i'm happy, you know?

it's strange, how i suddenly noticed that it's here, this happiness, and how it has sticked around for days now. i'm not used to this.

sure, not everything is perfect right now, some stuff is far from, actually, but this strange acute happiness syndrome has lasted through a massive hangover, a session with dr.k, study related stresses, boy stresses, time flying by and me getting maybe half the stuff done i need to get done (but maybe that's just because i'm enjoying myself, who knows), a few things that aren't usually that good. so it's still here, this happiness, and that just fuckin' rocks.

you know, it's friends that make me so happy.
i've realised again that starting up, and deepening and developing friendships is a bit (and sometimes exactly) like having a crush. not only do you get some newrelationshipenergy(TM), you're also anxiously trying to figure out whether there might actually be *something* of substance after all. or whether that substance is still there.

i can't put into words what i missed these years, with tina and me seperated and without contact. in a way, we picked our friendship up where we left it. i realised the other day, that we are so similar in some regards that it hurts. while we've not worked through everything that went bad then and are still sometimes tripping around issues, and while it's sad that it took us so long to get back to what we've got, there's not a moment of regret we didn't catch up earlier, but an allcovering happiness about us having reconciled. and it's good. i needed a galpal here.

there's another not so brand-new friendship that's lately been deepening with novel-like emails which are exhausting to write, but feel fabulous to send off and receive. they make me awfully happy, too, even when those novels are sad and make me wish to give his 7-year-old-self a big fat squeeze and tell him he should hit back, and that even if he won't, all will be fine in 15 years, and he'll get through alright and be a rockin' kind of bloke. it's all very good, and i feel very much cared for, and that rocks.

then there's kathrin, who i met at gym yoga.
we've been chatting, and to the sauna, and we met both yesterday and today to work out, which has been good.
with her, i'm most curious whether we have more in common than just our interest in yoga and the same gym. we're in two quite different spots, admittingly: she's from the former east, and i'm west; she's married (nice hubbie!), i'm partnered (and in turmoil, still); she's a physio, i study (and she's got awful respect for that, which she just shouldn't); she's trying to conceive and i'm nowhere near that. nonetheless it's been cool so far: we're both willing, and interested, and we'll see. exciting!

there's the "boys" at the laundromat, too, just a 2 minute walk away anytime i need a free coffee, a burned cd and a few caresses for my ego.
on thursday, when i unsuccessfully burned a few cds there, reza (who runs the copy shop next door) came in, and proclaimed me the ideal woman every man wanted. i told him it was just because of my curves and muscly roundness, and padded my thigh. to that he quickly jumped over to my computer and admiringly weighed and padded my thigh, too. hm. i've got a good firm thigh these days. :)
dieter offers more than friendship every single day anyway, but i wonder whether he wouldn't decline if i took him up on it (which i just wouldn't do, ever). marco does that, too. but i don't mind.
no matter what, it's fab to be a local somewhere and to always be welcome, and it makes me feel at home in this city. -which i just haven't felt in years, actually.

and there's so many more: the yoga people, kitto and heather and brianna and some more scarleteeners, some more blog folks, like stuart (who i owe multiple emails, still) and lastly, my other tina in faraway austria, and i miss her, and can't believe i haven't seen her in 9 months, and wish her penty of good stuff, and that all will go well at tuesday's exam.

generally, i feel quite well looked after right now by my friends, and that's a feeling i haven't had in a while.

spring being here, helps, too. it popped up from nowhere, the green stuff, sometime last week, and now it's everywhere the hills around the city are brightly and violently light green, today the skies are blue, there are primroses on my balcony (yellow and pink), and while it's chilly, it's fresh and nice outside, and i realise i can't wait for summer.

further happiness is caused by plain old feeling good in my body.
it's still a new thing for me sometimes, liking my body, but right now, i do, and do so muchly.
this morning, kathrin, hubbie matthias and i went to a spinning class, which i hadn't done in ages. the bloke who ran it did it fabulously: we were put in groups, and chased and lead, and for a while had to imagine being domestiques and do a little maneuver including falling back to the team car, getting water, then pedaling all the front to the peleton to reach our team leader. 25 minutes into the class, the endorphine high kicked in. i kept imagining tour de france scenes, i was pedalling away full power and awfully, awfully happy for being healthy, and able to do this, and being with friends and having fun.
when we had finally reached our hilltop and were on the final descend, the bloke who ran it told us to imagine a great descens, and i closed my eyes and saw and felt a perfect descend in the pyrrhenes, plenty of curves, wind, views, valleys. it was perfect, and like meditation.
and as usual, by the end of an hour on the spinning bike, i was full of admiration for lance and every other pro rider: my bum hurts so much after this one hour, it's agony. so good no one's here to ask for sex of the intercourse kind right now, it'd be impossible. i urgently need padded pants if i want to do spinning more regularly again, to prevent serious bruising and blood flow problems to happen. oh well. it still rocked, and rocked muchly.

to end this happiness register for now, i indulged yesterday, and purchased a tub of body shop mango body butter and now smell and feel totally soft and edible and all over the body lickable, that i do wish someone was here to do just that, after all.

now i got to hurry: dinner at tina's place, and i still need to change into something presentable.

life is so bloody good right now.

(regarding happiness: leaving cnn turned off and putting the head into the desert sand for a little while, helps, too.)