So Jeremy was so kind as to tag me to do a list of 100 Things That Make Me Happy. Since I’m a little bit short on time, I think I’m going to do this over the next few weeks in increments of 10. Here we go!

100. Snuggly kittens.

99. Thunderstorms at night.

98. Freshly laundered sheets.

97. Super duper hot bubble baths.

96. Journaling. And blogging. 

95. Having a reason to dress up.

94. Having no reasons to dress up.

93. Waking up naturally.

92. Playing racquetball till I ache from head to toe.

91. Being done with finals.

I am almost always happy. 90% of my life is spent dancing and singing and jumping and being at the level 10 kind of happiness that some people find obnoxious.

But some days I think I just decide to be unhappy. It doesn’t happen often—and I don’t particularly enjoy it— but I figure I’m happy often enough that I deserve a break from my near constant state of euphoria. 

This expresses itself in many ways. Sometimes I rant. Or cry. Or watch cathartic movies and bawl my eyes out over a bowl of popcorn and a liter of mountain dew. Maybe eat a pint of ice cream. And I cuddle my dog until he decides the couch is no longer an appealing fixture and that the floor may offer some relief from the excessive heat of my body.

Sometimes there will be a series of events that just cause a day to completely collapse (see: car crashes, getting towed, the impending gloom of having to return four fostered kitties back to the rescue, etc) and sometimes I just decide that people are awful and it’s not worth it to move out of the comfort of my bed.

Whatever it is that is causing my case of “The Mondays” (or Tuesdays, or Wednesdays, or Thursdays, or whatever horrendous day it is) I apologize in behalf. I’ll be checking back into work tomorrow.

1. Simplicity is key. Over-thinking things can lead to hours more head and heartache than necessary.
2. Diversity is golden. Embrace every type of person, regardless of “breed.” Who cares about upbringing, gender, color, size, or shape? Love everyone.
3. There’s nothing quite like a good bout of exercise.
4. There’s nothing quite like a long nap after a good bout of exercise.
5. There’s nothing quite like a nice stretch after a long nap.
6. You can choose to hang out in the shade, but joining in the chase is almost always more fun.
7. Celebrate the little, inconsequential things—even if no one else understands what that may be. Don’t be afraid to dance around and wag your entire body when you’re happy.
8. Don’t take a simple plate of food for granted. And always drink lots of water.
9. Choose your bathrooms carefully…
10. Take care of your teeth. 
11. You don’t have to broadcast every passing thought. (Sometimes I think twitter has killed the inner monologue.)
12. But still speak up when you need something. Sometimes a simple bark is enough to get your way.
13. If someone you love left— even for just a few hours—their homecoming is always cause for a celebration.
14. When you fail… try, try again. The stairs may look like Mt. Everest, but you’ll pick up your failures like a pro in no time.
15. Leave people smiling.

I spent most of my childhood up in the trees and tangled in the bushes. I would come inside at the end of every day with enough cuts and scrapes (and mosquito bites) to scare a parent into believing their child is going to unwittingly kill themselves one day. At one point, my mom got so sick of my carelessness (and scars) that she threatened that “no boy is ever going to love you because your legs are so scarred/ugly!”  I might have laughed at this because… Boys. Eww.

I’ve come to really love my scars and the stories they tell. I think they’re hilarious. And interesting. To read a line on one’s palm is to read their future. To read a line on one’s body is to read their past.

1. Chicken Pox Scar (age 3ish)

Just above the left corner of my lip light-ish patch of skin—a permanent mark of a very itchy point in my life that I can’t remember. I mostly enjoy this scar because it means I can’t get infected with that virus again. To this day, I scratch most mosquito bites until they bleed… Imagine if I had the pox now. I’m thankful that my baby skin healed quickly.

Does anyone remember the time that chicken pox was going around the dorms at TCU? Ha. 

2. Dog bite! (age 8)

You would think after being bitten at a relatively early age that I would be terrified of dogs… And yet my love of the canine species continues to grow with every passing day. To be fair, it was barely a nick—nothing serious enough to warrant a life-long phobia. Puppies have sharp teeth. Puppy left a mark on the back of my right knee. Nicole does not terribly miss puppy. Puppy was given away at a garage sale a few months later.*

*Not because she bit me, but because clearly an 8 year old cannot take care of a wild, rambunctious beagle.

3. Self-inflicted shot (Age 13)

I spent two years of my life being poked by needles delivering artificial growth hormones into my system. That meant I spent every night calmly waiting for my mom to arrive home so she could doctor me up and stab me with my nutro-pin. My dad hated the idea of inflicting pain on me (however minute that pain may be), so that meant days without Dr. Mom to deliver my daily dose = no shot for the evening. After accumulating a number of missed days, my mom became insistent that I learn how to give myself the shot. I hated the idea, for obvious reasons. There is a huge gap between receiving a shot from someone else and giving it to yourself. You are knowingly inflicting pain on your body. Oh heck no.

Well, one night she finally convinced me to do it. I prepped my right arm, picked out the right dosage, and sat at the kitchen counter for 30 minutes while I psyched myself out. Before I continue with this story, I should mention that this “pen” is not like a normal syringe that easily pushes down. The pen is digital. The black piece protruding from the end is a dial that sets how much of the medicine you want delivered; the only way to ensure that the entire amount has been given is the “click” the pen makes after being pushed down all the way. Ahem. So. After I finally worked up the courage to follow through, I reached around with my left hand, stuck the needle into my skin and… lo and behold, the pen jammed. The click didn’t come, and my already-shaky hand slipped and sliced my right arm open about three inches.

I spent the rest of the night sobbing on the couch, cradled in the arms of my dad who kept repeating, “You shouldn’t have made her do that!” to my mom. 

A few days after that, I got into a fight with the bathroom door at school. It resulted in another scratch that created an X with my beaded scab. I looked like a certified bad-ass, let me tell you. Pirates beware.

4. Kickball (Ages 11, 12, and 18)

Age 11: I am celebrating the end of a poor-weather, dry-land workout for summer swim league. My legs feel awful after doing lunges around the entire pool and doing crunches until my abs refuse to contract any longer. The team decides to cut loose early and play a little bit of kickball outside. First base is a pole attached to a sidewalk, and obviously I run further than I intend and scrape the top of my right foot on the concrete. Blood ensues. No crying.

Age 12: Yet another dry-land workout, although this one does not stem from poor weather. We play leap-frog for twenty minutes and kickball for the rest of the afternoon. First base is (yet again) the pole at the sidewalk. I scrape the skin where my foot attaches to my leg. Blood ensues. No crying.

Age 18: It’s the Diocesan Kickball Tournament, arguably the best youth event the Board coordinates every year. My team is undefeated. We rock that field. Second to the last game of the tournament, I slide into home and fall into a left split. I take it like a man and high five the team before sitting down and inspecting the nice long scratch that takes up half of my shin. It barely looks like I hurt myself, but I spend the rest of the afternoon fanning my burning leg. The next day, my leg looks like bacon. No blood. Plenty of whining ensues.

It takes a week before I stop limping for fear of breaking open my scab, two weeks before I can comfortably sleep with the sheets over my leg again, and a month to be able to wear pants. I believe my bacon scab is where my abhorrence of pants stems. I just realized shorts are the way to go. 

(Now that I think about it, I also developed a habit of shaving around this area, which means I have multiple “are you serious..?” moments when I realize I have a streak of hair right around my scar.)

5. Capture the Flag (Age 20)

You would think that I would learn that any sport involving a significant amount of running in a wide open space is not a terribly good idea. Also, running where there are sidewalks to be tripped over = not a good idea! 

One night whilst playing Late-Night-Capture-The-Flag-At-The-Capitol, I darted across a hill trying to claim the black flag laying down at the base of a tree. A sidewalk appeared out of nowhere (I mean, really, it poured itself and cemented immediately) and I… completely ate the ground.

Everyone—including the person chasing me—stopped for a minute out of shock/concern, but to my credit, I stood up and started running again. It wasn’t until I was caught that I stopped and asked for a bandaid/time out. My left knee is now permanently discolored. I look fondly upon this moment. So does my then-awful-friend, now-boyfriend. He still laughs at my clumsiness.

Hey, at least my mom’s prediction didn’t come true.

I think it’s a little bit overdue for me to tell the story of Becker, the not-so-elusive greyhound.

Unbeknownst to my parents, I adopted a dog on January 9, 2011. The rescue group had
taken a failed racer named Smooth Don B from the tracks and renamed him Becker. He was an inquisitive (albeit derpy) hound that had a penchant for leaning on people. I fell in love and refused to go back to Austin without him.

I reconvened with the adoption group the next day and picked him up— with a little surprise. Becker had a new ear piercing from a little pomeranian that had decided to snack on his ear. This meant the first couple of weeks included lots of puppy ear cleaning. Becker was not amused.

Greyhound stomachs are not particularly known to adapt well to huge changes, and the leap from adoption kennels to apartment life was a little daunting. Let’s just say I could not get the smell of dog fart out of my car for a few days. Home life went relatively well; Becker was mostly lethargic and confused while he was recovering. His ear healed up within a couple of weeks— but it left a little hole that I can still squint through. 

Because greys spend the majority of their lives on the track and in a kennel, they are not used to all the things people take for granted. Mirrors were a huge distraction. Loud cars on walks would make him jump. Even other breeds of dogs were strange and foreign. And stairs? They might as well had been Mt. Everest from the way he reacted to them every day. It took him a full month to climb the stairs to my apartment without me pushing him from behind. Seriously, it would take fifteen minutes to climb the stairs after every walk.

A year and a couple months later, I can’t imagine life without him. He is annoyingly persistent, has no sense of spatial awareness, farts without reason, and has become a terrible couch hog, but he’s my baby. He allows me to mess with him to no end and poke at his funny mannerisms. He patiently deals with other puppies and dogs he encounters (but always puts other dogs in their rightful place). He takes naps with me. He runs like a maniac at the dog park. He knows not to play with things that aren’t his toys. He sleeps on yoga mats and roaches on the couch. He acts like a cat in a horse’s body. He buries his head in my arms when he’s craving attention. And I love him even when I hate him. 

Despite the inconveniences any animal can bring (what do you do when you leave town for a week?!) Becker has brought me more joy than I can probably pay back. My 75 lb derp of a dog is my foot warmer, my quiet companion, and a shining light in my life. 

Can’t wait for many more years with you, little boo!

EDIT: Oh, and according to Dana & Co., Becker is a horse. 

If you have spent any amount of time with me, you probably know that I am extremely information hungry. If something piques my interest, I will go on a ridiculous hunt for more unnecessary details. My latest—and rather disturbing—information spree was on cysts. Yes, that’s right. Cysts. Different types of cysts, what they look like, what can cause them, what pours out of them— all the gory, disgusting details.

This need for knowledge overflows into my creeping habits. I expect everyone “creeps” on some level— after all, social media makes it far too easy to gather information and form opinions on people you have no right to really judge. Whatever. I know that I always do the obligatory perusal through a person’s facebook after being added as a friend. My ritual includes:

• A quick flip through the profile pictures
• A brief glance at the “About Me” page
• A scroll down recent statuses
• Optional: an inquiry into his or her old albums if something amusing pops up.

If that made you feel uncomfortable, then I suggest you delete your facebook. You made that information public. I willingly admit that I enjoy the occasional “stalking,” but that word has such a strong negative connotation. By intentionally posting all these little personal snippets, you are essentially giving me permission to know all about you. (And yet I still feign surprise and interest when you gush over all the latest happenings in your life. Why? Why am I ashamed for something you so gladly post for the world to see?)

Anyway, I was thinking, what can you really take away from my facebook page? Plenty. I have over a thousand tagged photos, and if a picture says a thousand words, I have several novels worth of information you could possibly absorb. You would find that I hang around the same group of people often, and that I go on vacations with my family, or maybe that I have the uncanny ability to hit the same pose in every picture. All in all, I think I would find myself rather obnoxious. But the only thing these images compose are surface details. If anything, my blog is the most telling collection of information about me on the interwebs. 

…So I broke down what I would find if I were a complete stranger going through my blog. After over a year of regular posting, I have accumulated a whopping 230* public entries.

Read More

Two days ago, I posted the story of how I made a cleaning lady cry. In the process of sifting through my old entries to find an old post to tie into my story, I ran across a private blog that I titled “for posterity’s sake.” And now I want to post a snippet of it.

(To the author of this letter: I won’t call you out by name, but if you want this taken down, just let me know!)

Dear Nicole Marie Tan,

I have a story to share with you.

Lately I have been in a pretty deep depression. I can’t really explain why, but it’s kind of new to me. I have always considered myself to be a happy person with a good life. Being sad and mopey all the time really isn’t my thing. Anyway, tonight was a particularly difficult night. Since I couldn’t sleep I did what I always do and surfed the internet. I’ve been trying to keep up with David’s blog because I’m super excited for him and his mission. I love to read about it. So I got caught up. I then remembered that you had a blog as well that I (forgive me) had never gotten around to reading. So I clicked… and read.

I just wanted to tell you that you have an absolutely beautiful way with words. A lot of your posts are cute and funny, but you also have extremely touching posts. One of your older posts really hit me hard. You really and truly made me feel significantly better. So much so, it brought me to tears. I wish I were better at describing to you the impact your post left on me. You have an incredible gift, and I wanted to tell you that. I love you, Nicole. Thank you.

Honestly, I had forgotten about this little love letter. I’m glad I had the hindsight to save it. I read some of the posts I had written prior to receiving this note, and seriously… I would never had guessed they were that touching. 

I don’t post this to toot my own horn. I’m keeping with the theme of “recognizing your own worth.” It feels great to know that I can touch someone’s life. And I’m glad this person went out of their way to remind me that I am worth something to them. This little note is a gift that keeps giving. I can forget about it, come back, and feel the happiness all over again.

So I’m paying it forward this Lenten season. 

Every year, a bazillion (rough estimate) Catholics “give something up” for Lent. As beautiful as the practice of self-sacrifice is, I feel like reflection is more powerful than abstinence for me at this point in my life. I suppose you can say that I’m going to be giving up time this Lent. I’m giving up some of my time to really thank the people in my life whom I do not thank nearly enough. I want someone to feel the same joy I did when I received that letter. Sometimes it’s not enough to just realize you’re lucky for having great people surrounding you. Sometimes it’s necessary to let other people know how awestruck you are by them. 

I’ve already written a couple. I’m hoping to do at least two a week.

I leave you with something I said in a post about a month ago. 

Keep your chin up people— and for those of us fortunate enough to not be battling something larger within ourselves, let’s try to be mindful and live outside our selfishness.

Love someone else today. They’ll appreciate it. And you might find you appreciate yourself more too.

Picture this: It is 10:00 PM, and 18-year-old Nicole is trudging down the dark halls of Port Neches-Groves High School with three other students. We are preparing for the single biggest, most terrifyingly stressful project of our careers as students thus far. And that requires lugging several huge theater set pieces* from one end of the school to the other. There is seriously nothing further from the theater closet than Mrs. Burkle’s classroom. And no way can three puny girls and one guy do it by muscle alone— not if we want to get any rest before class starts the next day.

*Regulation One Act Play set!

Lo and behold, in the process of meandering through the deserted halls, we come across the cleaning ladies taking a breather outside of the teacher’s lounge. They have a dolly—our problem is solved!— but it’s currently occupied by several full trash bags. We kindly ask to borrow it, and they tentatively agree; they just have to take the trash to the dumpster first. David enthusiastically says that we could take it out for them; after all, we’re the ones inconveniencing them by taking away their equipment. The rest of us nod our heads in agreement. We’re happy to do one small errand to save us a ton of time and energy. We’re tired. This project is all we’ve spent our energy on for a month straight. That’s not counting the multitude of paper planning for the 6 months prior to crunch time.

The ladies continue to say that it is quite okay— cleaning is their job after all. But we insist. And one woman begins to tear up. She mentions that we’re incredibly sweet and that no one had offered to do something like that for her before. 

She teared up, guys. We effectively made a cleaning lady cry. And I can honestly say that that was one of the biggest accomplishments of my high school career. I had no idea what was going on in her life that day, but one small act made it a tiny bit better. I have run through a million other scenarios that could have gone down— but her crying was something I could have never imagined.

I’ve blogged briefly about how it’s good to never take for granted the people in your life, but I have never thought about the impact I have leave on other people’s hearts. Maybe it’s because it feels incredibly pretentious to think you are super important in someone else’s journey, but let’s be honest— the road works both ways. If someone changed me, I more than likely changed them too. Life is a series of little adjustments— little changes that create the you that is here today. So I may not know that woman’s name— and she may not even remember that small moment from three years ago— but it changed me. Today, it reminds me to step back. Breathe. Take yourself out of your own shoes and see life with someone else’s ill-fitting goggles. 

So thank you, cleaning lady. Our project - turned - out - fantastically. 

And thanks to Angel, David, and Emily for making it incredibly memorable as well. :) I love and miss you guys!