I hate being such a sad sack ...

That comment ages me I know.  But it seems to fit.  I like being happy.  I fight that which makes me unhappy.  My kids know that if they can get me to smile, even when I am at my maddest, I will just cave in and be happy.

I often think that when I hear Daria tell herself "to just be happy" I actually always am. 

I can be crabby - sure.  When I am bone-tired, struggling with unreasonable issues and generally faced with battering the walls of ignorance and incompetance I become a bit of a pill.  I can be mouthy.  I can be stern with the idiot adults.  Even worse I can tell people about their shortcomings - in the nicest of terms of course. 

But mostly I am happy, even in the most dire of circumstances.  I can always understand a perspective that gives rationality and calmness to a situation. 

I think my kids do as well as they do because we are happy.  There are rules and chores and expectations and blah, blah blah but we are happy. 

So I hate being such a sad sack that Alex is almost home four years and we still have hills to climb.  We are faced with things that should not even be there before us.

I do not want my son to learn that what harmed him so greatly in Russia is what he is expected to endure here where home is supposed to be safe.  If that is true, then what difference is there between here and there?  None as far as he can see.  And I see nothing different.

So I wish to be happy with everyone but it is not going so well.  I was once told by a very knowledgable person that we judge people by how we are ourselves.  So if you are a liar, cheater and "base deciever" (an Addams Family Gomez line) you expect everyone else is one too.

If you are an honest, forthright, and kind person you expect everyone else is too.  Worse yet, if you wake up happy every day, you expect everyone else does too.  In my house I make sure my kids wake up happy - every day.  That is one of the joys of childhood.  At least that is the way I learned it. 

And that is how my kids know it too.