December 5, 2022

Daily Diary, Day 825: Today, at lunch time, as I went to sit down and eat my salad, I was filled with joy. And I laughed at myself, because this happens almost every day. You see, I love my salads. They take about 30 mins to make, about thirty minutes to eat (lots of chewing), and although I’ve been eating this meal for lunch for at least 5 years, I never get bored with it. In short, it is one of my favorite things. Cue music from The Sound of Music (and by the way, when I was young, musicals were definitely one of my favorite things.)

And with that thought, I decided that I have 20 more days until Christmas, and this seems like a very good time to list one of my favorite things every day.

So, I made a quick list, and figured if I continued to post my writing intentions on Saturdays and my father’s poetry on Sundays, this would give me about 15 days to fill. No problem.

So, while I will still give you updates on how my writing and exercise is going, I am also going to write a little about each of these favorite things, and why they bring me such joy. However, my salad is going to have to wait until tomorrow, so I can take a picture of it!

Instead, I am going to talk about why any kind of weather is one of my favorite things.

This should not be a surprise to you, since I talk about this all the time. I love when we have a fog that moves in at night and then slowly leaves in the morning. I love it when the wind picks up, sending our wind chimes ringing and palm fronds scuttling (although not during fire season.) I love the cool fall nights that turn a few of the trees into flames of red and give me the excuse to put on the flannel sheets—which probably should be on my favorite things list. I love the thunder and lightning that comes so infrequently that it is a very big deal (and unfortunately upsets our dog because she is so unused to it.) I love rain of all kinds, whether just drizzle or pouring down, maybe because it comes so infrequently.

And clouds.

And today it was the clouds that gave me joy.

Some background on the day. I didn’t take a walk this morning because I had my eye doctor appointment and I thought I was going to have my eyes dilated, so I wanted to get in a couple of hours continuing the work I had started this weekend in fleshing out the rest of my book’s outline, and I did make good progress.

My husband dropped me off at the clinic and the appointment took time, in part because I got there early, and they took me in late. However, the opthomolagist said the tests I had last week, my visual acuity, and his examination, all said I was doing fine, so he didn’t need to dilate my eyes.

I had thought I was probably going to lose all the rest of the day in terms of work, so this was great news. This meant that as I left the clinic, I was in a very good mood.

And what I saw were these truly amazing clouds. There were high ones that looked sort of like cobblestone streets, then under them some puffy ones you could see moving along swiftly, and finally some rather angry-looking ones that promised rain somewhere (probably over the mountains.) So I took a photo.

Of course, all this was before I fixed my salad, although it may have contributed to my generally good mood and my decision after I finished my lunch to start listing my favorite things. This good mood carried me through an unscheduled but delightful conversation with a relative, and the completion of my detailed outline for the rest of the novel. This means I am ready to start writing tomorrow, with no major obstacles to completing the novel from this point on. And of course writing is one of my favorite things (smile.)

So, here are the clouds and tomorrow, expect a lovely photo of my daily salad and why it is one of my favorite things!