*THPR is The Happiness Project Revisited, and in January we have a week of prompts. Here are a few more. These are boring navel-gazing, fair warning: Are You Promotion Focused or Prevention Focused? Do I gravitate toward achievement-related goals, or risk-avoidance goals? She framed this as being the difference between setting a healthy eating goal as “eat more vegetables” (achievement goal) or “stop eating junk food” (risk-avoidance goal). I split riiiiiight down the middle. As the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the only daughter, the striver-servant spirit is strong in me. I want to get an A+ in everything I do – I love achievement for achievement’s sake,…

Describe your current season of life. What do you appreciate about it? What makes it different from other times in your life? I am no longer young, but not yet old. The boys don’t take every scrap of energy and attention like they used to – parenting is a much lower pressure exercise these days. I love the ages they are now, they are so fun. The other day I was dropping Jack at a friend’s house but he was waiting for the friend to get home before leaving he car, so we sat in the dark and he played songs by artists new to me – Ice Spice (“she’s…

In her 1993 book “Dakota,” Kathleen Norris describes growing up in a Methodist church where her father was choir director. From toddler age she sang in the cherub choir, and took the sheet music home with her so her mother could play it on the piano while Norris sang along, sitting in her mother’s lap to practice. Although her early church experience was positive, Norris stopped going to church when she moved to New York City in her twenties.  She writes “church was an uneasy exercise in nostalgia,” and she no longer felt comfortable there. Eventually she left New York City, moving with her husband to her family farm in…

(*the amount of friction I have removed from writing here more by simply titling these with the date is huge. “Thinking up a title” can sometimes just stop me in my tracks entirely.) Pretty things. I set myself up with some pretty things at the start of this year. “Beautiful tools make work a joy.” I purchased a planner with a tiger pattern that reminds me of the riotous jewel-toned decor in our Amsterdam hotel from this past summer. As I hung up this year’s Este MacLeod calendar, I took down last year’s (and chuckled because I had just chosen this one after perusing a bunch and only later realized…

January 6 was Twelfth Night – and that means we now have King Cake on the counter! Carnival season has begun. I am in a walking krewe this year called the Candy Girls. We wear purple wigs and purple spangly outfits and do coordinated marching dances to various songs about candy and sugar. They slot us into parades in between floats, where we march along while a Ford F150 drives behind us towing a loud amp and a closed trailer with a bucket and some kitty litter (the gritty details of MG parading). I’ve been practicing with the group since autumn – we meet in a local park under a…