Joy

And now brings the end of the 35th week of 2020, the year that is lasting forever! (Or just seems like it is) My aim, as usual, is to record my daily joys to read on New Year's Eve and hopefully be reminded that every single day has something joyous, though some days you have to look really hard to find it.

                             Train passengers singing brings me great joy. Hope it does you too!

Wednesday: Jumped through another hoop dealing with Mom's estate. I had to change her car title to my name so we could legally sell it to the new owner. After over 4 weeks of waiting I finally received the new title in my name and was able to meet the new owner and turn all the paper work over to her. Wiping my hands clean of one more thing!


Thursday: I woke insanely early at 4:45. It was still dark and I was wide awake so I made a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen window to watch the lake awaken. Before dawn the lake is a gorgeous silver then right before the sun rises it becomes this glorious shade of apricot mirroring the sky. It lasts about 3 minutes before it turns  a tangerine shade, which  lasts for about two minutes, then right as the sun peeks over the hills the entire lake is golden for about another two minutes, I did not have my camera so this is just the apricot phase taken from my phone. It is still beautiful but not quite as apricoty as it is to the human eye. There is a huge joy watching the changes and if the mosquitos did not find me so delicious I would have taken pictures of the entire sequence. I managed one shot then made a hasty retreat from the deck back into the safe haven I call the kitchen.

Friday: I finished the second book I was reading then sat around twiddling my thumbs and doing a few chores. The main joy was TheHub who called and said he was headed back to the lake at a little after 2.  It was nice to have some wheels to go somewhere else. We drove around and did a little exploring before finding a new to us place to pick up some take out for an early dinner

Saturday: On our way home from the lake we did several errands, laughed and talked about everything and nothing. Drives to and from the lake give us some uninterrupted conversation time, which is a true joy. After completing all the errands and buying enough food to restock the lake kitchen, we grabbed a couple of hotdogs. Any night I don't have to cook is joyous.

Sunday: My cousin  and her husband stopped by on their way to the airport. It was great to see them even for the few minutes we visited. She is an excellent artist and had drawn a picture of Mom that she found on my Facebook page. It is actually my all time favorite photo of Mom.  My uncle, Mom's 94 year old brother, made a custom frame for the drawing. He does excellent work and made a walnut frame with a seagull inlay at the top of the frame, which is appropriate since the picture is one of Mom at the beach.

I also met another cousin and her husband at Mom's house. Mom had several pieces of furniture that belonged to my grandmother. Many of them are almost a century old and we wanted them to stay in the family, but neither my sister, Son2  nor I wanted them and it would be too costly to ship them to either Son1 or Son3.  They took a chest and a rocking chair, along with a lot of other things from Mom's. There is serious joy in letting go and passing things on.

Monday: It was a slow unhurried day with some drenching rain, along with sun, heat, and extreme humidity. There is immense joy in having a screened porch to sit on and enjoy the rain, and then having a/c to move into when the heat and humidity rear their ugly heads.

Tuesday: One of my dearest friends lost her husband a few weeks ago. Funerals in times of covid are horrid. You don't get to have the normal physical support of friends who would be there 10 minutes after they got word of the tragedy. Instead you have to rely on text, cards and flowers, along with food brought and left on the garage counter to keep contact at a minimum. I missed our conversations but had to let any phone call be on her terms. Today she felt like talking and we got to talk about how she is feeling and then we talked about some happier things. There was serious joy talking to her, even if it was sharing her grief.

I hope each of you look and find joy every day. It is out there, but sometimes it is a sneaky little $*!+.

Projects:

1. Took care of replacing the alarm system at the lake place

2. Rearranged the living room (kinda because the piano has to live in the same place it always lives and I had just recently moved the couch)