Little Pockets of Joy

When it comes to the small things in life, one of my core philosophies is this:

Take the good personally. Don’t take the bad seriously.

Someone tells me to have a good day? I take that personally.

A kid dresses me down and roasts me? I don’t take that seriously.

It’s a pollyanna view of life, but it is what it is: it works for me: it’s a fluffy mental toughness that helps me not feel chaotic when that’s all the world seems to be.

Because, truly, the world right now does feel more than a little chaotic and scary: that being the case, wasting all my energy on the small anger moments isn’t something I’m interested in.

Closely related and maybe even stemming off this philosophy is another core belief:

Small things are worth getting excited about.

And those small things for me? Those things that give me pure happiness for seemingly no reason at all? I like to think of those as little pockets of joy.

Introducing: Little Pockets of Joy™

I’ve realized that there are minute joys I have that I can choose to gloss over or focus on.

To focus on those can uplift your day: to gloss over them can make an ehh day look like a throwaway.

These are the small, lovely things in life I like to focus on. I think we all have them. I think we all need to have them.

What are those things that are specific to you that, for some reason, bring you immense amounts of joy?

It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else.

It could be mums in the fall.

It could be sunshine.

It could be a five minute ‘take a breather’ time after the gauntlet of putting young kids to bed.

Here are the little areas that have brought me a lot of joy recently.

Muscadines

There are few parts of fall I love as much as muscadines.

These are the blue collar grapes: they don’t require all the fuss of a full-blown vineyard. Or grape garden. Whatever they call them these days.

The majority of folks I know have some access to them, whether it’s their own vines, a grandparent’s, an aunt’s, or a friend’s.

I could eat myself sick on them. I favor the green-gold kind, but I’ll never turn away the purple ones, either.

It’s funny how our taste buds change: as a child, I was never too interested in them.

Now? I could feast on a bag like no one’s business.

Sitting outside in the afternoon

I’ve told you before that Trey and I like to sit outside.

As fall’s gotten here?

It’s become a daily activity for me (and, often, for Trey too).

Just about every afternoon, I’ll go outside, set up my lawnrocker, and work on grading papers or some type of school work.

I don’t like to bring school to the house, per say, but right now, it’s a necessary thing. Having Boone out there is the cherry on top.

Because he’s a big stick guy, our backyard looks like we’ve scattered firewood all over. It’s totally worth it, and it’ll be a sweet deal when the weather is actually cool enough for the remnants to go into the firepit.

It might be February before that happens, but imagine all the wood we’ll have then!

Homecoming Week

Homecoming week is my Superbowl. By this point, you might have seen pictures, but this year, on the docket was a Benjamin Franklin outfit.

Past favorites have been Mrs. Frizzle, an Oompa Loompa, and (of course) Joe Exotic.

For this year’s Tacky Day, I realized my opportunities were endless: after 9 years of teaching, I’ve accumulated more dress up clothes than I ever had as a child.

Add in Momma’s dress up clothes from her time as a teacher, and I have a veritable trove of gold.

This cooler weather

While I do understand that this has been a hotter week, the two weeks preceding couldn’t have been nicer.

I actually had to put on some joggers one evening to (naturally) sit outside.

Gives me hope for this fall. I know that we’re in fake fall right now: we still have some heat headed our way.

I haven’t bought all the way in, but I have brought out some sweaters bit by bit.

Lazy Saturdays

Last weekend was a dream.

Trey and I have been on the go a lot, traveling here and there for weddings. We went to Mexico, Denver, and Houston.

That’s been the best: we love traveling and seeing new places.

But it is really hard to beat a weekend spent at home.

Last Saturday, we played pickleball, cleaned the house, and finished up in time to watch some football.

It’s hard to beat a Saturday like that.

A clean house

There was nothing I hated more as a child than hearing we had to clean the house over the weekend.

The cleaning was a (seemingly) all- Saturday affair: unsurprisingly, we complained our way through.

Surely, the day of cleaning was the worst for my Momma. Imagine having to listen to arguing, break up fighting, and still just getting a half-done job at the end of it.

Now, though? The biggest, easiest boost to my mood is a clean house.

Few things have that same level of instant gratification, save for mowing grass (which I also love).

Last weekend, sitting on the couch and watching football was all the more enjoyable because I wasn’t looking at clutter.

I abhor clutter.

I work in clutter every day.

I do not want to go home to clutter too.

Turning on some essential oils, too? What more could you ask for?

My college self cringes at this current iteration of me everyday.

The Georgia Bulldawgs

Look…last weekend’s ball game wasn’t the best for our marriage: as many of you know, Trey is a Tennessee Volunteer. I am a Georgia Bulldawg.

Our general rule is that we will root for the other’s team, so long as we aren’t playing one another. Well, the one weekend we can’t say we were able to be overly cordial was this past weekend.

Now that we have a little distance, I have to say that I am overjoyed with the Georgia win, and I’m pretty thrilled with how Tennessee played, too.

I said from the beginning that I wanted to see a competitive game: we got that in spades.

That said, I did absolutely want Georgia to win.

Saturday held three and a half hours of fun. The end result? Well, we went in knowing it would make one of us sad.

And that it did.

I didn’t gloat because I don’t believe in being a bad winner: plus, apart from hitting the wall in joy at that crunch time run by Nick Frazier and the two point conversion, I didn’t do a single thing to contribute to this victory.

All the same, good playing Vols. And all the same (samer??), Go Dawgs.

Brushing Boone

Speaking of Dawgs, let’s talk about the goodest boy™, young Boone Kotara. He is still living his best life, minding commands at a 48% rate (specifically when there are no other distractions around) and making our lives a lot more fun.

He also enjoyed the excitement from the game the other night: when one of our teams scored, we would hug and celebrate him to the point where he thought he was the one doing all the good things.

But, as the seasons change, and as he gets older, his coat has been changing too. Add that to the fact that he got a bit of a break out because he has a chicken allergy, and I will tell you that we wade through dog hair every day.

I vacuum just about every day.

I still can’t keep up.

But one of the things I love to do is brushing him outside.

Out in the yard, he chews on a toy, and I get busy fighting his hair.

You won’t be surprised to hear that, along with many burnable sticks in the backyard, we also have an immense amount of blonde fluff the lawnmower will need to tend to.

That whirlwind of hair gets to going outside, and I am all sunshine and rainbows.

Again, I think it’s the instant gratification.

He loves the attention. He acts like he never gets any, but there are few things that are loved in this life quite like the dog of two married people who have no children to steal his attention.

Doggie Socks

We have a very slippery hardwood floor. Boone thinks it’s the coolest.

He loves to run, jump, and slide across it. Because we are halfways responsible, we are concerned about his joints.

Therefore, we did the very irresponsible and not at all rational thing of getting him socks.

Do I even need to tell you that he hates them with all of his heart?

He is a momma’s boy, but after we put those socks on, he IGNORED me for half an hour.

His gait was similar to that of a Clydesdale horse.

It was hilarious. It was adorable.

He fought us every step of the way when we tried to put them on him. Therefore, we could only put on the front paw socks.

That made him even madder.

We haven’t tried it since, but there is just something about seeing a dog in clothes that tickles me.

Just to add to the silliness, I’ll have you know that Momma thinks he would like them more if we got him Crocs.

So it’s a styling issue, I guess?

Buying meat from the butcher

We knew this month would entail a lot of traveling. So, we paused the Butcher Box order, and decided that we would buy meat as we go.

Therefore, over the course of the month, I’ve been getting the proteins from local butchers.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the new joint, Big M’s Meat Market, in Cochran.

I highly recommend. We got chicken tenderloins, chicken and steak wraps, and some sausage.

It was topnotch.

This past week, I made my way up to Harris’ Kuntry Market. I ordered my things, and I got home. When I started to cook, I realized that every cut of meat I’d gotten was wrapped in bacon.

Lord, please don’t let the functional medicine doctor be able to tell that on my blood test.

This is what happens when I’m in a hurry and under pressure: I resort to bacon.

I don’t know why this has given me joy, but my kids at school will tell you that I love a good grocery shopping trip. I know that’s not normal.

Let me live.

Let me find my joy in various proteins wrapped in bacon.