Happy

Well, as it happens, today’s fifteen minute blog segment is going to fall in the middle of the night, as did yesterday’s.

This time it’s because my eighteen-year-old daughter decided to drive from Tyler to Lubbock at a time which put her arriving at her dorm at 1am. Like the helicopter parent I apparently have become, I made her send me her CL every thirty minutes.

I aged ten years in the span of that drive.

My adrenal glands are still pumping way too hard for me to sleep any time soon, so here we are.

Other than the adrenal failure I’m feeling, and the enormous gratitude to God for delivering my baby safely back to Stangel Hall in the middle of the night, the other overwhelming feeling I’m feeling right now is…

Happy.

I’m really happy with my life.

I’m happy about the great people who surround me, my little home and the chickens in my backyard, my accidental career choice and the incredible job it led me to. I’m even happy about my presidential candidate. And, I’m happy to be a single mom and mostly, I’m happy with who I am.

And I say all this because there are people on the fringes of my life who think I shouldn’t be happy about any of those things.

Every sixth or tenth social media post I make will draw an ever-so-slightly condescending comment from one of those on the fringes, usually some distant relative or a girl I sat by in tenth grade geometry class.

I’ve noticed that my high school classmates who never came back to Tyler after college tend to look down on those of us who are still here, just judging by what’s said on social media by the sophisticated Dallas types.

We shouldn’t vote AT ALL, one of them said on Facebook this week, if we don’t vote the way she thinks we should.

Guess what… I voted for the guy she hates, and I’m happy about it.

One of my other friends commented on one of my posts about my chickens that it was just so East Texas of me, as if that’s an insult. I mean, yes, it MIGHT be ‘East Texas’ of me, but guess what… living in East Texas is kind of… perfect. And chickens? Y’all.

Seriously, they’re the best pets. And I’m not even sure how I became this person. What has happened to me?!

I spent a lot of years not happy.

I spent a lot of years beating myself up for quitting grad school and for never leaving Tyler and for being divorced and, gosh, I could list a thousand other reasons I deserved to be disappointed with my life and would have agreed wholeheartedly with my educated, progressive Dallas friends that this life I’m living, here in this lame city, isn’t much.

But I like this quiet life.

I’ve had four different neighbors bring me flowers over the three years I’ve lived here in this house. Bet y’all don’t have that in Dallas.

I have free range organic eggs anytime I want. Y’all pay a lot more there at Whole Foods.

My parents are 4.5 miles from here, and I’ve learned to really like them. It took a few too many decades, I’m sorry to say.

Life is good.

I’m happy.

And that’s fifteen minutes, y’all.

See you tomorrow.

Do we follow each other on Instagram? I’d love it if you’d find me there.