Happiness

I read somewhere that people that feel happy most of the time volunteer their time.  All that feel goodness from volunteering improves their mood.

I put in 6 hours of hard labor (ok, painting) with Habitat for Humanity today.

I don’t feel any happier.  Tired?  Yes.  Sore?  Yes.  Still waiting on the happy.

I arrived at the site and met Ty Pennington!  Ok, not the real Ty Pennington.  He was a local version…but he looked liked Ty and was a little hyper, very excited, and has never met a stranger.  Local Ty was the site leader and he put me straight to painting the upstairs.  I had splattered paint on me within the first 10 minutes.  After 30 minutes, I had as much paint on me as on the walls.  By that point, I didn’t even try to keep it off my shirt or jeans.  There were other girls there her barely had a smudge on their hands.  I, on the other hand, looked like I bathed in paint and primer.  On the bright side, guess who was a better painter?  The messy one or the college kid afraid of getting a spot on them?  That’s right…me.  Oops.  Just lost a hard earned karma point on that comment.

I figured after putting in 6 hours of hard work for a good cause gave me 6 hours of “good” time that I could trade for “bad” time.  Bad times are when I am rude to customer service personnel (they bring it on themselves, really), or when I tailgate (if you would go the speed limit, we wouldn’t have this problem), or when I gossip at work (hey – did you hear about…wait…good points).  I don’t think my good time bank is going to last very long.  That’s why I am going back next week to paint trim and help put in laminate floors.

If only the happy would hurry up and get here….