Well its been a while since I’ve been here. Thanks to those of you who have dropped by here and there to check on me.  That’s been nice. It’s just that I haven’t felt like smiling much these days. The loss of my dear sweet Maggie has been a lot to bear. Many of you who are fellow pet owners will understand entirely how deeply saddened we can become with the passing of our “kids”.  But now that the grieving is over, I can appreciate the love and the fun that Maggie brought to my life for over 17 years. She was a part of my life, my  home and my heart and even though it hurts right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Seeing how she looked when she was young and healthy, really does bring a smile to my face. And more than that, it fills that painful hole in my heart with love and laughter. Thanks Maggie, for being the sweetest kitty ever and for loving me and letting me love you.

I love pigs. I know that’s probably a strange statement to lead with but I do. I’m not even sure where this comes from or when exactly it started. I know it’s been growing for a long time. At Christmas, when everyone else makes Santa Claus shortbread cookies, I make shortbread pigs. My Christmas pig cookies have become a regular tradition. It’s probably been over a year now since I gave up all things pork. Not that I don’t love the smell and taste of crispy bacon, or the crackle on a pork roast. But knowing what I do about pigs makes me glad that I made this personal choice.

Despite their unusual good looks and reputation, pigs have many positive attributes including cleanliness, intelligence, and a social nature. Yes they do roll about in the mud but that’s only because they don’t sweat like people do so the mud actually keeps them cool. They are excellent swimmers which seems like a little known and useless fact except to help me see them in a different light.

They are  intelligent, highly social, and sensitive.  In fact pigs are actually more intelligent than many breeds of dog. Piglets can learn their names by two to three weeks of age and respond when called which is more than I can say for some people! I just read an article in which Professor Donald Broom of Cambridge University Veterinary School in the UK has stated that pigs “have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly three year olds.”  This sort of blows me away.  Not only are they cool looking but smart too! Of course I think my dog would give any pig a run for their money but…who knows…they already look alike so maybe they think alike too.

Yes, next to dogs, pigs are my favourite ‘people’.  I think they’re cute and they make me laugh out loud. What a crazy, mixed up, delightful bit of design they are!

Another year has come and gone and I hope you found something to smile about over the holiday season. Of course the new year often makes people reflective about the past and what’s in store for the year ahead. I don’t very often make New Year’s resolutions. I just find that I try to live a good life every day so I guess you could say that for me, each day I wake up is a new year that comes with new resolutions. But this year I felt differently. I’m not sure why but I woke up and realized that this year, I needed to make myself happier and, although it might sound selfish to some, I decided that this year was going to be all about me. It has taken me a lot of years to realize that I am worth it.

How I am going to make myself happy is by not creating my own stress. To do this, I am going to remove the word ‘should‘ from my vocabulary. Before this, I would often go through the day feeling like I should do this or I should do that…things I really didn’t want to do and never really did. This made me stressed and unhappy. Each day I would wake up and think about the things I should have done or the things I had done but didn’t really want to do simply because I thought I should. So on January 1st, I decided I had had enough. This was going to be my year. If there is something that comes to my mind that I feel I should do, I either just do it or I let it go. There is only action or not. No sense in stressing about anything other that what is.  And then the universe validated my decision. After making my resolution, I discovered that  in the Chinese zodiac 2013 is the year of the snake and yes, I am a snake! Wow! When I realized that, I just knew I had made the right resolution after all and this year was meant to be a great one. But only I can make this happen. Only I am responsible for my happiness. And only I can make the choices that are right for me.

This leads me to my next decision. I have decided not to stress about writing this blog. Yes I think its important to find a reason to smile and to make others smile but I have taken on too many things and doing a lot of things halfhearted is not my style. For this reason, I decided that I will streamline my commitments therefore I will only post here periodically. Although everyone says that I will lose followers I believe that all those people who also feel overworked or stressed by their daily commitments will totally understand. For those of you who wish, you might want to check out my other blogs at Ramblings from an Untamed Mind or My Inner Buddha. Whatever you decide, keep smiling each and every day