Addicted to Happiness and Sunshine

Addicted to Happiness and Sunshine

Whenever I go to Florida or Central America, I find that I am happy.  Yes, I admit it.  I love warm breezes and sunshine.  I don’t even mind the occasional rain, whether a drizzle or a downpour, if it is warm.  A warm rain is wonderful.  It’s like a tepid shower at a health spa.  I don’t think anything really feels quite as cleansing as a long walk in a calm rain.

Then it stops and the sun cracks through the clouds and maybe it gets a bit steamy and begins to dry everything.  It is simply wonderful.  There are the bugs; you have your spiders and snakes and minor annoyances like that.  There are inconveniences in everything.  And that’s how I like to view those things.

Actually I am fascinated by snakes.  Sure the super-poisonous viper type snakes frighten me.  Although I also have to admit to considerable ignorance on that subject.  I truly would not know a deadly viper from a garden snake.  Unless I happen to be in the company of an expert on snakes, I leave them alone.  Like mushrooms; if you don’t know what you are doing, best to just look, admire and leave alone.

Now spiders are another matter.  I am also fascinated by spiders, especially the really big ones.  And being aware that the bigger they tend to be, the harder it is for them to actually hurt a human.  It’s the really little plain looking ones that are the most deadly.  The ones you don’t see until it’s too late.  I have had a number of spider bites from those guys and whoah!  They do hurt.  Getting treatment is pretty much mandatory.

But a reasonably healthy person can recover without too much permanent damage.  What you gotta do is educate yourself on where those kind of spiders tend to hang-out, and avoid those places.  Like Black Widow spiders.  Black Widows like untraveled out-of-the-way darkish places.  Very distinctive looking, with the red hour-glass abdomens, but they are slow as slugs.  Their webs are easily recognized by the crazy insane patterns and are extremely strong and sticky.  In warm to hot climates, anywhere that is dark and unswept for any period of time WILL have a Black Widow in residence.  So you just need to dust and sweep a lot and help them into the next incarnation when found.

And then why is it that in the warm and sunshiney places are the people so much friendlier?  Smiley with a tendency to be helpful and just a tad more polite.  At least in my experience. 

There are paths wherever you go.  Paths that will avoid much of the bug, snake, etc. (alligators) and other matters that can inflict conflict.  I find it’s fairly easy to find those paths, if you just allow yourself to tune in to them.  Maybe it’s a matter of looking for the tiny bit of extra sunshine you can catch just out of the corner of your eye.  It’s there, I swear.  I think a big part of it is giving yourself the allowance of just being happy.  That might seem to be obvious, but is it?  I have found I have to work at it a little bit.

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