Looking for happy

And trying to avoid thinking about what's going on in the larger world. World news looks ugly today.

Because ultimately, the only person whose behavior I control is my own.

On the "home front" so to speak (and dear God, I hope I don't wind up using "home front" in the same sense it was used in WWII in another few months....), things look better.

Charlotte, you may well have been right. At the meeting last night, the head of the search committee noted that they had a very promising candidate - it is someone who grew up in a rural area, wants to move back to a rural area, wants a small church, and both he and his wife are avid fishers and golfers (both recreation opportunities widely available here). And our finances are looking better; donations seem to be up. (Maybe the economy is finally getting a little better?)

So that's a relief.

I've been picking away at different things. I did start the garter-stitch Scrunch Hat and worked on it while invigilating. It's probably half done. Garter stitch takes a long time (longer than I remembered), even in bulky yarn. The hat pattern, when it's finished, calls for sewing some kind of embellishment - a ribbon bow, or buttons, or something - to it. I had bought a rhinestone snowflake button with the thought of using that, but now I can't find it. Not anywhere. (And yes, St. Anthony has been called upon, and I even was looking for something else this morning (a matching pair of the heavyweight socks I wear for fieldwork) and I didn't find it). So I don't know. I'm not quite ready to give up but I'm thinking maybe this means I go searching at the Goodwill or one of the antique/resale stores for a big gaudy rhinestone brooch (that was another suggestion, and one I like). At any rate, it gives me an excuse to go antiquing (Or to go to JoAnn's again the next time I am in Sherman to look for another one of the snowflakes.)

I've been knitting more on the fingering-weight pony. This is going to be TINY when it's done. But it does seem to work up faster than the crocheted amigurumi ones. I may try doing the pattern again with a worsted-weight yarn to see what I get. (I'm thinking of doing the grey pegasus with a pink mane that I was talking about the other day - a totally made-up character on my part, though I think there is a pink-and-grey pegasus in the show). And another goofy thought: while invigilating yesterday I started thinking about a unicorn family. They'd have crocheting and otherwise making fibery things as their talent. The matriarch would be Granny Square (yeah, kind of an idea stolen from "Granny Smith," but still. Only Granny Square would be a lot less stereotypical old-lady: she'd be an old back-to-the-lander-type who knows how to do all kinds of stuff; she'd also know some of the "healing arts." Maybe she'd be friends with Zecora...). Her daughter, Rosette and her son-in-law, Treble Stitch, would have three fillies of their own: Doily, Lacey, and Battenberg. (Battenberg might be a colt; that might be a more boyish name). All unicorns. And they'd have kind of a family workshop where they made stuff. Totally silly, I know, but it's those kind of silly little excursions back into the sort of imaginative stuff I used to do as a kid that help keep me happy.


Speaking of happiness. There's an ad that uses this song as its theme music. I cannot comment about the service the ad offers as I've never used it. But I always stop when that ad comes on and listen. Because there's something I just LIKE about the song.



A big part of it is the sentiment behind it. I do think it's very true that when you unselfishly do something to make someone else happy, it makes you happy (I think that's a reason lots of people on Ravelry like to do swaps - not so much for the getting of stuff, but for the fun of putting together stuff to surprise someone else).

And I hear the song, and I kind of sigh and my shoulders drop back down to where they should be, and I think, "Yes. That is right. That is something people should think about."

Part of it is also the delivery. It's funny: Durante was in no way a great singer (some might argue he wasn't really even a singer at all), but there's something appealing about the delivery - a heartfelt quality that grabs my attention.

I know next to nothing about Jimmy Durante, but from the roles I've seen him in, he strikes me as someone who was fundamentally a good-hearted and good-natured person. The humor I've seen from him (again, in the relatively few roles) was mostly a good-hearted sort of humor. Different from some of the humor you see today. One thing I dislike about some of the allegedly-funny television shows is that they seem so much to rely on putting people who are "less cool" or something down - of poking fun at someone else. Rather than kind of shrugging at the vagaries of life and finding things to laugh about dealing with that. I don't like snarky humor; I'd rather see something that was just kind of silly and absurd rather than something that tries to get fun out of making someone else look bad or feel bad. (That may be why I like cartoons so much: for example, most of the humor in Phineas and Ferb is either silly humor, or funny things that don't go together being put together.) I don't know; I find some of the shows people like kind of exhausting to watch. Cartoons seem more my speed these days.