Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Always look on the bright side of life... do do do do do do do
Always look on the light side of life...

There are times in life when the Chris Hadfield perspective is the way to go. Last week in Kroger artichokes were in the markdown bin. Two for a dollar... what?! I bought all of them (six) and ate two by myself as an appetizer that night. Win! I ate the last four the next night. Yes, four. Win! The Redbox gave me two free movies the same day. Win! We had pizza for dinner. Win! I watched a Christian Bale movie (American Hustle. Bales still got it.*) and drank wine while working on arts and crafts. Win! I didn't spill any of my red wine on the white project I was working on. Major Win!

*In my mind I'm yelling, "Bales still got it!" in the same vein as when Buster yells, "Mom's still got it!" on Arrested Development. hahha... I love that guy.


I've always been a strong supporter of the Chris Hadfield outlook on life.

So, for today:
When my mom mentioned that the smell we've been obsessing over smelled like "The Treasure House" we finally decided it has to be human urine (Carolena.... we're looking at you on this one babe). Chris steamed the carpet and a company is coming to clean our furniture and stain guard it today. Win!...?

Nils slept all night the last two nights (errr... rather... none of us went to soothe him). So, win!

It's 930 in the morning and so far caffeine weening is going well. Win! Yes, it's early, but we're taking the wins where we can get them around here.

This fall has been nuts. I'm dubbing today "reboot day." The furniture is getting cleaned, the huge pile of stuff to get rid of that is threatening to take over my room is getting shipped out of the house. We're rebooting around here. Win.

Breakfast of Champions

At the end of the Q&A with astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield last night, a woman in the front asked him, "What, if anything, is left on your bucket list?" And Chris' response was phenomenal. I wish I'd recorded it, but lacking that ability, here is my best paraphrasing of what he said:

"I don't believe in bucket lists. I mean, the mere idea of a bucket list seems like a millstone dragging around someone's neck. Who wants to walk around with a mainly empty bucket all of the time? It would be like going trick or treating and having a bucket with like three pieces of candy in it the whole time. Depressing.

I choose to live my life in such a way that I celebrate all of the victories. I got out of bed this morning and thought to myself, "Hey, good job! You got out of bed today! I win!" I looked out the window and the sun was shining and it wasn't snowing. Another win. I sat down to my favorite breakfast of Cheerios and skim milk (henceforth to be known in the Duncan household as "The Chris Hadfield Special"). By the time it was 9 am I felt like I had already had a great day. I'd already won.

I don't want to be the person who lives each day going, "Aw man, I'm awful, I haven't even climbed Everest yet." I'm going to take every victory no matter how small and consider each one a "win." Who wants to base their success on whether or not they've been to Machu Picchu yet? 

So, to answer your question, sure, there are more things I want to do. Long-term goals. But I don't base my happiness or self worth on whether or not I accomplish them."

Starstruck

Last night I had the opportunity to go to a book signing of Col. Chris Hadfield (former commander of the International Space Station, hit youtube sensation, all around loveable Astronaut).

Guys, it. was. awesome.

He was signing copies of his new book, "You Are Here." It's a compilation of photographs of Earth that he took during his five months on ISS. He and his wife are giving all of the proceeds to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinsons research. Yeah, he's pretty cool.

After he spoke for a bit about life on ISS he opened up the floor for questions and all two hundred (from my quick count) people's hands shot up. And he called on me! Moi!

I asked him to speak about what it was like to return to Earth after so long in space. He began by saying, "Think about your body. You heart is pumping blood five and a half feet... no... wait... five feet seven inches all of the time." HA! How awesome is that?! He said that the return to Earth was really physically demanding and that the first month was like the combination of a long serious illness and a horrible car accident and that he was nauseous all of the time. It was fascinating.

But the best answer came in response to the last question. A person in the front row asked what there is that could possibly be left on Chris Hadfield's bucket list... and his answer was phenomenal. It was a summary of how I try to live my life and was so great it deserves it's own blogpost.

To be continued...