Some happy stuff

Little things that make me happy: a list. (Partially compiled in my head while students were taking a short test):

* Glittery or otherwise shiny or pretty pink toenail polish. (I once tweeted out "Life is too short not to wear glitter toenail polish" and yeah, it's a pain and a half to remove it when it's time to, but it's so fun while it's on).

* Coming home to something nice in my mailbox - not a bill or junk mail. Whether it's something I ordered (I bought "Nurse, Come You Here" - the second installment of Mary MacLeod's memoirs of her time as a nurse on a small Hebridean island - I enjoyed the first one so much that when I saw Bas Bleu had the second one, I had to get it) or not.

* My amigurumi. Childish, I know, but they do make my life happier. Both making them and having them.

* Realizing I have good left-overs in the fridge so I don't have to cook.

* Not having to set my alarm on Friday AND Saturday mornings in the summer.

* Nice and cute movies or cartoons. Ponies are probably the prime example of this, but there is also a lot of niceness in some of Miyazake's movies. And in Big Hero Six. Something that portrays people being better and nicer and braver than people often are in the real world.

* Going antiquing, or going to a craft supply store, or a nice bookstore, or somewhere that sells things that are not essential in the sense of "I have to buy this or I'll eventually die" (unlike medicine or food) and especially when those places are relatively uncrowded and un-crazy and I have enough time to just look at stuff and consider whether I want to buy it or not.

* Some of the "beautiful" things I teach in my classes. For example, I think the Chemiosmotic Coupling Theory of how ATP gets made in mitochondria is fascinating and beautiful - and thought so the first time I learned it in AP Bio. And as I said the other day, I love a lot of the old foreign-language science terms we have, especially some of the German ecology ones or the Russian soil ones.

* Going to church and getting to sing one of the old, old hymns that my grandmother used to sing. Part of the reason I'm not a big fan of "praise choruses" (and am sad when churches go EXCLUSIVELY to them) is that I don't feel the same historical connection that the older hymns give me. I also like the older tunes better, and the (generally) more complex language.