social "secrets" without addressing some very basic things. It's tough to be happy when dehydration is making you feel listless and depressed, for example.

So we're keeping with the physical for now, though at some point everything is going to be intermingled.

Remember that awfully clever post from last week entitled "POTUS"? That was all about my feelings for pears as the perfect commuter fruit. This secret expands on that:

Eat fresh fruit

I know, you are in shock at such a revelation. But you'll have to trust me on this one. Instead of an entire grande Snickers or a pint of Ben & Jerry's, eat some fruit.

To make that work you have to have some fruit on hand. This is where the concept usually bugs me. You see, candy bars, bags of chips, cartons of ice cream, they all keep for some period of time as long as I store them properly. Fresh fruit can be overbought and if it isn't eaten in a certain period of time, your left with trash or compost. So, I think you need to plan a bit on how much fruit you're thinking you might eat.

For me, I use fruit as snacks during the day. I mix it in with pretzels or nuts of some sort to get that sweet and savory mix that I seem to need for culinary balance. So that's three servings during the day. Then I usually eat at least one more after dinner. Four per day then.

Notice that I haven't mentioned any government recommendations, mainly because I don't know them and I am too lazy to look them up (I'm on a laptop! How lazy is that?) Plus, I have no desire to lecture anyone beyond what works for me. These "secret" posts are pretty borderline in that regard already.

What follows is just a list of fruits. At some point, like the pear post, we'll look at them in more depth. Not all fruits are easy to eat fresh, like pineapple which requires all sorts of hefty bladework. And then some fruits aren't really that tasty without cooking like cranberries, unless you like tartness. Makes me cringe.

Pears
Apples
Quince (prep work!)
Peaches
Apricots
Cherries
Nectarines
Dates
Plums
Blueberries
Strawberries
Blackberries
Raspberries
Grapes
Currants (tartness alert)
Cranberries (tartness alert)
Watermelon
Cantaloupe
All the varieties of melons (I should've treated the berries this way)
Oranges
Kumquats (should be coming into stores soon)
Grapefruit (the one I really dislike, but will eat if starving)
Tangerines
Ugli fruits
Limes
Lemons
Tangelos
Guavas
Bananas
Prickly pears
Cherimoyas
Figs
Carambolas (star fruit)
Kiwi fruits
Pineapples
Papayas
Persimmons
Passion fruits
Pomegranates (a pain to get to, but oh, so good)
Lychees (first tried these in Hawaii)

There must be more. Which ones have I missed? Which are your favorites?

A 5th grader's imaginative costume play

Gabe likes to play. When he plays, he prefers to play historical war games.

When I was a young lad, I grabbed my plastic guns and went outside with friends and we pretended we were in the Old West, Civil War, World War II, or even the Revolutionary War, depending on the guns available and the latest movie we watched or book we read.

Gabe does the same thing, only he needs a bit more realism. No, he doesn't use real weapons. He puts together outfits that resemble uniforms. Here he is as a Union Civil War soldier. Looks like infantry to me.

He had us snap a photo and then modify it until we created a Matthew Brady-like portrait. Looks pretty good to me.

Gabe has costumes for the following:

Civil War: Union soldier (pictured), Union sailor, Confederate soldier
Davy Crockett: the Alamo look with coonskin cap
Roman Legion officer: with armor and short sword and the brush helmet
Conquistador: with the funny shaped helmet
Pirate
Cowboy
Orc and Ranger from Lord of the Rings
Indiana Jones
Assorted scary stuff: ghoul, Grim Reaper, zombie, and the Beastmaster
And I think he has some sort of Darth Vader stuff. I know we have a few lightsabers.

Yet, this is the gentlest, most well-behaved, politest kid on the planet.

But he's got a great imagination. We indulge it.

Did you have a favorite costume or make-believe game that you played as a kid? Or do you have one that you still play? Paintball comes to mind as an adult version of a pretend game (with sometimes painful and colorful consequences.)

The view from above

I didn't post Monday because I worked in the morning, flew to Texas, went to a business dinner in Dallas, and then watched a game on TV back at the hotel. Not a total wasted day, but not quite one for the happiness annals either.

But on the way there, and then on the way back home today, I realized that the view from an airplane is full of variety and beauty, even when the view isn't spectacular.

There a few overriding factors that will determine your view. They are time of day, weather (cloud patterns), and underlying terrain (when clear or partly clear, of course.)

My two favorites are:

1) flying over a terrain change during midday when it is clear. I love seeing features that I recognize from maps. Going from plains to foothills to mountains is one of those times. Flying over the Mississippi River or any large recognizable body of water is another. And anyone who has flown into the Pacific Northwest knows all about seeing Rainier, Adams, and Hood, with St. Helens occasionally throw in, and how majestic these mountains look without any peak competition around them.

2) thunderstorms in the distance right around dusk. I've been lucky enough to see this a few times over the years and it shows nature as the true master (mistress?) of special effects. Sure we can replicate the darkness, the flashes of lightning, and the shapes of the clouds, but we cannot do it on such a scale. To witness a thunderstorm roll across your path at a distance is to understand how tiny we are, even when massed together in towns and cities, on this earth.

Have you had a memorable view from an airplane? Besides the baggage handler unceremoniously throwing your luggage on the conveyor, that is.

(this photo was posted by greasewood at photobucket.com)

Hot showers and the perfect shower head

Even if I shower at night after working or playing hard, I still need to shower in the morning or I just don't feel completely awake. Well, that and my hair is fairly curly wavy and somewhat oily so it would never feel right and I would be forced to wear a hat which I think is prohibited by the dress code where I work. But I've moved away from my point.

Which is that there are few things that we take for granted as much as the ability to have a hot shower when we feel we need one.

Not only that, but we can get all picky about the power and spread of the shower head. Come on, when you visit your relatives and they have this old weak shower head that, at most, gets your shoulder kind of wet, like walking through one of those cool mist machines, you feel discomfort if not frustration, right? Or if the water is subject to temperature change based on other water-based behavior in the house, you can never really relax while you're shampooing your hair, can you?

So, when you have that perfect shower, and by that I mean, perfect for you, think about how wonderful it is and happy it makes us.

Part of happiness is about the little things. And they're only little things until we don't have them anymore.

If you can think of something you take for granted that would ruin your day if it was gone, let me know in the comments or by emailing me.

The last hurrah for hair metal

Ah, Skid Row and their second album, Slave to the Grind (yes, I own it,) debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1991. Good times, good times.

Rachel Bolan, the bassist, and Dave "The Snake" Sabo, the guitarist, wrote most of the songs, including this one, Monkey Business. Sebastian Bach is the singer with a powerful set of rock and roll pipes.

Not only does this song have a relentless driving rhythm, it has some of the best lyrics ever found in a hair/pop metal tune. It's tough to pick out a single line, because, like the beat, the words just keep rolling along in a rapid staccato attack.

Here's a sample:

"Little creepy's playing dollies in the New York rain, thinkin' Bowie's just a knife, oh the pain" which leads right into "I ain't seen the sun since I don't know when, the freaks come out at nine and it's twenty to ten." A little dark humor keeps it all from being totally morose.

And that's just the way I like it.

A visit with the doctor

Preschoolers have it pretty good when it comes to literature. Picture books with superb art and great stories are published every week. My kids had their favorites and I had mine. You probably did, too.

When I was a kid, I liked Ezra Jack Keats. Remember him? The Snowy Day and Whistle for Willie are the two mainstays. (These will be covered in depth in a future post.)

My kids liked writers/illustrators like Jon Scieska and Janell Cannon. Oh, and the Numeroff & Bond classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

But nearly everyone loves Dr. Seuss. His books are found in practically every home in the United States. They're difficult not to like. And because the characters are usually fur covered and wear the occasional hat, they're not ready candidates to become dated.

My favorites as a kid were The Cat in the Hat and Hop on Pop! My son, Gabe, used to love Hop on Pop! He would giggle on every page, but none louder than at the beginning: "Stop! You must not hop on Pop!"

Now that I'm older, I prefer the allegorical stories from the good doctor, such as Yertle the Turtle and Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish didn't work for my story-driven brain as a kid. And that Sam I am, well, I did not like that Sam I am. But I liked the book well enough, but he did come across as pushy. The moment he rhymed box and fox and mouse and house, I think I would've decked him.

Let me know your favorite Seuss books (or Seuss library books, cause we all like those Berenstain Bears.) Better yet, go read your favorite Seuss books. And go buy them if you don't have them. There is nothing shameful in owning the classics.

I'll leave you with a Spanish quiz. What are the english titles of the following?

1) El Gato en el Sombrero (too easy)

2) Horton Escucha a Quien (simple)

3) Juevos verdes con jamon (sorry about the missing accents)

4) Hay un Molillo en mi Bolsillo (now this is translating)

The Secrets to Happiness: Secret #2

Oxygen is life. It is the key to Secret #2 which is:

Breathe deeply.

Big secret, isn't it? But apparently most of us really don't take full advantage of our lung capacity.

So, the idea behind this secret is to learn how to breath properly and then set aside one minute a couple of times per day to practice (you don't have to sit like her, either, but you should sit or stand with good posture.)

To take a full breath, use your diaphragm to pull air into your lungs. This will cause your belly to expand. Then expand the rib cage to continue drawing in air. Finally, expand the chest to fill the tops of your lungs. Then exhale all of it, in reverse order, through the mouth. Try to empty the lungs. Do this five or six times and your minute will pass quickly. Take your time while breathing. Relax.

It is a stress reducing activity. I usually do this while sitting in a comfortable chair. When I am finished, I feel relaxed. There are supposed to be mental benefits to this in addition to the physical and emotional. I don't pay attention to that, but I'm guessing it's true.

Sit down, clear your head, take the deep breath and let it go. Let me know how that works for you.

Visiting the Rothko Chapel

This is the interior of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. The main room contains six murals painted by Mark Rothko. They are all dark, but each different. It's tough to tell in this photograph, but each work has its own character.

This photo, with two people setting on one of the four benches, shows the scale of Rothko's work. These are typical sizes for him. The National Gallery (Washingon, DC) has even larger works on display.

The Rothko Chapel is very quiet, solemn, even sacred space. Everyone is welcome. When we stopped in a few months ago, there were people meditating and praying. One man appeared to be a Muslim, and another was practicing an Eastern religion, perhaps Buddhism.

The serene stillness of the place drove my children to distraction. My son kept whispering to me in a barely audible voice asking when we might leave. I sat on each bench and admired the paintings and the coolness of the room and the rustling of clothing. I don't believe there is such a thing as silence.

I have created a couple of Rothko-like canvases. It looks easy, but it takes layer after layer of paint to achieve the desired effect. Not all of his works are "color field" paintings, but those are his most popular. He worked with all sorts of color combinations.

Check out his works and try it yourself on a small canvas. You'll know you've done it when the painting takes on a depth and mystery that you didn't anticipate. The moment that happens, put down the brush.

A pond is my metaphor for peacefulness

(thanks to wildandwoolyart for this Carolina pond photograph)

There is a quality in still water that exemplifies peace and tranquility. Rivers have a noticeable flow, lakes are too large to be personal, and oceans, well, oceans might as well be war and strife and tribulations of all sorts.

Ponds are usually created by blocking a stream or digging deeper in an already low lying area. Ponds serve as watering holes for livestock and birds and other animals. Sometimes, if the pond is large enough, it can be stocked with fish.

But I like ponds because of their quietness, their shiny reflective surfaces in blue, brown, and green landscapes. I enjoy seeing them when cruising down rural roads and highways.

If I had a pond, I would build a little bridge over a narrow part of it. I take time out each week, probably on Saturday, to walk out and sit down and look out over it. Maybe watch the alpacas swing by for a drink. (We'll cover alpacas in some future post.)

Would a gazebo ruin the effect?

Which landscape features do you find peaceful?

Griffon update

Intimidating, yet a comfortable ride with a gorgeous view and two exhilirating freefalls. The wait is long, the ride fun but short.

Ranks just below Alpengeist on the fun level, because of the Griffon's shorter length.

Recommended for the view alone. This ride is worth the wait in line, at least once.