Keys to Happiness

I am currently reading through a little book called, Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. It was written by Gordon Livingston, a man who has practiced psychiatry for over thirty years and has made many observations about life through his own and others’ experiences. There are thirty short chapters with titles like: We Are What We Do, Feelings Follow Behavior and The most secure prisons are the ones we construct ourselves. I am really enjoying the book so far because it is simple and straightforward and the short chapters allow for quick reads here and there. I am exactly halfway through and wanted to share some of his wisdom.

“Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure…The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to”
For some reason I like to contemplate the idea of happiness. It can seem so abstract but summing it up with a little formula like he does makes it seem so simple. Although our busy lives can seem hectic and chaotic, it is so much more aggravating to have nothing going on. Having spent some time in retirement centers with my own relatives, I have seen the sadness in the eyes of some residents. I spent some time with a recreation coordinator at one of these places as part of a Joy School activity several years ago and she told me about how much the residents looked forward to the crafts and cookie decorating we would bring on our visits. I guess our visits provided all three aspects because they just loved being with little children and doing activities with them, and looked forward to our monthly visits. It’s also important to me that he says someone to love and not someone to love us. It is certainly easier to love when someone returns it, but it isn’t necessary for personal happiness.

“…most of our dissatisfactions with others reflect limitations in ourselves.”
So true! I have noticed that too. Next time you are annoyed with someone, think about how you would deal with the same situation.
“…there might be advantages to being depressed. One of the benefits is that it is a safe position… Because their expectations are chronically low, pessimists are seldom disappointed… To be happy is to take the risk of losing that happiness.”
Have you ever wished you were sick just so that your responsibilities would be taken over by someone else? I have! It is sometimes easier to be pessimistic so that you don’t feel foolish if something you were openly excited about blows up in your face. Wouldn’t it be better to hope for the best and be wrong than to bet on the worst and be right?

Las Vegas pics.

I thought I might make a post and here it is! Here are some pictures from our las vegas trip. I hope you like them!

thanks-Hunter

Sabrina’s Style

Sabrina brought me this dress and was so excited to wear it! This is a dress that Heather (my sister-in-law) made, yes she made it!!, for her daughter Ciel years ago. I love this hand me down. It is still so cute and fallish that I couldn’t pass up the chance to share some pictures. I wish I could have taken them without the yucky kitchen background, but I’ve learned that spending too much time messing with locations or poses makes your models cranky!

Bar Widow

As stated in the post below, I was a “bar widow” for the summer of 2005. This meant that Rob was technically home for the summer, but nobody knew it. He could have holed up in the library or something, but since my parent’s basement is pretty soundproof from the chaos in the rest of the house it worked for him to study in there. He was in that basement bedroom studying all day; reading, taking sample tests, writing, and stressing out. Then he drove to Stockton every night (almost an hour away) for the BarBri class. This class is essential to preparing for the California bar, and he took it very seriously. It was brutal.

I was kept sane by staying with Nana and Papa who would help out a lot with the kids! Also, in the middle of it all, we found out that we were expecting baby Sabrina just days after Hannah started crawling at six months old. I put myself in denial about what that would mean for me, and dove into finding our family a place to live in LA. I did tons of research online, where were the best schools? a low crime rate? a decent commute? I drove down with my Mom and Hannah and we stayed at Auntie J & Dan’s house while we looked around. We timed the drive, checked out neighborhoods, called realtors and scanned the papers for rentals. Unfortunately we didn’t find anything from that trip so I went to plan B and started calling bishops in the area and friends of friends etc. Finally, I found a bishop’s wife with a lead! Someone in their ward was taking a year to practice law back east and wanted to rent out their house while they were gone. Ta da! They sent us pictures and told us how great the neighborhood was. We felt like it was a good fit, and signed the lease by fax. Luckily, it turned out to be just as nice as we had hoped and our blind faith paid off.

When the bar exam was over we started preparing for our move to LA. We settled in and loved our new community. The hours at the firm were a very hard adjustment for all of us. In fact I still have a tolerate/hate relationship with all firms. Regardless of where you work there is an unpredictable schedule and lots of surprise late night shifts. If getting through law school weren’t so expensive I think most people would never choose to work there, but when you finish school with undergrad debt and then law school debt, you do what it takes to pay the bills. It’s like having to pay for two homes, one that you live in and the other that houses your opportunity for a career. The firm takes good care of you financially and gives you lots of little parties and perks to keep you from saying “I’m outta here!” It’s what has been called the “golden handcuffs.” Once you go in it’s hard to leave behind. Although we are determined to not buy into the lifestyle and use these as our big earning years to pay things down to a more manageable level and then Rob can get a job with better hours, etc. So until then I have morphed from the “Bar Widow” into my current status as the “Firm Widow.” My next title had better be more glamorous!

A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar…

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching Ebert & Roeper and the reviewer that was filling in for Ebert had as his video pick of the week a documentary called “A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar…“. He said it’s been making the rounds at the film festivals and getting really good reviews. I found it on Amazon and ordered it (when I ordered it, it was $14.99. Now, it’s $21.95. Must have gotten popular). Amy and I just watched it last night. It’s really interesting. It follows 6 law school grads as they study for the California bar exam. It’s also interspersed with interviews of well-known lawyers and commentators (Alan Dershowitz, Nancy Grace, Scott Turow, John Stossel) talking about lawyers and the craziness of the legal system. I posted a couple of short clips from it below.

It brought back a lot of memories from my time studying for the California bar. It was by far the hardest, most stressful thing I’ve gone through so far. I basically had no life other than studying for the bar for the 3 1/2 months between graduating from law school and taking the bar. For me, the main source of stress wasn’t that it was just a hard test, but that it was pass/fail. I couldn’t just stop studying and say “I’ll just accept a lower grade on this one” (something I’d done on plenty of other tests in the past). It was all or nothing, and if I didn’t pass, that pretty much erased the degree I’d just worked three years for; not to mention that it would put in jeopardy the job offer I had, the reason I was taking the California bar in the first place. It was a lot of stress. I’ll have to get Amy to post about how it was on her end. I know it was pretty brutal for her too. We stayed with Amy’s parents that summer, I don’t know how Amy could have managed with the kids if we hadn’t stayed with them. Amy was a “bar widow” that whole summer.

One of my best memories though, was coming back home after taking the bar up in Sacramento (it was the closest testing site and an hour and a half from Amy’s parents’ house so I stayed in a hotel up there for the 3 days of the test). When I walked in the door, I was greeted with balloons and a cake and a big banner that Hunter, who was 7 at the time, had written on in big letters, “Lawyer or not, you’re still our Daddy”. That was pretty great.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3eZamdVnw

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEMBsS4VZD4

NICU Preemie Costumes

My friend Kim sent me a link to this cute website Elliott’s Preemie Tees.  They also have adorable Halloween costumes.  I think it would be so comforting as a parent to have these tiny clothes if my baby were in the NICU. I have heard of people getting doll clothes for their preemies.  These seem so much nicer because they allow for tubes and monitors too.

Las Vegas Getaway

This last week was an especially rough one for Rob at work. He’s been working on a deal that was originally supposed to close on Friday, then it was bumped to today, and who knows when it actually will close, but it has been one of those killers trying to meet the deadlines. Every night last week he got home as early as 11:00 pm and as late as 2:00 am. I suppose it was lucky he didn’t need to pull all-nighters which he has had to do before. Anyway, the weekend came and we were faced with a blessing and a curse. There was another work obligation… in Las Vegas. There was a conference that Rob was signed up to attend. Luckily, we were all able to go and the firm paid for our rooms.

We made the four hour drive and arrived at the Signature at MGM Grand. We were all excited to find that our rooms were beautiful! We had adjoining rooms, one for the kids to sleep in and the other for us. From the balcony we could see the airplanes taking off and landing which was so exciting for the kids, and luckily not noisy enough to make it annoying. One of the favorite features was the TV that raises up out of the desk, fancy! I have to admit I wasn’t too excited about the idea of packing everyone up for a one night stay that would mostly be me and the kids in the hotel room, while Rob went to the the conference and a fancy dinner. It turned out to be a lot of fun for us though.

I ordered pizza and the kids and I ate, played games and watched the movie, Bridge to Terabithia. I warned them that it was very sad, but they insisted that it was one they wanted to watch. It was sad, but also a great story. I’d recommend this one for the family. About half way through the movie I took the little girls in the other room and put on Baby Einstein Farm Animals. They loved that one and had fun watching as they jumped on the big bed. Rob returned around 10:30 pm to find me and Emma crying on the couch at the end of Bridge to Terabithia, Hunter lounging on the floor seemingly unphased by it, and the little girls sitting quietly with me knowing that if they fussed at all I would put them to bed.

After we put the kids to bed, Rob and I snuggled up to watch Deadliest Catch Season One. We have gotten into this show since we expanded our cable a month ago. It’s the true definition of a reality show, following several fishing boats as they make their way through “the vast Bering Sea” to find crab. It sounds like it wouldn’t be very interesting, but somehow it is fascinating and we just had to go back and find season one, since we came in on season three.

The next morning we woke up and prepared for our trip home. But before leaving we took a long walk to see the lion habitat at the MGM Grand and then on to M&M World, where we were all left drooling. Sabrina literally was, and left the store sucking on a bag of M&Ms with a chocolate goatee. Having exhausted our knowledge of family friendly attractions near the hotel we headed home.

There was something surreal about the experience of leading our little kids through the hotel casino to get back to our van. There was a walkway running through it and on all sides we were surrounded by people planted at their slot machines with their hands poised over a button feeding quarters, mindlessly pushing the button hoping for a big payout. It was sad to me because none of them seemed to be having any fun. In fact most of them sat alone. Not quite the kind of fun you see in the images of Las Vegas playing on TV.

It was a great trip for our family though. We made some fun memories and I stocked up on hotel shampoos, lotions and soaps 😉 The return trip took us six hours because we hit a lot of slow traffic so we’re glad to be home now. It’s back to the old grind…