Warning: Following the advice in this post is surprisingly addictive.

 
By NICKY CHAMP

Last week my wheels well and truly fell off. It was more of a culmination of events rather than any ‘one big thing’ that happened. And purely for the purposes of this post (not because I want sympathy or anything *sob*) I’m going to detail exactly what went down over the last few horrid weeks.

First off my 19 month-old contracted pneumonia, I initially took her to the doctor because I thought she just had a cold. Chalk up a 1 on the Mother Guilt tally board.

Later the next day, when she wasn’t getting any better we ended up in the hospital emergency department. Several doctors appointments, follow-up appointments, chest x-rays, throat swabs and more tests later, she then also came down with tonsillitis.

After more than 9 nights of zero disturbed sleep I then got hit with a chest infection with head-exploding flu symptoms. And just when the long weekend was in sight and I was looking forward to catching up on sleep, my toddler then got a nappy rash infection from the two types antibiotics she’d been on.

Not that I knew that at 2am when she was inconsolable – the only sane thing I could think of was to put her in the car and drive around until she fell asleep. When she woke up again an hour later I had figured out what was going on. Add a 2 onto the Mother Guilt leaderboard.

Oh hey there, you’re still reading, great, I’m still going… at the same time when all that was going on: my washing machine started leaking flooding the laundry, the central locking stopped working on my car and randomly my favourite print fell off the wall, the frame smashed into tiny pieces. Of course this happened when I’d just spent the last 40 minutes trying to get my toddler to sleep. Wait there’s more, to top it all off, I missed the kitchen bench and dropped my new(ish) iPhone on the tiled floor, completely smashing the screen.

Oh and did I mention my husband was away and I was on my own? Good times.

Nevertheless, I was well aware of the fact that everything could’ve been much, much worse. When I saw this post on on xojane it really resonated with me and I soon began to think about all the things that make me happy, here they are:

• A cup of tea first thing in the morning.
• Family sandwiches (my name for group hugs with my husband and toddler).
• Freshly washed sheets.
• Letters that aren’t junk or bills.
• Unscratched scratchies.
• Sunday nights.
• Knitting Nancies.
• When Twitter users use their powers for good and not evil, like this.
• Vintage Choose Your Own Adventure books.
• Biting into dumplings and the juice runs down your chin.
• Ugg boots.
• Rainy weekends.
• Infectious laughter.
• Multi-coloured pom poms.
• Chip sandwiches (crisps AND hot chips, not at the same time that’d be gross).
• Watching addictive tv shows back to back, most recently The Americans.
• Venus fly trap plants.
• Nutella croissants, toasted.
• Polaroid pictures.
• Room service.
• When the Apple Store replace your smashed phone for FREE.
• Kirra Jamison artworks.
• The Catalog Living Tumblr.
• Animal masks.
• Editorial Skype chats with the brilliant and witty Bec Sparrow & Kate Hunter.
• Byron Bay.
• Lazy Susan’s at Chinese restaurants – why doesn’t EVERY restaurant have these?
• Water slides like these.
• Glitter nail polish.
• Holographic anything, currently these shoes.
• Blue mascara.
• Neon shoelaces.
• Parody twitter accounts.
• Twin Peaks re-runs.

And there you have it, my happy list. I thought I would get to 13 or so but found it a strangely addictive process, and now over to you.

What makes you happy? Go.