Enjoying the "readily enjoyable."

Another good post from Mental Multivitamin (I do not know how I first came across her blog but it is a good source of thought-fodder).

I would use different terminology, perhaps - I've referred to it as being grateful for little things. But here are some of the things that I find readily and easily enjoyable, even when the day isn't going so well...

Stopping to fix and drink a cup of tea, particularly that moment of choosing the variety (do I want the strength of Irish Breakfast, or the subtlety of White Peony? Or do I feel like my immune system needs Dragonwell?)

My books. They have crept into almost every room of my house now but it gives me delight to see them ranged on the shelf, and it gives me delight to begin a new one - or begin one I had stalled out on - or reread parts of one I read and loved.

Putting something on the cd player, sort of loud (loud for me) and dancing around the room to it. I've recently 'rediscovered' a couple of Dolly Parton's bluegrass albums I bought over a year ago and am struck by how enjoyable they are and how easy it is for even a non-dancer to dance to some of the music. (Putting something - anything - on my stereo and dancing for five or ten minutes was one of my ways of "changing the channel" in my mind when the day had gone badly when I was in college. It did not matter if it was doo wop, or Sam Cooke, or Charles Trenet, or Strauss waltzes. Just something to move to for a few minutes)

Hot water, whether in the form of a shower or a bath. One particularly stressful semester I took up the practice of taking a shower every night right before bed - regardless of whether I had already showered (maybe even already showered more than once) that day. I called it "washing away the day" (not very original; it came from a soap commercial) but it did help. And for the five or ten minutes I was in the shower, no one could touch me. If the phone rang, it had to ring over to the answering machine. If someone "needed" me, they could just keep 'needing' me. The world stopped, as far as I was concerned, for the time I was in the shower.

Craft supplies. (Not necessarily the PROCESS of knitting or sewing or embroidery, that's a more subtle thing and requires more work to be enjoyed). But going into a store and looking at the racks of yarn (or, for me where I live, logging on to a yarnshop website or opening a catalog). Looking at the neat colorful rows of DMC floss, like captured fragments of a rainbow. The potential of that stuff is what is important and restorative for me - looking at a particular color of floss and thinking about how I could use it for a design to go in the center of a pillow, or feeling a yarn and thinking how it would feel knit up into a scarf. (Actually, my books also have the same feeling of joyous potential - I could pull any one off the shelf and find a new friend or new knowledge).

Cooler weather. The feeling of being slightly chilly in my house and being able to pull on a sweatshirt to make it better. It's such a relief after the summer.

It's funny how different my list is from Brooks'. But then we are doubtless two very different people. To me, children are not always something readily enjoyable - they are too unpredictable, too needing-of-attention (pets are the same way, and to an extent, so is travel). And sunshine is as much a curse as it is a blessing - the lovely gold of autumn sunlight is enjoyable, but not to me the hot, flat, white-hard light of summer. Chocolate, yes. And books. And walks, although I don't get to walk as much as I would like, considering the lack of good sidewalks and close walking-destinations right where I live.