my week in joy
tea and movies and flowers, oh my
Welcome to the 3rd installment of my weekly “thing that brought me joy this week” posts. I’m finding this to be a really helpful exercise, especially when my week is full of doctor appointments and various pains. It’s good to focus on the things that make you smile to force you to realize life isn’t just a series of aches and pains and heartache and despair. There are smiles! Laughs! Friends! All kinds of treasures abound if you just look for them, and that’s why writing this every weekend is so important to me. I need to treasure the treasures. So let’s look at my week in joy.
Tea
I have become a tea person. I was always a big coffee drinker. At one point I was drinking five cups a day and was so addicted that I’d get a massive headache if I skipped a cup. I’ve now got myself down to my morning cup of coffee, and the break from the acidity of coffee has been great for my acid reflux. The rest of the day I drink tea. English breakfast, Irish breakfast, a plethora of herbal teas. I love slowly sipping my tea, savoring the taste, enjoying the aroma of a good berry herbal tea. Right now I am using teabags, but I am getting a proper teapot and I’m going to dive into loose teas soon.
Music
This is what I listened to this week, for the most part (obviously doesn’t take into account how much vinyl/cds I listened to). The new National album that I wrote about this week is getting a ton of play; the count on everything else pales in comparison. But I treated myself good this week, even if a lot of this music is of the sad variety. It just hits different when the weather is good and the door and windows are open and The Replacements are blasting from your speakers.
Movies and TV shows
I watched the usual - Succession and Barry and Ted Lasso and while the first two were stellar episodes - this ep of Barry might be the single greatest episode of tv I’ve ever seen, but the Ted Lasso episode sucked. Not here to talk about that, though. Only joy. I watched a great movie this week. OUT OF SIGHT (1998) with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. What a delight. It was a fun movie, a good story, Clooney and Lopez had great chemistry. I started watching CODA (2022) on Apple TV, a movie that won the Oscar for best picture. I stopped it halfway through because I was tired but I’ll continue it today. It’s a good story.
Surprise Flowers
A thing you may not know about me is I have a tenant. She is an old friend of the family - her daughter and Natalie were good friends growing up - who needed a place to live and my house came with a full apartment. It’s been a good arrangement as we talk a lot, keep each other company sometimes. I get to play with her dog and she has a safe, comfortable place to live. As a bonus, she loves to work in the garden, whereas I hate it. I love a good garden. I love how flowers look in my yard, but I am decidedly not a gardner nor am I someone who can keep plants and flowers alive. Well, when I arrived home from the hospital last week, there was L., planting flowers along the driveway, putting planters on the front step, tending to the hydrangeas and impatiens and all the other stuff I can’t name. Everything looks so pretty and colorful and alive and I am thankful to have L. in my life. This above anything else really made my week.
So there you have it, my week in joy. I know I’ve been sort of behind on posts, not publishing as much as I used to. I just have a lot going on. I have doctor appointments/tests on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week, but I hope to get at least one new essay in this week. I hope the week ahead of you is filled with little pockets of joy.