Onion Smiley
Peel 1 onion and cut off the stems of 4 jalapeño peppers.
Throw them raw and un cut along with 1 veggie bouillon cube
into the blender with some water.
Grind it all up.
Pour it into a pan.
Jalapeño Pepper Smiley
Add water, salt and pepper and a few handfuls of spinach (don’t you just love prewashed spinach?! Ask an old person to tell you about back in the day when washing spinach was soooo hard! Triple washed spinach made it onto my Giant List of Smiley Things! http://blog.spontaneoussmiley.com/?p=7103)
Cook ‘til spinach is looking limp.
Toss in few handfuls of tiny pasta (cooks almost instantly).
Want more heat, add cayenne.
Spicy Spinach Soup Smiley
Smile. Be healthy.
Ruth
Decide to be an optimist.
Don’t think it is something that you had to be born with.
Don’t believe it was how you were raised.
Don’t accept that it’s out of your reach.
DECIDE to be more optimistic.
Everyday, a 1000 times a day it’s how you act and how you react. Those are completely up to you.
So start working on your Internal Optimistic Narrator. All day, everyday you talk to yourself/narrate your life. In a traffic jam do you curse all the reasons it’s bad news? Or do you think: Score! I get an extra 10 minutes in the car to sing and NOT accomplish anything. WooHoo, traffic jams are a gift!
When your internal narration turns angry, frustrated or sad, stop yourself. Rephrase and redefine! At first it may seem artificial and contrived. But with practice you start to do it more naturally and automatically.
With practice you can decide yourself into optimism.
Ruth
It’s not that I haven’t been doing my daily Smiley stuff! Actually, crazy busy. As part of the promotion for the book’s release (Next Tues!!! 3/13/12) I have been doing guest posts on lots of other people’s blogs! It’s been a blast. Some days I do as many as three or four.
Ok that doesn’t sound like a big deal . . . but each one is like writing an essay. Then there’s the tech challenge of sending along all the accompanying photos in a format I can send and they can receive and successfully open. This last part is often the biggest hurdle. Just goes to show that my kid is correct: mom needs to start using Drop Box!
What else is new in my little world? Well, contract negotiations fell apart for one of my preschool’s locations . After 14 years we sadly closed our doors last week. Now there are just 2 Tot Drops.
Had 2 small surgeries. One on my eye, gotta keep seeing! And one on my thumb, gotta have that opposable thumb! I’m down to typing with one hand for a couple of weeks. Today is day 3 of that challenge and it’s amazing how quickly we humans can adapt!
So, let’s review: Paragraph 1=busy, 2=disappointed, 3=pain+challenged. To sum it all up, life continues to be pretty darned great. All the things that matter are fabulous!
Smile. Be happy!
Ruth
P.S.: Oh yeah, I got married last week!
Can’t find my groove. Lots to do but wheels a spinning.
Maybe a cup of coffee will help…nope.
Clean the cat litter box, see if the mail has come, make some toast, forget the toast, retoast the toast, burn the toast, change my socks, change my bra, call my mom, look at my face in the mirror & use hands to imagine what a facelift would look like, cut daffodils to bring into the house, take a shower in case the daffodil hunt took me thru poison oak, pet the cats, cackle with the turkeys, organize the bathroom drawer, calculate the cost of sesame seeds if you were to buy a pound. . .
Confession: Above, every comma you see represents a visit to Facebook and or Twitter. Just being honest.
So far nothing’s working. I know, I’ll open a bottle of wine!
One gorgeous spring day, my three kids were in the backyard making mud with the hose, lots and lots of mud. They’d come up with the marvelous, incredible, never before experienced, “How Much Mud Can You Carry in Your Underwear Challenge.” Unbeknownst to me one of them had run into the house to get the bathroom scale. When I peeked out to check on them, there they were weighing themselves, hosing off and weighing again. Three happy, filthy kids doing math problems with a muddy stick (I almost typed, with a “stick in the mud” but that means something completely different!).
I could have been grumpy that the scale was all muddy or that muddy little footprints ran from the back door to the bathroom. But being grumpy wouldn’t clean up the mud and being grumpy would definitely ruin their fun. I simply rejoiced in seeing them in cooperative play and using math to solve a real life question.
Foot Print Smiley
I was also happy that when they looked up and saw me watching, they had no concern that they would get in trouble. It wasn’t an uh-oh, we got caught moment. They know I am the kind of mom who is quick to smile and slow to scold. It’s a good way to deal with everyone, young and o
It is that lesson that sticks with me. It is a lesson I model for, and teach to, the teachers at my school. As adults we chose our reactions to the behaviors of our children. Our reactions help them to define what is right, what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is not. It is our responsibility to take care and think before we speak, especially before we speak harshly. Especially if our motivation for wanting them to stop doing what they are doing is based on anything other than helping them to have a happy, safe life.
Curb Smiley
Ask yourself: Is the behavior actually wrong, needing to be curbed? Or is it merely irritating? My kids loved “recreational screaming.” Joyous noise making, usually accompanied by wild, goofy dancing, for the simple pleasure of doing so. Loud and annoying? Yes. Wrong? No. Should their enthusiasm be reigned in? At the Library or while the baby sleeps? Yes. In the family room or the backyard? No. Nobody ever said being a parent would be without chaos and noise!
Again,ask yourself: Is the behavior actually wrong, needing to be curbed? Or is it merely going to generate a bunch of work for mom or dad? Those huge messes we walk in on, are often the result of incredible creativity. And surely, the motivation in their hearts was not, “Let’s see if we can drive mom crazy.” Remember the spilled paint is, just that, spilled paint. Cleaning up messes, dealing with dis-order, is in a parent’s job description.
Shopping Cart Smiley
Think of all the “I want to do it myself” moments. Oh, good golly Miss Molly, it’s easier to jump in and do it your fast grownup self. It can be irritating and time consuming to let them be the do-er instead of you. But if all the little guy is doing is trying to be competent and independent, doesn’t your job description say you should let them? Does it take more time? Absolutely. Is the solution then, to take over for them or use an unkind voice as you hurry them along? No. The solution is to allow for more time. Grocery store trip without a child = 30 minutes. Same shopping list with a child = 60 minutes (and a handful extra items, LOL). Plan for it and you will find that your aren’t nearly as likely to be irritated.
Be quick to smile and slow to scold, and always remember to smile.
Be Happy.
Ruth
Back to the mud story: Wondering who cleaned up the mud in the hall? We all did it together. It’s important to help kids learn how to take responsibility for their messes. That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. We used shaving cream and sponges. The floor got clean, the house smelled great and we all had fun.
I don’t know when someone has made me so genuinely happy, has made me laugh out loud so long and so hardily!!
I am filled with gratitude for a gratitude named Neil!!! Best, funnest video ever!!!