December 7th's Book of Good Things

Yesterday's walk to work was surreally bright, the sky glowing a golden-white despite the many charcoal clouds in it.  I had forgotten my gloves as I walked out the door and soon had near-numb hands but was otherwise warm enough in my raincoat, while parents and children around me were emerging from cars bundled up in coats and hats, and a runner darted past me in just a t-shirt and shorts.  When there was a pause in traffic, all around me was hushed and stilled save for the leaves skittering down sidewalks and being whipped off the trees by the wind.  My umbrella stood up to the weather the entire walk, but I heard an embarrassed-sounding whoop behind me when another woman's began to turn inside-out in the wind just as we approached our building.  Yesterday's rain and wildness have moved on now, though, and a morning that began here in the low twenties will end with snow tonight only to disappear again this weekend with temperatures in the low sixties.  I give children at my workplace coloring pages depicting "Sesame Street's" Elmo making an igloo--I is for igloo!-- and Winnie the Pooh building a snowman and wonder if they even relate, the weather is so strange anymore and December is so rarely the way it was when I was their ages.  My work-schedule for today is an adjusted one that sees me starting four hours later than usual, so I've had precious time to catch up a bit with Mike before I leave for today's walk back to work.  The sun is shining.  I slept well.  My work-day is only eight hours.  I will treat myself to a slice of cheese pizza for lunch halfway-through it.  This news story keeps making me smile.  I am off tomorrow.  I feel I'm on an upswing.  'One day at a time, as ever, and today looks good. 

This Day

'Leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast, 63° outside, Stuffed is curled up in the sun-slants along the floor, and I have the day off work.  'Time to read with Stuffed snuggled into the afghan on my lap, time to cook a proper dinner this afternoon, time to catch up on email to dear Lisa later, and time to get laundry and other chores crossed off my list for the day and rest of this week.  It's all so much of a juggling act lately--I much preferred the work-schedule I had with my previous job, it turns out--that I feel like everything I do gets done at the last minute in a rush of "Whew!" and "'Pulled it off again!" so days like this when I can catch my breath and sit awhile in late fall sunshine with pie and a good book and a cuddly cat are truly, more than ever, the sweetest days of them all. 

Treats

Oooohh, a delightful day here.  ♥  Sweater weather this morning.  A brisk and beautiful walk to work.  I love fall, I love fall, I love fall. . . .  Strawberries, string cheese, and iced tea for lunch.  A sweet interaction with one of my on-the-job kiddos.  Laughs with one of my coworkers.  A relaxing walk home.  A grilled cheese with my mom's potato soup for supper.  Funny texts back and forth with one of my brothers.  A new book.  Blanket weather tonight.  A few books I treated myself to will arrive in the mail in the next day or two.  Library and museum visits tomorrow or Friday.  Two new bookshelves I ordered are arriving this weekend.  And the next three days off work.  Late October Bliss!  ♥

Friday

Cuddles with the floofy kit-kat.  Tomato-and-mayonnaise-on-white-bread for breakfast.  Soft flour tortillas stuffed with sauteed mushrooms and melted cheddar for lunch.  Homemade dark chocolate and almond brownies. Sun tea with lemon.  A bubble bath.  A little more sleep.  A hard rain this morning and a gorgeously cloud-dotted blue sky this afternoon.  Extra time to write.  "Night Court" reruns.  (Harry Anderson is one of my many crushes.)  A night off tonight, so more time to read.  Real mail.  Home.  ♥

Another Puff-Quilt Sky, and a Sandwich Shop Kindness

Tonight's sunset was another glorious puff-quilt of a sky, and I watched it for awhile, blissed-out and grateful.  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, headache-be-gone-and-let's-focus-on-the-good-things. 

An item from today's page in the Book of Good Things, then:  Thursday afternoon, I stopped at a sandwich shop to treat myself to lunch, and when I attempted to pay, the counter-clerk told me the computer system was down and he couldn't process my debit card payment.  I simultaneously thought something charming and articulate along the lines of "GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!  THIS STUPID! WEEK!" and apologetically told him that I didn't have any cash on me at the moment, and he immediately told me not to worry and just to stop back in to pay him whenever I could.  I protested--He could hold the sandwich until I came back with the cash, I offered--but no, he meant it, and with a smile, he handed me my sandwich and kindly wished me a good day.  So trusting!  And in a city!  Here's hoping he didn't lose too much in profits before he could process card-payments again.  When I returned with the money yesterday morning, he smiled again as he thanked me and didn't seem at all surprised to see me.  Here is someone who has some good karma on the way, I'm thinking, and someone who still has an incredible amount of faith in the goodness of people.  I so needed that kindness this wearying week--He has no idea.  :)  I will choose to remember his act of kindness, tonight's sunset, yesterday's bouquet of pink roses, and all Stuffed's time at my side this week.  And with that, I'll turn the page.  ♥

Seven Nice Things

I was nursing a headache most of yesterday--yes, my turn, Lisa!--but am feeling better today for Day Off #2 and have gotten a lot done.  And am just enjoying myself.  Seven sweet things this week:

1.)  'Am still working on my 80s childhood memoir.  Loving!  It!  ♥  That pile of paper scraps in the photo above is all the remaining notes that need to be turned into index cards--which will later be turned into "real" writing.  The pile has shrunk so much since I started this in earnest earlier this year.  My goal for the rest of today is to get as many scraps onto cards as possible so I can move on to the filling-the-notebooks-with-rough-drafts stage of things.  Progress!

2.)  The building manager and a plumber had to stop by earlier this week for routine winter-prep radiator maintenance, and as I welcomed them in,  the plumber glanced around and unexpectedly greeted me with "Oh, I like it in here!  It's very family-oriented!" and moments later commented, "It smells really good in here too!" as he left.  I hardly knew what to say besides thank you, but both remarks made me laugh.  A sweet encounter.  

3.)  A coworker left a thank you on my note that accompanied the cookies I'd brought into work last week and later thanked me in-person.  A day-brightener for me. 

5.)  Chicago Cubs in the World Series playoffs!  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about any one team--I tend to wish them all well--and it would have been a treat for Dad if his Pirates had advanced in the playoffs, but how fun to see the Cubs and their fans having such a great ride this fall.  

6.)  This pup, an English Yellow Lab--

--is now my younger brother's dog.  So sweet!  ♥  My brother, his wife, and somehow-almost-two-year-old Bianca have all wanted a dog for ages, and this one looks so dear. 

7.)  Chilly fall weather has returned, and with it, a pot on the stove here of simmering cinnamon water.  Today's mix is simply cinnamon with vanilla, but as I finish my iced teas while I write this afternoon, I'll throw in the lemon slices too.  Snow flurries and a frost warning are in the forecast for the next few days.  Oh, fall!  Love, love, love.  

'Back to the index cards.  'A sweet weekend to you all. 

All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. ~ Charles Kingsley

One afternoon while sitting with my grandmother on her and Papa's front porch swing, flipping through the pages of a wildflower guidebook together, Grandma confided that sometimes when she couldn't fall asleep at night, she would try to think of a flower that began with each letter of the alphabet.  It has probably been almost thirty years since she told me that, but like Grandma, I've never been able to fall asleep easily either and I often find myself employing her alphabet trick.  Flowers tonight, I hear myself thinking.  Anemones, Bachelor Buttons, Camelias. . . .Some nights, it is birds, and sometimes they come even after the flowers if I'm still wide awake.  Auks (thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Long Winter [my favorite book in her series] for that one), Baltimore Orioles, Chicadees, Doves, Eagles, Finches, Grackles. . . .I'm not too strict with myself with my twenty-six-item lists.  I often skip Q and X, no matter the subject.  More often that not, the flowers, birds, places-I've-been, and words-in-Spanish aren't enough, and I decide to alphabetize my gratitude list or Things-I'm-Looking-Foward-To list.  It is not a bad note to end the day on, and there are certainly worse ways to fall asleep than by reflecting on all the good and sweet in one's life.   

A is for a big salad, I will tell myself tonight.  My mother-in-law recently bought us huge restaurant ware-type salad plates, and we used them for the first time tonight.  ♥  B is baking.  My third (and maybe final) attempt at meringues has been in the oven about three hours now.  This batch looks okay but isn't thrilling enough to me to bother with again.  Catching up on sleep.  That's always wonderful.  Sleep usually is on my list somewhere.  David Bowie:  Starman, an impressively well-researched biography by Paul Trynka.  There is so much glorious detail in this book.  As a boy, Bowie, along with his friends and apparently like so many children in post-war London, used to play in former bombsites, digging in the dirt, imagining, and unearthing little treasures lost until then to the war.  "It was unbelievable," one of his childhood friends is quoted as remembering.  "There were these huge spaces from the bomb sites, and ruined houses, which seemed like mountains to us, covered in Buddleia:  they were our plagrounds."  I will think of David Bowie every time I smell or see powder-scented Butterfly Bush now, and I like knowing that he probably remembers his childhood whenever he catches a whiff of the flowers too.  Dishes have been washed and are all put away.  By the end of the week, all the piddly and naggy little errands that have been on my to-do list for ages will all have been run, so E is errands all the way.  Fresh air.  (Months now of) Good health.  I cut back on sugar last fall to see if it would help my immune system, as I had read that it would, and who knows, but I have gone cold-and-flu-free for quite awhile now, so maybe. 

Heart-shaped leaves.  I prefer blue Morning Glories to any of the other colors, but their heart-shaped leaves always charm me.  I have tomorrow off from work.  Just hearing about a friend's maybe-possible-I-hope-we-can-go travel plans.  Knowing a letter likely reached my parents over the weekend.  One of my new loves:  Linen-scented candles, particularly Glade-brand's "Clean Linen and Sunny Days" ones.  My grocery store carries these for just a few dollars, and the scent is so relaxing, as if I'd just carried in a basket of laundry that had dried out on the line.  A movie I'm looking forward to watching (When Do We Eat?), thanks to Heidi who mentioned it on her blog a couple weeks ago.  Nancy Drew.  I bought the first ten books awhile back and just finished (re-)reading them.  As a kid, I was introduced to the Bobbsey Twins and Trixie Belden books by my mom.  I don't remember when I read my first Nancy Crew books, but it's been fun to dive back into her world of sporty blue convertibles and classic sheath dresses.  Organizing to pay bills this payday.  I'm determined to have one of my student loans paid off by spring, and I've been getting real satisfaction from playing the little if-I-pay-this-much-toward-the-balance-I'll-only-owe-this-much-but-if-I-can-pay-this-amount-the-new-balance-will-be-even-lower game.  Plans for next week include a visit home to my parents.  ♥  Quinoa, since I keep seeing recipes for it that I look forward to trying soon. 

A gift from a friend of a mini Silvertone radio that not only plays both AM and FM, but also looks vintage and fits onto my little corner shelf in the kitchen.  I will think of her every time I play it, making it even sweeter. ♥  Stuffed meowed at me this afternoon.  He rarely "talks"--he is silent most of the time and saves his few meows for Mike--so to hear anything besides the jingle of his collar was sweet.  Time to myself tonight and tomorrow.  Updating aunts in letters and email tonight.  Vanilla soy milk.  Creating another faux wallpapered wall tomorrow, this one pale green with bouquets of pink roses--the wall beside the mantel and that the wing chair will be against.  I might skip X as I usually do.  I never thought to ask Grandma what she came up with for the hard letters.  Maybe she fell asleep before she reached them.  Maybe that was the point.  :)  Y will be the 80s song "Your Love" by The Outfield since I've had it on repeat-play this past week.  And Z--Z, I can do, Grandma, if you've listened all the way to the end ♥--Z is for Zucchini-Tomato Tart, one of my favorite dishes and one that will be my supper later this week.  Any recipe will likely be wonderful, but I just throw sliced zucchini and tomatoes into a pie crust with feta or Parmesan cheese and maybe some olive oil and bake it about thirty minutes.  (If you could be my guest at luncheon, Nancy Drew, I'd serve you this tart with your oft-mentioned iced tea and fruit salad.)    

People are often asked what they've learned from their loved ones or their favorite teachers, and it seems that peoples' first thought is the grand life lessons, but Grandma's little alphabet trick is one of the things she told me that I most appreciate.  Some people get up to watch television or read when they can't sleep, but Grandma stayed-put and made mental lists of pretty things.  ♥  Pansies, Queen Anne's Lace, Ranunculus, Snapdragons. . . .It makes me smile now to think of garden-loving Grandma's silent recitations.  To know that the sun will come up eventually, even if sleep doesn't come at all, and to decide to focus on the happy and beautiful in the meantime:  This is a lesson worth passing on too.

The trick is to stop and think occasionally during normal times how good things are. ~ Andy Rooney

Thursday was one of those beautiful days that I wish I could bottle, label "What June of My 31st Year Was Like," and keep on a shelf forever. ♥  

It was my day off from work and I awoke from a sweet dream about being with my grandparents at their home again. In it, just they and I were eating lunch together and talking about the rock wall they had behind their house and about how I liked tadpoles and wanted more frogs to visit my garden. 

I got out of bed and soon discovered a two-pound weight loss. 

I got "real" mail. 

Despite the 90+ degree heat, I got my walk in and spent some time sitting outside reading with a banana, bottle of ice water, and vending machine bag of gummy fruit on the bench beside me while waiting for Mike to get off work. He joined me before I finished the last 20 or so pages, so we claimed our spot under a tree and read our books there before heading home. 

The tomatoes and cucumbers have already grown enough to make their containers look green and full, the Petunias are sprawling out of their pots, the Morning Glories are showing their first heart-shaped leaves, and the strawberry seedlings are now about an inch tall. 

And then, best of all, while the chicken and pasta for supper were cooking, I checked my email and found a message with the subject line "interview at [your dream job.]" I had a happy little crying jag over that, with Mr. Mike all the while hugging me and repeating, "Just do your best" and his stock phrase "You'll be fine," and then I called my parents to tell them the news.  I went to bed late Thursday night after sending a bunch of ecstatic emails to friends and family, visions of Life with Dream Job dancing through my head.

I imagine that someday when Mr. Mike and I are old, these days of our first "official" year together--we were friends for nine years before becoming a couple--will be remembered as some of our sweetest: We are grateful for all we have, but we dream of so much more and seem to alternate daily between being The One Giving the Pep Talk and The One in Need of a Shoulder. There is a bit of dialog from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner that I've always loved, and it's come to mind again since Thursday:  

"You know, for us it's all been great, but do you know what was the best time of all? It was in the beginning when everything was a struggle and you were working too hard and sometimes frightened. And there were times when I felt that I really knew that I was a help to you. That was the very best time of all for me." 

 Life will go on and still be wonderful, no matter the outcome of next week's interview, and this in-between time with its wait and wonder is itself worth bottling. 

A Page from the Book of Good Things

My breaks on this weekend of working and resume-revamping have been spent on long walks and quick peeks at my garden. (And late at night before fatigue overtook me, finally reading Nick Hornby's  About a Boy. There's a line in it that's so funny to me, I giggle every single time I think of it.) On my walk home yesterday, I stopped at an antique shop to ask about a couple of old metal chairs I've oohed and ahhed over the past couple of weeks. Amazingly--especially for this shop, and most especially for the small "treat budget" I allow myself--the price was right. The many decorating and gardening scrapbooks I've kept since age thirteen are filled with pictures of chairs and gliders like these, so yesterday marked the rare instance in which I practically jigged as I parted with money. One chair is rusted on its seat and needs to be sanded, and someday both these babies will be Val-ed up in glossy pink paint, but they were certainly worth the seventeen-year wait.

And ohhh, how the Bleeding Hearts continue to enchant me!  ♥

The Book of Good Things

Before she graduated from the university we were both attending in December of 1998, my friend Marylou gifted me with a personalized blank book. It stayed in its place on one of my apartment’s bookshelves for a few months before I decided on its purpose: The fabric-covered book would be my Book of Good Things. I would record in it every night those things that made me laugh, that made me feel comforted, that brought me joy, that showed me I was loved, and that renewed my faith in the world for another day. From the moment I decided to start the book, I found myself approaching my life—and the people and events in it—more optimistically: Of course today will be filled with goodness--because I have to come up with The List tonight!  Determination to look for the good made finding it much easier. 

I quickly learned that a great day was made great by “little” things, those moments that before would have been forgotten or that would have become vague memory blobs along the lines of “I enjoyed college” or “I love my family and friends.” As every student of creative writings knows, “Show, don’t tell.” So I soon saw the significance of documenting details: Funny lines from phone conversations, scenes from movies I wanted to remember, the look on someone’s face during a conversation or a moment of shared silence, the way a certain hug felt, songs and scents that would forever remind me of that day, what came in the mail, what a friend said when we ran into each other between classes. . . . Such small things, but by nightfall they became big enough to make me see that it had been a pretty good day.  On some level, I knew all these things before I started the Book of Good Things, but of course, you don’t really learn something until it’s changed you in some way. One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the wise and wonderful film critic Roger Ebert: “They used to tell us in writing class that if we wanted to know what a story was really about, we should look for what changed between the beginning and the end.” In that regard, my college-era Book of Good Things is the story of how I learned to see. Writing it helped me figure out what mattered.

And the things that make for good days haven’t really changed much for me since childhood, I know now. Give me someone to love and someone who loves me, a comfy corner to sit in, fresh air, good music and good books, pen and paper to write with, something to think about, something to laugh over, and something good to eat. It doesn’t take much to make me happy. The trick is seeing it.