What's Making Me Happy This Week

This morning I get my second vaccine shot.  I plan to write more about that tomorrow, once it's actually happened.  Today I want to make a list of some things that are making me happy this week.  Some of them are tiny things that I might never remember if I didn't write them down.  Others are pretty big--like my second vaccine shot!

--Last night I stopped by the public library to pick up my books that were on hold.  A woman came in with her two small children who were SO happy to be at the library.  And come to find out, she had made them a challenge about how quickly they could get in and out of the library giving them a time to beat.  And somehow, it all worked.  The kids grabbed books, the woman checked them out, the kids raced to the door, there was no traffic in the parking lot late in the afternoon, and they made it to the car with one minute to spare.

--In tales of administrator life, I spent a good chunk of time hunting down a box of disposable pillowcases that we were told had been delivered, but we couldn't find it on site.  Finally, after looking in every room, I went downstairs to see if the box had been delivered elsewhere--and it had!  I felt like one of the girl detectives in the lesser books I used to read as a child--not Trixie Belden or Nancy Drew, but the girl sleuth who solved a lesser crime, the one who was never in danger, but solved a puzzle nonetheless.

--I have finished turning in all the paperwork required to begin the candidacy process (the way one becomes an ordained pastor in the ELCA variety of the Lutheran church).  If you have never done that, you might wonder why finishing the paperwork is such a big deal.  So many forms, so much information, so many processes.

--In my childhood, I called very small oranges tangerines, and these days, they have any number of names, but I rarely see them called tangerines.  It's the time of year when they are cheap, and I have a wooden bowl that's full of them.  I'm enjoying eating them, and I'm enjoying seeing them in the wooden bowl.  I can't have my cutie and eat it too--but I can buy more mandarins!

--I am trying to cut back, way back, on my alcohol consumption.  I'm trying to do this for any number of reasons, but primarily as I've considered the more recent research on cancer risk and alcohol, and with some family medical news, it seems essential to reduce the risks that I can.  There was wine in the house last night, and I was able to resist its siren call. 

--I am amazed that caterpillars eat milkweed down to the stalk, and a week later, they bounce right back with new leaves and new growth.  I never get tired of seeing that process.

--I love seeing monarchs in the milkweed.  I want to believe that they know that they are coming home, but I remind myself that life is not a Disney movie.  But maybe it's not Disneyfied to think that they might remember our milkweed patch, next to the herbs, next to the tomatoes that never produce, but we never give up hoping.