A Book Sale and Other Small Delights

One good thing is that if you've been procrastinating on purchasing my book, One Good Thing, you can now get it on sale! I don’t know how long this sale will last, so order your copy now if you want one. Or why not pick up a few extra copies to gift to your friends, your mother, or your postal worker this holiday season?

The great thing about this book is that it lends itself to easy gift messages.

“One good thing is your friendship.”

“One good thing is the way you’re always there for me when I need you.”

“One good thing is how you only occasionally deliver the neighbor’s mail to my address.”

Go buy One Good Thing!

One great thing is how happy it will make me if you do. Thank you!

I have had a long week that came off of a long week before it and probably a long week before that, I can’t really remember anymore. So just for a little brightness and my own mental reset, here are a few other things that are making me happy right now.

• The other day I texted my mother, “Apropos of nothing, if I could own one item, price not a concern, I would want that white dress Diane Lane wears in Under the Tuscan Sun. I think about that dress all the time.” And she immediately responded, “I do too. I love that dress!”I love when you know the exact right person to message with a random thought because they’ll totally get it and feel the same way. Like how I once texted my friend Judy, “UGGGGHHHHHH” with no other context or follow-up and she simply replied, “here too,” and we were obviously both talking about our kids.

• It’s apple cider & pumpkin beer season which means it’s time to make my favorite drink: fill half a pint glass with a pumpkin beer of your choice and then top it off with apple cider. It’s delicious, it’s seasonal, and it comes courtesy of a Southwest Airlines inflight magazine that my husband and I read while flying to I don’t even remember where over a decade ago. We drink this every fall and it’s a great use of pumpkin beer if you buy some and then remember that pumpkin beer isn’t actually very good. But it’s good here.

• The university down the street from my house has a daycare center at the entrance to its campus. It is surrounded by a tall slatted fence that has an opaque netting draped over it to protect the privacy and safety of the kids when they are outside playing. For the last year or so, right across the street from the daycare, they have been doing construction on a massive building project so there are constantly big trucks and cranes and all manner of construction equipment coming and going. Because of this, they have cut a few large squares out of the daycare’s fence and put up plexiglass in those openings. The reason is obviously so that the children can watch the construction happening because little kids love construction almost as much as I love Diane Lane’s dress, but when you walk past the daycare as I often do when out with the dog or the baby, it has the feeling of a zoo exhibit. You can see the little kids running around, wrestling each other, sunning themselves. My dog, who is a herder at heart, gets all amped up at the kids racing by and I love the image it creates in my mind of him hurrying down the path, excited to get to the kid exhibit the way my actual kid hurries at the real zoo to see the lions or the giraffes. It’s delightful.

• My summer garden was a massive bummer, but my autumn garden is killing it right now.Every time I look at my dahlias now, I recall this poem by Brigit Young, which be warned is not happy-making, but is beautiful and heartbreaking and worth reading.

• Speaking of good reading (that is also beautiful and occasionally heartbreaking), I loved Natalie Marino’s chapbook, Under Memories of Stars.

• Though it is still warming up in the afternoons more than I would like, the mornings are cool which means I get to wear one of my chunky cardigan sweaters while I sit by the open window and drink my coffee. It is perhaps the smallest of small delights, but gosh I love it.

Happy October, all. I hope this month brings you many good things.