And Now For Something Completely Different: The Happiness Project Roundup
It’s been about ten days since I last told you all about the small, daily details that made me happy. The Happiness Project is still going strong, albeit significantly less long-windedly. It’s all happening onInstagram so feel free to stalk me there, should the suspense of waiting ten days for an update here prove too stressful.
It’s been a very, well, interesting ten days.
Let me re-cap.
Day 31: I finally got my act together and dyed my hair after a long hiatus. Thwacky waited semi patiently on the bathroom floor.
Day 32: Motivated by the revitalization of my hair colour (chocolate cherry ftw), I made my way to my local hairdresser and had most of the aforementioned hair lopped off. It felt great.
Day 33: I made a freaking amazing herb-garlic rub hunk of pork in the slow cooker. This is what happens to pigs when left overnight on low. Stunning.
Day 34: My fencing teacher also happens to be a belly dancer. After a decade+ hiatus from the dance studio, I found myself signed up for an advanced class and it was just fine.
Day 35: After finishing that 30 day detox diet thing, we went out with a brilliant bang. Tapas and wine and a proper grownups’ night out, sans Thwack for the first time since he was born. It was amazing.
Day 36: Further debauchery, this time at the international food fair at the open air fruit and veggie market in central Leicester. After the best Pakistani lamb kofte ever (seriously), we further destroyed our former diet by ordering white chocolate crepes covered in Oreo crumbs from a spice grinder.
Day 37: A grey, rainy bank holiday Monday. Sir Thwacksalot was considerate enough to give us several hours of tea and cake and conversation in a cozy cafe up the street. What a thoughtful baby.
Day 38: Having hit the miraculous 3 month mark, Thwacky is now patient enough to actually get stuff done before he scrunches up his face and howls. Here we are making kofte. And don’t worry, I was very careful with the cleaver. He only used it a few times for simple chopping. Knife skills need to begin early.
Days 39 and 40: This was an interesting turn of events…
At some point during the initial 30 day blog project, we had a little talk about our life here in England. With a baby in arms and Leicester job options and social opportunities being not quite what we had anticipated, our time here was proving more challenging than expected.
So we had a big think and quizzed a number of good friends scattered around the world and decided to move to Vietnam.
People, come mid October, this blog will slowly shift toward becoming A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Hanoi.
Brilliant — I think you will really enjoy Hanoi. Give some thought to living at West Lake; in the last couple years it’s become the most happening spot in Hanoi. It’s cheaper, you can have a bit of open space and green (and walk and bike around the lake) and still be around cool new cafes and bars and restos and real Vietnamese life and be not far at all from the rest of Hanoi. All our friends live there — they like the balance.
What Hanoi! Get going, I love your anecdotes and want to see what you see living in Vietnam. I used to live in Beijing and wrote up my experiences there – about how I became convinced I was in the wrong city.
Yes! I’m totally looking forward to being back in a place that confuses me. I think this on year experiment in being normal showed me how maladapted I am at such things…
reading your #100happydays posts has uplifted me more than you’ll ever know.
i feel, in the creepy stalker-like ways of the internet, that we have been living sort of parallel lives: i live in phnom penh and have a little girl who is barely a month older than mr. thwack. she is decidedly not a sleeper and her favourite passtime (other than nonstop nursing) is howling. i have felt each of your cooking and outing victories as my own and resonated with day 22 and similar feelings.
my reading of your blog has also caused some friction between my husband and i. oh yes. one day he came home to find me in my worn and torn hippie pants (again), tears careening down my face and shrieking: “you know that blog i read? the one who used to live in shanghai? the one that has a baby almost the same age as our daughter? SHE WENT TO A PUB TODAY! A PUB! WITH THE BABY! and it SLEPT! it’s not FAAAIR!”. one of my proudest moments in motherhood to date.
your thoughts on traveling and having a child – especially several posts writen during your pregnancy – helped word some of what was swirling around my own brain.
so thank you for often being my moment of happiness.
I have to say, this comment has been quite possibly the most amazing and moving I’ve ever received for a post. Thank you. I’m really glad you are out there.
Leave a Reply