A vase full of happiness…

 

At the beginning of 2018 I popped a label on a vase and started, alongside Hubby, adding moments of happiness to the vase.

Over the 12 months the vase gradually filled with multicoloured folded squares of paper, on which Hubby and I had written little notes when something had made us particularly happy.  Not once in those 12 months did we reach in and read any of those dockets.

At the beginning of 2019 I transferred the papers into a little gift box for treasured safe-keeping.

January 2019 has been hideous.

I felt hopeful for February.

The sale of the millstone of a flat I bought off-plan some 15 years ago should have been long completed, yet for some reason, remains, even as I type, inexplicably trapped in the bureaucracy that is conveyancing solicitors and estate agents; with weekly demands for extraneous charges for this report or the other; then there’s the ongoing mortgage costs; the transferred to me utilities and council tax demands and any other little thing they feel they might be able to milk out of my sunken emaciated breasts before the final moment of completion  (or exorcism as I feel is a more accurate way to view the process).  I have never written the full horror story of the purchase and ownership of this rental property, but I can safely tell you it is the stuff of nightmares.  It has led me to a breakdown; to almost financial ruin.  It has strained my relationship, it has broken my mind, it has weakened my stamina.  Think fire , flood, plague of locusts…. that’s chapters 1-3.  Several chapters then followed.  None quite as bad as those, but all sprinkled with equal amounts of corporate apathy and incompetence and throughout, a total absence of customer service charged monthly at a disproportionate rate!  This final chapter, lets call it chapter 10 “The exorcism”, is just about leaving me teetering on the precipice because of the inexplicable delays…. surely only to make us believe that conveyancing is far more complex than reality to justify the extortionate fees charged for the process (lets not call it a “service” any longer,  “process” will more than suffice).

Anyway.  January did finally fuck right off, but as far as I’m concerned, February can go do one too…

Which leads me to my vase of happiness ……

This morning Hubby and I sat in bed with our mugs of tea, hacking wet coughs and sweaty fevered bodies and read all those little squares of magic memories.

A glimmer of hopefulness ignited within us at each joyful memory we read out.

2018 had been an exceptionally good year. Perhaps explaining the deep greyness that has shrouded the beginning of 2019.  These problems existed in 2018 but there was so much joy, laughter, friendship and family within those 12 months that the problems were pushed into insignificant corners, and became dust bunnies that were hoovered away and discarded with the rubbish.

Reading the contents of our 2018 Vase of Happiness has made me realise that I already have many moments to add to the 2019 vase…… I’d lost them in the fug of January.  But I’m going to dust them down, note them onto little squares of coloured paper and start collecting 2019s happiness in a jar , ready to save me from the doldrums of this time next year.

Try it yourselves, I recommend it