Adding the date to the title might suggest that there’s significance to this date.
There isn’t. Not to me, anyway. There is to all the people who are having a birthday today – for them I imagine it’s quite a significant day. But there’s no significance for me.
And now I’m beginning to sound like I’m protesting too much, but I’m really just trying to work out why I added the date to the title. When I did it, mere moments ago, I had a reason, then I got distracted because I realised, when I typed the word ‘birthday’, that I’d missed my friend Airdre’s birthday two weeks ago and so had to write to her a very belated birthday wish, and now I’ve come back here and the reason for adding the date has slipped through the (increasingly) porous parts of my mind that holds reasons for doing things.
Very convoluted way of saying “I wrote the date and now can’t remember why”.
I could, of course, just delete the date and all of this nonsense and start again, but I’m not inclined to.
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Friday and that means it’s time for a Friday Feels post.
You know the drill. Three questions and an F-word.
- What made me happy this week? Not only normal happy, but the kind of happy that makes you do the weird little happy gesture with your hands that you try to keep to yourself because when other people see it they stick a label on you. That kind of happy. Let me tell you the story.
We were one minute and 17 seconds into our journey to Tumut last Thursday when I asked Tim to turn around. I’d seen a man building something out the front of someone’s place, and I needed to speak to him. Tim duly turned around and I went and spoke to the man. I didn’t know the man, but soon discovered his name and number, and arranged for him to visit me on Wednesday, my working from home day.
Kyle, for that is the man’s name, arrived on Wednesday and is the cause of my happy gesture. He came to give me a quote on some work I want done on the house, and he brought his six-month old daughter with him. He handed the baby to me while he was measuring up and talking tradie talk, so I got to hold said baby and talk to her and bring up some wind I saw she had trapped, and let her play with my hair (well, she was going to play with it whether I said she could or not – it’s just one of those baby things).
It was lovely. It’s been way too long since I’ve held a baby and she was an absolute delight. I hope I get to do it again. - What else made me happy? I’m glad you asked. Yesterday was a hot day. Clear blue sky, broken air con at work, very noisy fan pushing hot air around. Hot. I got home, put our working air con on, found my bathers and headed to the pool. We’d had the cover on the pool for a few days (maybe a week) and of course, the heater’s been on (apparently, in this part of the world you only put your pool heater on in the summer – never in the winter), so I was expecting it to be warm. Or warm-ish at the very least.
It was only 35C warm-ish!
It was blissful. Maybe a tad too warm, if I’m being really honest, but I did not mind at all. I swam laps (five strokes up and five and a half strokes back), floated, swam lengths under water, and floated some more. It was a fabulous day for my first swim of the season. The sun was very low in the sky when I dragged myself out, and there was a distinct chill in the air (I think the outside temperature had gone down to 25C by that stage), but I didn’t mind at all. I was, in fact, very happy. - Anything else? Now that you mention it is, there is. Funerals are not generally things that make people happy – unless you see them as a celebration of someone’s life and can distance yourself from the fact that that person will no longer be in your life (except as memories). And even then, they don’t really bring a sense of happiness. But they do provide opportunities for families to come together. I have four cousins on my mother’s side, and while I see each of them individually from time to time, it isn’t often that we get together. Usually only at funerals as it turns out. Friday last week I got to spend some time with three of my cousins on my Mum’s side and it was lovely to share memories of our shared grandparents and trips we’d done and look back on photos when we were all a lot younger and decide not to re-create the ones where I, as a 12 year old, was holding my cousin Michael, who was then a baby and is now, quite obviously not.
So, not “happy” happy, but it’s always great to connect.
My F-word for the week is the same as my sister’s as it turns out: festive. I, however, did not dress as an elf and embody the notion of festive as she did. But we did put up the Christmas tree and that gives the house quite a festive feel.
Only two more Fridays between now and Christmas, meaning only three between now and 2025.
Golly.
See you next week.
Musings from the cold 