Go to your happy place

It's funny how life throws you curve balls.

You know what? I'm not even sure what a curve ball is, technically, but I've heard this analogy often enough that I feel sure that I'm using it in the right context here.

So many things may be going your way. And yet, melancholy lingers like the smell of three-day-old milk behind the kitchen bureau. You scrub and scrub, but every once in a while you get a wiff of the smelly waff.

At least that's how it works for me. Sometimes I blame it on hormones, the weather, genetics, stress, I mean, I have a whole slew things to blame for the little black rain cloud that occasionally follows me around. Don't we all?

Elise is reading this crazy book for her book report this month. The genre is "science-fiction." We went to the library to get "The Iron Giant." We had it there, in the building stacked with a bunch of other books, then when we went to check out, it mysteriously vanished. There's more to the story, but I digress. Elise is now stuck reading some weird book called, "Can of Worms." We would search longer for a better book, but her book report is due next week and we really wanted to get it done this week, again, I digress.

The whole point of my story is that Elise got a little freaked out by this book this afternoon. She was getting ready for bed upstairs while I was helping the little girls downstairs. When I went up to tuck her in, she said,

"Mom, I was a little scared up here by myself, but then I remembered a part of this song that said, 'What you think is what you'll do' so I started thinking about happy things. I thought about my baptism, mom, and how good I felt. And you know what? It's amazing because I totally wasn't scared anymore."

Once again, I am taught by my children.

Black cloud, be gone. I'm going to think of happy things. Like my daughter.

And pink and these two cute faces.