Tag: 100 happy days

100 Happy Days: 89

Moooooooose! Meet Moose. I happened to be at the rescue office today when his foster mom brought him and two of his siblings in for supplies and medicine (good medicine, not “I’m sick” medicine). I was pretty sure he needed to come home with me after he curled up and napped against me for as long as I was willing to hold him. But apparently his foster mom thinks he’s pretty great, too, so she took him when she left.

Even a crappy cell phone photo can’t diminish the charm of a teeny baby puppy.

100 Happy Days: 87 (a/k/a Snoopy Saturday!)

For as far back as I can remember actually talking to people and not hiding behind one parent or another or on the other side of the locked door of my bedroom from invaders who might destroy my toys or read my diary, I liked to ask random questions as a way to gain insight into people. (I’ve also always been a fan of run-on sentences.) In the days before I thinned my Facebook herd (Nora’s term for it), thereby turning it into the place where I basically just link to this blog or stalk my family, this was my favorite thing to do there in my status updates. For example, I might say:

Donald Duck or Daffy Duck?

or

John, Paul, George, or Ringo?

or

Dynasty or Dallas?

Questions that mean nothing to anyone under thirty forty, but you get the idea.

The other night while Tom and I were out running errands, I spotted this at Barnes & Noble and bought it. It’s a box of 156 cards (it’s true; I counted them), each containing a question “guaranteed to spark an instant conversation!” While I have lots more readers of this blog than I did when I was on LiveJournal, I have fewer commenters. Maybe y’all are shy the way Wee Becky was. So today I’m beginning “Snoopy Saturdays.” Please use my comments here to answer my Saturday question. Because that will make me happy.

100 Happy Days: 84

Sometimes it’s the little things… I had a hanging wire basket many years ago–I think it was mandatory during one of those past decades when I’d probably barely cut my teeth–and who knows what happened to it along the way with a divorce and an ever-changing cast of roommates and homes.

Recently I was reading how this thing I do–putting damn near everything in the refrigerator because of the climate I live in–is bad for potatoes, onions, and some fruits and vegetables. I love almost all vegetables, but I have a problematic relationship with fruit. I like it okay, but I rarely think about eating it. And if I put it in the refrigerator, it’s really easy for me to forget we even have it.

Solution: back to the wire basket. Some things still have to be refrigerated, but as long as we eat those apples and oranges quickly, they can stay at room temperature. It’s working, because I’ve eaten at least half a piece of fruit a day ever since Tom figured out a place to hang this Container Store version in our small kitchen. Making healthier choices is a happy thing.

100 Happy Days: 81


This evening I went to Half Price Books looking for something that was not Jenny Lawson’s book, but when I saw Jenny Lawson’s book–in hardcover–for $6.99, I grabbed it right up. Because when the book came out a couple of years ago, every time I went to a bookstore they were always “out of stock” and “expecting more in” and so I’d leave and forget to go back, and then when I remembered, it would be the same story. Any time that happens, I usually forget that I wanted something because a new something takes its place. Then I’d read Jenny Lawson’s blog (The Bloggess, if you didn’t know), and I’d think, Damn, I need to get her book, only by then it was due out in paperback, so I waited, and then, you guessed it, the paperback was always out of stock wherever I went. It was like the years I could never find a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint after my mother removed it from our house before I could get my hands on it when I was fourteen or fifteen.

All that being said in more words than should ever have been used, when I saw this book and its bargain price, I was a little conflicted. After all, if I bought this copy, Jenny Lawson wouldn’t be getting royalties because I was buying it used. Though I mean it when I say I don’t care if people buy my books in used bookstores and deprive me of royalties, because if they like that used book, they may buy other books I’ve written or helped write, or they may tell people how much they loved the book because people always share positive information, right, just as they do in comments online?

But I still don’t like to feel that I’m depriving authors of the pittance they make on their book sales.

Then, as I held the book, I reminded myself of three things.

1. Unless the book was stolen from Brazos Bookstore (who I assume was its original seller because of the bookmark inside it), Jenny Lawson has already earned her royalty pittance.

2. Stephenie Meyer never surprised me by showing up at one of my book signings. And I know how to spell her name!

3. I never got to collate paper with Wil Wheaton. Actually, that last thing isn’t really a big deal, because though I like Wil Wheaton, he’s not first on my list of celebrities I want to collate paper with. (That’s not a euphemism.)

So overall, I’d say Jenny Lawson’s writing career has gone pretty well for her and she won’t care that I bought her book used. But because she has entertained me so often, because I think she’s a genuinely good person who’s done many generous and kind things for other people, and because the stories she’s shared and the information she’s provided about depression helped me understand this disease better at a time when I really needed to understand it, there is another way I can show my admiration. On some future transport, there’ll be a dog named Foxen–but only because Hamlet von Schnitzel (pictured on the book’s dust jacket) has too long a name.