This week’s delights feel pretty random, but I guess that’s the whole point of doing this is noticing even the weird, tiny things that bring you a moment of joy

• My umbrella dress. I have a dress from eShakti that has umbrellas on it. It’s one of my most complimented dresses. What I love about it aside from the pockets of course is that it’s flowy in such a way that when I’m walking down my stairs it catches just enough of a breeze that it billows out in a delightful way. It makes me happy every time it happens.
• Bubbles. Last weekend my friend and I were sitting outside in a park and a little girl and her mom were blowing bubbles and they kept blowing into us. They kept apologizing and eventually moved to the other side of us, but we didn’t mind. Then I was driving home from work a few days later and random bubble just floated in front of my car, obviously from someone playing with bubbles in a yard on the street. Bubbles are just inherently joy making. Who doesn’t love bubbles?
• Puppy in a window. I live in a neighborhood of rowhouses, which means that a lot of people’s windows are right up on the sidewalk and their houses are easy to see into if they don’t have them covered in some way. There is a house that I walk by every morning that must not have central air because their front window is always open in the summer. Last summer they had a little kitten that used to hang out in the window and always seemed like it was trying to play with me through the screen when I walked by. This summer they have a new puppy and now he hangs out in the window and seems like he wants to play. The other day he was standing with his paws up on the window sill looking out the window with a toy in his mouth and he dropped it on the window sill as I was walking by like he wanted me to pick it up and play with him.
• Filled pothole. There has been a pothole in one of the alleys I use to get to the parking pad behind my house. It was really quite the crater, and it was super annoying to drive through. I literally thought it was never going to get filled partly because it wasn’t clear who was responsible for it. Was it the city or the property owner of the building in front of it? There’s some weird stuff about who owns what for the alleys and sidewalks on your property, so I had no idea and figured that if it was the business who was responsible they would never realize and would do nothing about it. I have no idea who finally filled it, but I’m just glad it’s finally fixed. I was very excited the night I came home and realized that I didn’t have to drive through a giant hole to get home.
• And speaking of driving, I got another delivery order of Taharka Brothers ice cream to split with my friend this week. We had to. It was for the children. Our local elementary/middle school was doing a fundraiser with them, so you see it would have been very wrong of us not to get it. Anyway, I was driving to her house to drop off her half of the ice cream and was thinking it was going to be terrible because of this one intersection I have to turn left at. There used to be a cut through to get to her house around this old brick water tower, but they closed it off to repair it and have never reopened it so now I have to make a left turn through this terrible intersection to get there. It was rush hour, so I figured it was really going to be bad, but then amazingly there were literally no cars going south on the road so I was able to easily turn left across it no problem! Miracle!
• Salmon from Cypriana. My husband and I went out to dinner at Cypriana last week because the weather was nice and I figured we should take advantage of eating outside now because soon the weather will be hot and gross and we won’t want to anymore. There are lots of things on their menu that look good, but I will apparently never know how they taste because I have only ever ordered their salmon. It is the best salmon I have ever had and have never been able to make myself order anything else because I love it so much. It’s flavorful and perfectly cooked with a crispy outside and a moist, tender inside. Yum!
• I have to get blood drawn every few months because of the medications I take. I have terrible veins. It’s lucky that I do not have an aversion to needles or blood because finding a usable vein to draw blood is always a drama. Usually it involves getting stuck multiple times in both arms, some digging around in there with the needle, and sometimes resorting to weird places like my wrist or the top of my hand. I even had someone do my foot once. It’s always a pleasant surprise when someone gets me in one stick. I had blood drawn last week and the phlebotomist not only got me in one stick, she did it with a regular needle instead of a butterfly needle. I told her I was impressed.
• Cherry season. Cherries are my favorite fruit. Actual cherrries. Not fake cherry flavored things. That is actually one of my least favorite flavors. Tastes like medicine. Anyway I was excited when I went to the farmers’ market on Saturday and they had cherries. I love cherry season.
• And now for your musical delight. We’re going way back to the 80s with the Survivor song “The Search is Over”. I loved this song when I was a kid. I was thinking about this, and how my friends and I were really into very earnest love ballads and deciding it was because those were the over top emotional songs we had to process our over the top pre-teen and teenage emotions. Kids after us had things like emo and pop punk. That’s what we had to work with. Anyway, I heard this song on the radio on my way to work last week, and I had honestly forgotten it even existed. Hearing it brought back a bunch of memories. Then apparently the song was stalking me because I believe I mentioned in one of these previous posts how my neighbors sit outside listening to music and wouldn’t you know it they were listening to this song this week. Crazy.