Happy Stuff

In this post, I mused (at length; probably longer than necessary, really) about why I need to smile a little more. I thought it would help if I worked up a list of stuff that makes me happy. (Thank you again to Cathy for the idea!)

Caveat: this is a list of this moment (OK, of the last few days, done in spurts). It is a list of large and small, and it is not meant to be comprehensive. Neither is it written with any particular order of importance.

1. jitterbugging with S
2. witnessing my daughter's absolute confidence in the competence of her sturdy little body
3. reading to and with my son (who now wants to read to me, too!)
4. children's books (especially those by Kevin Henkes, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak, Lois Ehlert, A. A. Milne...)
5. used bookstores
6. thrift store shopping (especially with Miri -- I miss you, girl!)
7. hula hoops
8. campfires
9. Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Almonds (the ones with sea salt and turbinado sugar -- you were right, A, these are divine! and dangerous!)
10. going grocery shopping with my mom
11. looking at my dad's photos
12. talking girly stuff with my sister
13. OK, spending time with my parents and sister doing almost anything, whether on the East Coast or the West Coast
14. watching my kids play with their cousins
15. swingsets
    
16. riding my bike
17. the Stanford Theater
18. watching MST3K with S (the ones with Joel especially)
19. discovering a new song to love and having it sing in my head for days -- like this one (thank you, Miranda at Creative Construction!)
    
    


20. The little X button that lets you close annoying ads, popups, etc...
21. Kris Delmhorst (thank you, M!)
22. Hayao Miyazaki (thank you, S!)
23. Patrick O'Brian (thank you for that one too, S!)
24. having people to thank for sharing their excellent taste with me!


25. parenthesis (amen!)
26. beach glass
27. the end of the spectrum including blue, indigo, violet, purple
28. prisms
29. rainbows (especially remembering the ones in Martinique)
30. roller skates


31. Renaissance Faires
32. fountain pens
33. hair "pretties"
34. scarves
35. digital photography
36. re-reading favorite books
37. discovering new favorite books
38. having a quiet hour just for reading (or even 15 minutes, in a pinch)
39. a really hot mug of black tea, with honey and milk
40. Chai.
41. lavender plants
42. lemons right off the tree
43. tomatoes fresh from the garden
44. picking strawberries
45. planting seeds
46. pansies


47. ladybugs
48. dragonflies
49. farmer's markets
50. kettle corn
51. naps
52. Paul Simon
53. yoga
54. beads
55. baskets
56. that new baby smell
57. that sweaty "I've been playing all day in the sunshine!" kid smell
58. playing "pickle foot" with the kids -- actually, my kids' feet in general
59. fingerpainting
60. playing ant and anteater with the kids
61. the "ding" of the neighborhood ice cream truck (it sells soft serve!)


62. having my hair brushed
63. brushing other people's hair and then braiding it up (BB's is almost long enough for a french braid!)
64. french fries (especially made from sweet potatoes)
65. french toast
66. breakfast for dinner
67. Thai food (especially Thom Kha soup. YUM!)
68. pink grapefruit salad with frozen pecans, gorgonzola cheese, and dried cranberries
69. mom's chicken & dumplings
70. cream of wheat with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon
71. Skittles


72. Etsy
73. IKEA
74. NPR
75. Obama
76. state quarters
77. pinball
78. playing old style arcade games with S
79. watching S try to beat my high scores on said games (until he inevitably does....)
80. e. e. cummings
81. Rumi
82. Annie Dillard
83. Terry Pratchett
84. Jack Gilbert
85. Emily Dickinson
86. Jane Austen
87. I'm tempted to start looking through the bookshelves and list from there, but that would be a bit ridiculous, so instead I'll say -- having VERY full bookshelves and sharing a life with someone who appreciates this fact!
88. watching the A & E Pride & Prejudice DVD with S


89. wearing hats
90. petting cats
91. remembering my canvas bags at the grocery store
92. getting footrubs
93. pedicures
94. rainboots
95. mint chocolate chip ice cream (but not if it's the green colored kind)
96. honey
97. libraries
98. bookmarks
99. rhyming dictionaries
100. handmade paper
101. handcrafted soap
102. almost anything made by hand
103. book clubs
104. librarians
     
105. Longwood Gardens
106. hiking
107. oak trees
108. dogwood trees
109. fields full of daffodills
110. colorful umbrellas
111. amethyst
112. hematite
113. tigers eye
114. rose quartz
115. Rehoboth Beach
116. writing poetry (sestinas, sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, free verse... you name it!)
117. blogging
118. having hair long enough to put it in a ponytail
     
119. Las Madres
120. mommy friends
121. playdates
122. making playdough
123. kneading bread dough
124. blowing bubbles
125. bubble wrap
126. karaoke
127. velvet
128. old flannel shirts (especially ones that used to belong to S)
129. knitting scarves
130. learning new handcrafts
131. DIY (except when DIY leads to $$$ for Others To Fix)
132. the OED
133. the New Yorker
134. ReadyMade Magazine
135. Wikipedia
136. Skype



137. S's fuzzy slippers
138. the way BB says "tending" for pretending
139. the way S will come home from work and tell me, "I said something really funny today" and proceed to replay the moment for me
140. BJ's little habitats that he sets up all over the house
141. playing Legos with the kids
142. yellow painted walls
143. lemongrass incense
144. a well made bed with freshly cleaned sheets (especially if somebody else made it up and washed the sheets)


145. cinnamon bread (especially from Greenlee's bakery)
146. mom's sourdough cinnamon twists
147. Red Hot Cinnamon Imperials
148. Hot Tamales cinnamon candy
149. almost anything with a cinnamon flavor, when it comes to it
150. my crock pot
151. the full moon
152. Beltane
153. the purple frames of my eyeglasses
154. the fact that S thinks girls in glasses are sexy
155. 11 years of marriage (going on 12) and 18 years of friendship (going on 19)
156. anniversaries
157. being able to wear my wedding rings again


158. birthday cake candles
159. clover chains
160. seashells
161. my mother's "AAC" bag
162. the 20 year old shirts my father still wears
163. his appreciation for the 20 year old shirts that I still wear
164. sharing the experience of motherhood with my sister
165. the way my brother-in-law thinks I can follow highly technical scientific talk based on my freshman year in college spent as a biotech major (not to mention the fact that sometimes he's right in thinking so!)
166. flower pens at the post office
167. colorful socks
168. public art
169. tossing pennies into fountains
170. rolling pennies with S
171. watching my son learn to write
172. seeing how my daughter is learning to read


173. crayons
174. handmade quilts
175. a husband who likes folding laundry
176. chopsticks
177. Freecycle
178. cooking for the folks I love
179. family recipes
180. picnics
181. lilacs
182. the Santa Cruz boardwalk
183. holding hands
184. a to-do list with everything crossed off
185. an empty sink AND an empty dishwasher
186. watching finches at the birdfeeder
187. a full pantry
188. cable knit tights on my little girl's legs
189. my son's new red shoes, and his adoration for them
190. shopping for shoes with my daughter (especially her joy in trying on all the grown up girls' shoes, All By Herself)
191. bandaids with patterns and colors
192. stickers
193. sunshine
194. sunflowers
195. sidewalk chalk
196. alliteration
197. dichroic glass
198. oversized pottery mugs
199. weed bouquets picked just for me
200. butter
201. cloth napkins
202. lists....