This is for the Blogging from A to Z theme reveal:

I choose my theme today: Happy things.

When we first moved to Port Townsend, my mother had recurrent of ovarian cancer. My husband was very unhappy and my son had to switch schools in January, leaving a teacher that he loved in Colorado and all his friends. I was working and finding learning all the new phone numbers, specialists, acronyms and patients difficult.

After a while, I instituted Happy Things. At bedtime I told my son that we each had to say three happy things.

“But mom,” said my son. “I am not happy.”

“Well,” I said, “They don’t have to be very happy.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Just a little happy. Like, only three patients cried today and not four. No one died today in my clinic. I didn’t forget my lunch like yesterday.”

He thought about it. “We didn’t have the awful pizza at lunch today.”

“Good job! What else?”

“I only got yelled at by the teacher twice.”

“Great! How about the other kids?”

“I only got hit on the playground once.”

“Good job. Yeah, stuff like that. A meteor didn’t hit the school and destroy everyone.”

“I’d get out of school then.”

“If you survived.”

So we did happy things every night and sometimes they were very dark and gradually they got better. I will do happy things from A to Z and some days they may only be a little happy….

The rat is for my son. He has pet rats. This rat is loose on Hawaii, which is not a happy thing for the native birds, but I think the rat may be happy. It came down the tree and was then holding very still, trying to convince us that we couldn’t see it. Be careful, rat, because we saw a mongoose there too.

For the Daily Prompt: toxic. Is the rat toxic? An immigrant? I would immigrate if I had to, so how can I scorn others who do?

It is a small picture, because I had my phone zoomed all the way in. Hello, rat. We see you.