Support

This week events both positive and not-so-positive have reminded me how important it is to have a strong support network of people you love and who love you--friends, family, significant others, friendly co-workers, etc.  In the good times, it feels great to be able to experience joy and excitement with other people.  Sharing can intensify happy emotions and also, interestingly, help to diminish unhappy ones.  When events take an unexpected negative turn, talking with other people really helps me step back and put things in perspective.  I feel very lucky and grateful to have people in my life with whom I can share the good and the bad and keep on trucking together.  Thanks for propping me up, being sounding boards, offering advice, sharing your good news, and trusting me with your bad news.  Together we're better!

Simple Pleasures, April 2011 Edition

On Friday I caught up with some good friends over dinner.  We live in two different towns, so we rendezvous-ed at a big shopping center halfway between them.  The dining options were somewhat limited, and we picked a mass-market Asian fusion kind of place.  The food was not unpleasant, but really sub-par as far as Asian food goes.  I had a dish with tofu and broccoli, and the tofu was just as it would be if you opened a package of smooth tofu and cut it into pieces--bland and slippery, not crispy or flavorful like it often is at Chinese restaurants.  The sauce was thin and not particularly flavorful either.  Nevertheless, the whole experience was very pleasant because I was there with friends and the weather was great.  We got to be silly just like we always are when we hang out, and we got to catch up on what's been going on in each other's lives.  After dinner we had planned to see a movie, but nothing that was playing looked too good, so we just wandered through a bookstore instead.  The evening was a prime example of the power of simple pleasures to bring joy.

Porch Time

Friday afternoon found me and my housemate sitting on our porch shooting the breeze.  The weather was perfect: not too cool, not too hot, and sunny but not blindingly so.  It was the first time in rather a while that neither one of us was rushing off somewhere or preoccupied by an urgent task.  We were able to just relax and let the conversation flow, interrupted only by squirrel acrobatics in the trees overhead.  I'll probably post a paean to porches another time--because I think they're great--but for now I'm just happy thinking of an excellent conversation outside, lingering while day turned gently to dusk and our minds meandered through pleasant fields of thought.

Standup Comedy

On Thursday I went to a local comedy club to support my friend, who was competing to be North Carolina's Funniest Comic.  This was the first round of the competition, and I was pleased to cheer on multiple comedy friends--folks whom I had seen perform several times while giving standup comedy a try myself this past fall.  I decided that for the moment I prefer strapping on a guitar and singing melancholy songs for an audience rather than being funny for them, but I may give comedy another try in the future.  Having tried it, I can say that it is a lot harder than it would seem.  And my friend does it very well.  By audience vote on Thursday he happily advanced to the next round of competition, and I look forward to cheering him on again!

(Late-Night) Milkshake Runs

Throughout my college years, a recurring treat was the late-night milkshake run.  It was never clear who exactly had suggested we drive to Cook Out to get milkshakes in the wee small hours, because the idea spontaneously arose in all of our minds at once.  We would pile into someone's car, pump some tunes as we rolled down the road, and often discuss the relative merits of different flavors of milkshake.  The stuff memories are made of.  So you can imagine my joy when a friend and I happened to be driving late this past Saturday night and we looked at each other and asked, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"  Yup, it was Cook Out time.  Cook Out is a drive-through chain around here that has fast food and is open late at night.  The important thing about Cook Out is that they have so many flavors of milkshakes, and they're all really good.  If you're in the mood for a strawberry cheesecake shake, they can do that.  If you'd prefer a simple banana fudge (my all-time favorite and standby), they can do that, too.  This particular Cook Out run was somewhat vexing, but I'll hasten to say that even a vexing Cook Out run is still pretty great.  It was vexing because I did not get the shake I had ordered.  I asked for a plain chocolate one, and was handed one that was chocolate but with a bit of a coffee flavor and odd, crunchy candy-like bits in it.  My friend and I spent the better portion of the ride home passing the mystery shake back and forth attempting to decipher its flavor (possibly chocolate Heath bar crunch).  Although it was not what I had asked for, the entertainment value of trying to solve the mystery more than alleviated any disappointment.  And thus came to pass another excellent milkshake run.

Sharing Books

Once when I was in high school, a friend of a friend gave me a dog-eared, softcover copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  She had gotten it from a friend, and after reading it wanted to pass it along from one reader to the next.  On the first page she'd written "Kerouac knows his stuff! Let's all go one day!! Enjoy it, then pass it on!! [and then she'd signed her name]"  The last two exclamation points were turned into the eyes of a smiley face with its tongue out.  I'm only a little sorry to say that I never did pass the book along.  I read it and loved it with all the fibers of my being.  And I kept it.  From my parents' house to various rooms in college to life afterward, I have always made sure it stands on my bookshelf.  This particular book notwithstanding, I love sharing books with friends, and I have embraced the joy of not caring much whether they make their way back to me afterward.  As long as a book is in the hands of someone who loves it or at least is curiously reading it, I'm satisfied.  (Honestly, though, there are a few like the aforementioned which I would care to get back and keep.)  I believe someone once told me that books should never be lent, only given.  Perhaps that's right.  I read, too, that Studs Terkel (I think it was he) would not like for books he loaned out to be returned without the borrowers' marginalia inscribed within.  He felt that properly reading a book was to have a conversation with the author, and enjoyed seeing his friends' conversations on the pages of his books.  So if you haven't recently, consider giving a book you love to someone you love, and don't worry too much about getting it back.  There are many more on their way to you.

Unexpectedly Running into Old Friends

Dear friends, I tried to take a good picture of this drawing, and then I tried to edit it to come out clear and crisp, but it just was not happening.  I think it's because my pen was drying up, and the lines weren't bold enough.  Anyway . . . today I ran into some old friends from my childhood whom I hadn't seen in far too long.  It was quite unexpected, but not startling.  I find that running into people I'm really comfortable with tends not to be startling, even when they're out of the normal context.  And when the universe throws us together again, it's a reassuring reminder that our worlds are not so big, the distances between us not so vast, and the connections uniting us surprisingly powerful.

Postcards

I didn't send any postcards today, but I thought of how great it feels to receive them, and to send them to friends and family when you're traveling.  I was reminded how important it is to stay in touch, and how hard it is to do that consistently with people I don't see all the time.  I also love the kitsch of postcards.  Because there's not much room on the back to write, the picture you choose for the front becomes an integral part of your message.  You can be sassy, sincere, goofy, informative, or pretty much any way you please.  It's totally great to get an email from someone you haven't talked to in a long time, but there's something extra special about getting a physical postcard in the mail.