Some where in the span of the last half year – give or take a couple weeks – life went from sickly sweet and seemingly picture perfect to oh-so-insanely soap opera-ish that even Susan Lucci would have to change the channel because she can’t keep up.

Yes, once upon a time I used to watch All My Children.  So sue me.

I had to stop blogging because when the going gets tough, the tough just makes a salad.  And the tough can only blog about green juice and breakfast cookies and crudites with hummus lunches for so long before her readers start yawning and drooling into their keyboards.  Then before I know it, I’ll have a stack of bills on my desk from bored readers invoicing me for their new typing apparatus’s (apparati?  what’s the plural of apparatus?) to replace the ones said readers ruined after they dribbled puddles of saliva while falling asleep from reading about my vegetable monotony and posts full of run on sentences.

Here’s where I stop being annoyingly cryptic and overly dramatic and get to the point of this post.

So, as the new saying goes… when the going gets tough, the tough makes a salad.  But the tough can also tie on her sneakers and go for a run if she likes as well.  A girl always has option.  And after all, what better way to take full advantage of the feel good hormones evolution afforded each of us than to rub the sleep out of your eyes, throw on some non-cotton clothes and your (still relatively new!) Garmin 405 and hit the road, Jack?  It’s all about figuring out how to give that pituitary gland a good hard squeeze and allow some endorphins to ooze out into your blood stream for a cheap and natural pick-me-up.  Personally, I prefer to squeeze my pituitary gland around 6am when most of the creatures in this urban jungle are still sleeping.  Or, while the creatures in my very own urban habitat are still sleeping at the very least.

Given the going is still going a bit tough these days, the first thing on today’s to do list?

Squeeze pituary gland.

Check!

Sneaks on, garmin buckled to my wrist, off I went for a few butt-crack-of-dawn miles around town on a pseudo drug run to turn any frowns at least temporarily upside down.  All I know is that it’s a good thing running feels a lot more like a habit these days rather than a chore ’cause otherwise I’d probably be watching old episodes of All My Children on Hulu whilst simultaneously shushing and barking orders at my kids to Be Quiet and Fetch Mama Some Bonbons.

Another happiness tip?  Find pleasure in the little things.  And what little things pray tell am I finding pleasure in these days?  Why a spinach bed overflowing with fresh, backyard and organically grown spinach – that’s what!

Here’s a true story:

Ready for lunch one day last week, whole wheat tortillas in one hand, tub-o-Family Size Garlic Sabra in the other, visions of veggies wraps danced in my head – until I realized I was out of spinach, or greens of any kind for that matter.

Crap.

Ummm, out of greens in the fridge maybe… “out of greens” with the exception of the very green spinach flowing from the raised bed in my back yard, ready and waiting to be harvested.  Ohhhh yeaaaaaahhhhh forgot about those greens!

Tortillas and hummus tubs quickly cast aside to be replaced with plastic bowls and purple handled scissors as I skipped and squealed gleefully down my back steps and into my back yard.  It’s time to snip snip snip until her Daddy takes the scissors away.

Enter more skipping and squealing back up the steps, into the kitchen to get to work on a hummus wrap masterpiece magnificent enough to belong in a museum.

The Museum of My Mouth, that is.  MoMM?  How quaint.  And oh yes, there is a layer of hummus under Mount St. Veggie, I promise.

So, the moral of today’s true stories?  Implement some healthy habits into your life NOW, before the shit hits the fan, so that when the fecal matter does inevitably fly into some speedily rotating blades one day, you can more easily avoid being completely splattered from head to toes covered by running sneakers.  Who needs daytime drama and chocolate covered ice cream balls to escape your own personal soap opera?  Instead, you’ll be all set up to get up and get out and feel good after a few easy miles on a muggy Thursday morning at 6:36 AM.  You too can be making chirping noises as you bound down your back steps into your yard to load up on fresh spinach for a museum worthy hummus and veggie wrap instead of watering your garden with tears.

And if the shit never hits the fan?  No harm, no foul. Consider those healthy habits the Real Life insurance policy that you never had to file a claim on.