Pima County Fair

Friday we had so much fun with Izy at the Pima County Fair.  I grew up going to the Kane County Fair (Elgin, Illinois) with my Grandparents Dice.  In the Midwest, the Fair is in August, but in Pima County it comes in April.  It was a surprisingly damp (slight shower) and cool evening, but our spirits were sunny.  Mark took Izy on her first Ferris Wheel ride; she visited her first petting zoo where she met a lovely llama; she learned about the carney games (a quick way to lose tickets), and rode the modernized tilt-a-whirl with another "friend" she met while standing in the ride's ticket line.

We spent almost an hour at the 4H exhibition hall and she admired the art work, quilts and made her own crafted baskets.  She gathered vegetables from the "farm", milked a (plastic) cow, and, another first, sat on a tractor.

Four and half hours later, she got into her car seat and was asleep before we hit the freeway!  Such is the happiness of a child at her first county fair.

Gratitude

My mammo results came in the mail today: normal.  I said a prayer of gratitude and prayed for all the women facing similar fears, diagnosis, treatments and healing.

Yesterday I did take a bouquet to the imaging center and asked staff to offer a flower to women getting a mammo.  I am going to try to repeat that behavior throughout the coming months.  It is a small action I can take that helps me stay on a healthier and happier path and may "crack some light" into the walls of the waiting room.

On Monday/Passover (and the day my results were written), I acted "as if" and bought flowers for myself.  Later, I received more flowers from my son and family.  The aroma from the flowers fills my home with comfort and love.

 

 

Sunday outing at the Southern Arizona Water Color Guild Gallery

After spending the morning sitting on the front porch, waving to neighbors as they pass by, I took a short walk in the neighborhood, appreciating my surroundings.  In the mid-morning light the flowers were partially shaded, but their colors were brilliant reds, yellows, and purple.  I saw a few butterflies, two hummingbirds; and multiple grasshoppers popping across the sidewalk. Our cat, Gray, kept going back and forth from the cool house to the warming patio and eventually settled on a soft chair in the backyard.

When Mark got home from his morning meeting and visiting a friend, we drove to Ft. Lowell Park and walked around the small lake, viewing the egret fly, the ducks paddle, and the turtles poke their heads just above the water ripples.  Continuing our walk, we followed the path through the pecan groves which are beginning to shed their nuts and finished with a cooling stroll among the cottonwoods.  Since this weekend is also the Open Studio Tour for our local artists, before returning home I wanted to visit the gallery for the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild  http://southernazwatercolorguildcom  . 

Yesterday, we spent time on the westside (after I did my downtown library happiness community conversation), visited the Mission Gardens, and enjoyed an early dinner at the Tucson Food Truck Round-Up www.tucsonsbirthplace.org  www.tucsonfoodtruckroundup.com.  Then we went to 2nd Saturdays in downtown Tucson and thoroughly enjoyed the music by The LoBros www.theLoBros.com.  Thus, having gone to the westside and downtown yesterday, I knew I didn't have the legs to do those galleries, so a short visit to the WaterColor Guild's Gallery, matched with light lunch and shopping at Whole Foods pretty much took up the early to mid-afternoon. 



Back home, it's catch-up on the computer time and then watching PBS' Masterpiece Theatre where I am totally hooked into the latest classic, Paradise.  What fun to imagine how London might have been when shopping for the new middle class meant buying fabrics and lovebirds from Paris. 



Fantasies are fun and as I reflect on today's outing, I realize how happy I am today where fantasy and reality can intermingle and bring me joy.

A visit to the Agua Caliente Park is bittersweet

http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/agua-caliente-park-s-pond-a-dry-shadow-of-yesteryear/article_9b989460-c43f-519a-897f-59a93ecf4b49.html

One of the benefits of "partial retirement/self-employment" is the freedom to take off on a spur-of-the-moment minitrip on a Friday afternoon.  We went to Agua Caliente Park where Mark's mom enjoyed herself, particularly in the last months of her life, and I, too, recall taking my mom there before her decline.  It's been a couple of years since we last visited or maybe longer and we had both read the recent article about how the second pond is gone and even the remaining pond is drying up.  We saw mud flats where water used to be in the first pond and only a few ducks were in the water.

 

Still, beauty remains.  We took a leisure walk through the mesquite bosque, where late afternoon shadows tempered the warmth of the sun.

 

 

As we came through palm trees, this is the vista that welcomed us.

 

 

 

There's a touch of autumn in this scene--the way we Tucsonans like to experience happiness in October.

 

Tucson Meet Yourself Festival: An Abundance of Happiness

This post could just as appropriately be on my AnitaWrites blog since it highlights the Tucson Meet Yourself Festival which was one of the primary "reasons for happiness in Tucson" cited in my Talk UP^ Tucson... book.  But, since I am writing this on Sunday, my "slowww day" (supposedly), I am putting it on the Slow Life blog.

We spent three hours at the Festival (now in its 40th year and a true legacy from the SW Folklore Center/now a part of the UA's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Folklore Center's founder "Big" Jim Griffith).  We could have spent another two or three hours with the entertainment, food booths, or the booths we didn't see on the southside of Broadway, but fatigue set in around 4 p.m..  But what we did see we enjoyed: the PACC booth (I hope some of the lonely dogs were adopted), the Chinese Cultural Center (nice display and I learned they have Tai Chi classes open to the public), the robot display at the Sonoran Science Academy booth, and, of course--the SBS Happiness Booth and the Public Library's expanded display of Happiness Books. 

Mark took more photos, but here is a sample of why we love to live in Tucson and what brings happiness into our lives.

Early autumn sunlight in front of our historic courthouse:

 

There are even more books now on the library's Happiness display.  And the ones they have of mine are either "out", "on hold" or only in collections:).

 

 

Here is the UA's SBS Booth spreading the words of Happiness:

 

 

One of the activities I hope to replicate at the Library and Community Renaissance's Happiness Community Conversations (which start this week) is a paper chain of words of happiness.