I am not feeling very delightful right now. I’m ready to take my body and hurl it off a cliff. Don’t worry. I’m not threatening to commit suicide here. I want my being to go on, I just want a new vessel to keep it in because my current body is making me pretty miserable. I upped a dosage on a medication back in the fall, which led to some pretty terrible reflux issues. So I’ve now been off that drug for about 10 days, but things are so screwed up that even being off the medication and pivoting to a low acid diet is not helping that much. For now that means pretty much eating practically nothing. Seriously try finding recipes that don’t include onions and/or garlic in any form. It’s particularly impossible for vegetarian meals, so I’ve been eating some fish at home. That means I have to cook my own dinner now because my husband won’t cook meat. Plus a fun, weird side effect of the new medication I’m on to replace the one I dropped is feeling like a have a catch in my side all the time. So that’s super fun. And my foot is still not better, partly because I haven’t been completely resting it like I should. I just scaled way, way back on what I was doing instead of getting off it completely. I just hate being a complete couch potato. Not good for my physical or mental health. I spent way too much time standing on this weekend, so now it seems as bad as ever and we’re starting from square one. So basically the few joys I had in my life like my daily walk and food don’t exist right now either. But I’m still over here trying to keep that hoping machine running. Don’t you like how I start all these delights posts with like 10 minutes of whining first? I’ll try to be better.

• One of the reasons that I was standing around a lot over the weekend was that we went to the Harbor Point Ice Festival. It wasn’t really what I was expecting, and it was a little lame but it was also nice to get out of the house and go do something. Since it coincided with the Lunar New Year, it was Lunar New Year themed this year. There were ice carvings of all the animals from the Chinese zodiac. While we were there they had dragon dances and we got to see someone do an ice carving demonstration. I’m not sure I’d bother going again in future years, but I’m glad we made the effort to go this year.
• I got the official word that I’m finally done with my Invisalign treatment. I’m still not done done because I had to make an appointment in a few weeks to get the attachments taken off my teeth and for them to give me my retainers, but it’s nice to know that I’m pretty much there. Though there seemed to be some suggestion that I wear the retainer on my upper teeth all the time. That does not seem realistic. I will happily wear it to bed, but I just want to be able to eat things when I want (if my body ever lets me again) without having to worry about taking something in an out of my mouth and brushing my teeth after.
• I’ve started off the new year with a couple of really good books. I read a whole bunch of middling books last year. I read very few books that I was really in love with, so I was starting to forget how great it is when you’re reading a book you don’t want to put down. I’m back to a middling book right now that I wouldn’t have kept reading except that it’s for a book club, but hopefully the first couple books portend a better reading year this year. In case you’re wondering what the books are, I have advanced reader’s copies of both so you can’t buy them yet, but they’re Prom Mom by Laura Lippman and Charm City Rocks by Matthew Norman. Incidentally two books set in Baltimore by two Baltimore based authors. Charm City Rocks in particular, which is as the title suggests a romance book heaving featuring music, might be very much in my wheelhouse and perhaps something other people may not love as much as I did. I adored it though and think it would make a really great tv series. So someone who has that power should adapt it. Also, I have to say that I was a little surprised that I found out through the acknowledgements of Prom Mom that Laura Lippman and David Simon got divorced back in 2021. They’re some of the most well known people in the city and it’s Smalltimore after all, so I’m a little shocked that I hadn’t heard in some other way before now. Like they obviously don’t owe me or anyone else information about their private lives, but if I was going to find out that information somehow I was definitely not expecting it to be through an off-hand mention in the author acknowledgements of one of Laura Lippman’s books.
• Speaking of Laura Lippman, this morning on Twitter she posted a snippet from the poem “Improvement” by Danusha Laméris. It seemed very apropos for where I’m at right now

• I love this Reel posted by Brandi Carlile of her daughter Eli reacting to some new cartoon that she is apparently in. Her little voice saying “this is amazing” is the sweetest. (Sorry I don’t know why it’s embedding weird.)

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• And now it’s time for your musical delights. There were many this week. Music never lets me down. Also, this week was a prime example of why I will never stop listening to the radio. How else would I accidentally encounter songs I forgot about. I know a lot of people stream their own music in their cars these days, but I’m still 100% radio all the way. I mean my car is old and has no bluetooth connection, but I’d listen to the radio on my commute anyway.
• As I mentioned in my most recent new music Friday post there was a ton of excellent new music out this week including new music by boygenius, Peter Gabriel, Arlo Parks, and Daughter.
• Some days I wind up with a really good music mix on my way to work. Those are the best days. This week I had a stretch of “Take a Picture” by Filter, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears, and “Freedom is a Highway” by Jimmie Allen and Brad Paisley.
• And finally I will leave with another song I heard on the radio this week that I had completely forgotten about. Like I could have named songs until the end of time and never mentioned this one, and yet as soon as it came on I was bopping along to it and singing every word.