Today’s been a typical brain-bleeding chicken-with-its-head-cut-off workday, with the exception of one text message I got a little while ago. My brother-in-law was at a parent-teacher meeting at his daughter’s school, and saw something posted on the wall in the hallway. He snapped a picture with his phone and sent it to me.
It was a drawing, meticulously signed by his daughter, of two semi-stick people side by side. They were anatomically incorrect with all the enthusiasm a 5-year old can instill. One figure had a head four times the size of the other, and it was hard to discern their ages or anything else about the two people other than that they were 1) happy, and 2) probably, judging by their hairstyles, female.
And printed below the drawing, in slightly crabbed handwriting:
I like walkine to tha prk wif my aunt Petrikord.
(Name approximate.)
Suddenly I don’t care so much if all these work emails are absolutely sent out exactly on time today.
Tell me about something that once made your day. Could be big, could be small, as long as it gave you the warm fuzzies. And fuzzies, like cabbages, can multiply in abundance without loss of quality. So pass them on!
Today I had my longest conversation ever on facebook. It was with my youngest niece. She always makes me smile anyway, but today she was expressing extreme enthusiasm about my visiting her in December. That makes me very happy.
I found a $35 dress at H&M today, went to the register, and was surprised to find it rang up for $7.68. That is one fuck of a sale. I hadn’t realized it was discounted until I already had my card out. Yay $8 dress!
I had a similar experience once. We were in Lake Tahoe for my birthday and forgetting it’s still cold enough to snow in April there I’d neglected to bring a jacket. We went to several stores but all the winter stuff had been put away and the swimwear was already out. Finally we stumbled on a store that had one lone rack of winter coats left. They’d been marked half off - good deal! I brought it up to the register and the cashier asked “Do you have the coupon from today’s paper?” I told her I wasn’t from the area. She said “Oh, hold on.” went to the back room and scrounged up a paper. She paged through it until she found the coupon, and tore it out and applied it to my purchase. It was something like “30% off any clearance item.” Not only was I tickled that she went to the time and effort to do that, I ended up getting a $100 London Fog coat for around $30.
I got to work early, and I was all frowny and grumbly because my feet were hurting and I was thinking that I was going to have to go buy new shoes tonight because mine are apparently so worn down that I’m basically stomping on the ground itself, and you know when your feet hurt your whole body is miserable, when the orthotist, a guy that specializes in orthotics for your shoes- for your feet! came over and got me and took me into his office and sat me down and fitted me for some new cushy inserts for my shoes, just out of the blue! Is that crazy, or what? And they were free- the best part!
This happened years ago, but it still makes me smile.
I’d stopped in at a local cafe to pick up a sandwich for breakfast. When I walked in, there were two women, obviously related, one of whom had a small child, maybe 18 months, in her arms. I like babies, so I was waving and smiling and making flubby noises with my mouth at him while waiting to order.
All of a sudden, the baby leaned towards me with his arms outstretched: universal baby for “I want *you *to hold me”. And the momma, after seeing if I were willing, let me hold him!
They said he’d never done that with a stranger before, but even if he did it all the time, I don’t care. Made my day. Made my week. I didn’t even care that I wound up juggling baby, purse, wallet, and sandwich while trying to pay.
He was a sweet armful, and he gave me such a nice hug before I had to hand him back.
On Thursday, I was meant to have a meeting with a documentary crew I am currently working with, to go over the entire plan for the next day’s shoot. I was all ready for the meeting at 8pm that evening, when one by one, everybody cancelled. We had been having lots of problems already, but this was pretty much the final straw for me. Knowing we had to have all the work done, I started getting things sorted, later having to go out to one of the crew’s houses to get some work done. I got home at 2am (I needed to be up at 6.30) and still had to make breakfast and lunch for everybody for the next day. I was so worn out, and really wanted my bed.
I walked in to the kitchen to find a note from my flatmate saying “I have made all the food. Now go to bed!”
I just stood and cried in the kitchen for about 10 minutes. My flatmate is amazing and I don’t deserve her!!
Every single day last week I was stopped in my tracks because I was stunned by all of the beauty around me. I love this time of year. I just had to stop and take it all in.
Yesterday was an unusually warm day for this time of year. On the way home from work, I passed a car with a dog standing in the back seat with his head out the window, ears flapping in the breeze. Dogs that do this always look so happy it never fails to make me smile.
Happy dogs always make my day, too. I can be in the worst mood ever, and if I see someone walking a dog, and that dog happens to be carrying home a stick he found somewhere, it just cheers me for days.
Once I saw a (loose, no person) dog carrying off a package of cut-up chicken he’d found somewhere. Man, that was one happy fella. It still makes me smile to think about him.
All of which I guess explains why my dogs have such happy lives.
I went back to the weight room after a 3-month hiatus. My shoulder was giving me trouble and it made me really sad, but I’ve “kept off it” for 3 months then eased back into using it for 2 weeks then last night was the big test.
I kicked ass on the weights too, pretty much starting back where I left off. Whew!
I got to pull a random act of kindness last Monday evening.
Lady in the grocery store line went shopping and miscalculated the purchases, wound up $22 short. I covered it for her and simply said, “An early Christmas present for you, ma’am”. She burst into tears and I got a nice hug.
A guy blew through a red light several seconds after it changed, nearly hitting me. I gave him a good loud honk and he stuck his arm out the window and flipped me off. A half mile down the road, I see the same car stopped by the police I stick my arm out the window and do the “woop woop” gesture.
Yes, this probably makes me a very sad person, but since I work downtown I haven’t had a chance to be around horses in a few years and I’ve missed them. So when I saw a couple of mounted police officers hanging out near my bus stop and saw that other people had gone up to say hello to the horses, I did so too. There’s nothing quite like getting whuffled by a nose the size of a salad bowl.
(Hm, come to think of it my previous ‘made my day’ moment was getting a kiss on the nose from a very sweet pit bull. I really need to move to the country and get animals.)
And they were free- the best part!