"Sharing prosaic pleasures"

The title comes from yet another nice (if short) Christ and Pop Culture story: Social Networking your food and the Joy of Prosaic Pleasures

One of the things this made me consider: perhaps some of my malaise of late is that I've gotten less good at recognizing (or perhaps, appreciating), the "prosaic pleasures" of life - the little good things that, although they aren't miracles, still kind of are:

"When friends of mine tweet or Facebook a photograph of a latte (or any food item, for that matter) I smile and thank the Lord for his grace to give us the opportunity to see beauty in what we eat and drink."

And you know? That's right. And that sort of thing is why I try not to snark on it when people do things like post instragram photos of their restaurant lunch. And why I seek out pictures of cute animals and lovely landscapes, and things like that. Because right now there's a lot of bad in the world (perhaps it always has been such) and it's sort of a sigh of relief to find something GOOD, something enjoyable, even if it is just a big sandwich or a latte.

(And how much more fun, I think it is, to share things you enjoy or that make you happy, rather than to look to poke holes in things others enjoy)

So here's my little contribution. My July Doki Doki box came today. This one REALLY did not disappoint; it had lots of cute things but also lots of useful things. And a few neat cultural things.

I don't have a photo of one of the cultural things because it was so small I didn't see it at first.. It is called "kaeru," which is the Japanese word for "frog" but which also sounds a bit like "return" in Japanese - apparently there is a tradition of carrying a small figure of a frog with you when you travel as a lucky charm or as prayers for a safe return home. And I like that kind of thing, as I said before: learning a little about the "material culture" of a culture different from my own.

Anyway.



It is always a little hard to get them out of my mailbox; they are just a tiny bit big. Small enough for the mail carrier to cram them in, but a little hard to get out, and I always wind up fighting the mailbox a little. Oh well.



This always gets me. I guess I don't hear that kind of thing enough. But it always makes me happy to see it on the box.



And here it is, open. Lots of stuff in this one.



This is this month's stuffie - a goldfish named Kiko. Goldfish and koi amuse me because to me they look slightly grumpy and Kiko is no exception. She is also kind of cuddly and she has a bell attached to her head so if you shake her, she jingles. Most excellent stuffie.

And some useful things!



A paper fan. I actually use these at home so it's nice to have another one. This one has all the "characters" exclusive (more or less, I think other places sell Hoppe Chan) to Doki Doki. There is also a little matching hand towel kind of like last month's hand towel - I may take this one over to my office in case it would ever come in useful.



This is a tenugui, which I am not familiar with at all, but they say it is used like a handkerchief to mop your brow with, or some traditional performers will wear it under helmets or masks to prevent chafing. It's pretty and it's interesting and maybe yes, sometimes I do need to mop my brow in the summer.



And here's the rest of the loot. A nice big Rilukkama (a bear character) towel, large enough to hang up on the spare towel rack in my bathroom and use to dry my hands. Some little stuff, a Hoppe chan figure, a gashopon capsule with a little charm of an ice cream cone, and the watermelon slice thing is a hair scrunchie. (I may save that one and pass it on to my niece eventually; it's not quite the sort of thing I would wear but I could see her wearing it)

And a couple other little fun things - they included a blind box containing a "tsum tsum" (these have become a thing lately). This is a random Disney character:



I got Sully from Monsters, Inc., which is a good one to get.




And there was a little Gutedama (a "lazy egg" character - again, cultural differences, I guess) that is a clip that will magnet onto your fridge so you can use it to hold a recipe card or whatever.

And on the back?



Butt. hee hee hee hee My inner 12 year old is pleased.