Small Cheerful Things

Kat M

Ooh, look! String!
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I dunno. Paddingtons and Poohs and Teddys in police uniforms roaming the streets looking for stray food would be a adorable sign of the state of things.

Or that I've been inside too long.

That would be delightful. I have some marmalade, but I'm keeping the honey for myself.
 

grandma2isaac

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Things here in Northern Indiana are opening up. We have numbers that are still climbing, but I think a lot of that is due to the increased testing. My happy place right now is the laughter and squeals of the neighborhood children. It's like magic after so long without it. Even living right across the street, I rarely heard them for a couple of months. A lot of the people here did bears in the windows, I just took half of mine out of the windows. Leaving the rest for a while longer.
 

Goshawk31

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I think the real metric to watch is not how many more tests are being done but the percent of the tests that come back positive. John Hopkins has a good page showing these kinds of statistics here and for just a little bit more good news, your state (Indiana) is on a nice downward trend.
 

mccardey

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Big things are great. But sometimes it's the small things that brighten someone's day, often all out of proportion to the thing itself.

I gathered up all my pink plastic flamingos and put them in the flower bed by the mailbox. With the different sizes I've accumulated over the years, it looks like four generations of flamingo family have gotten together to say hi to passersby. It amuses me, and I figure it should bring a smile to the faces of people driving or jogging by. (And even if somebody really hates pink plastic flamingos, it'll at least give them something else to think about.)

Have you done a small thing to put a little cheerfulness into the world? Or, what small thing did someone else do that made you smile?

Yes I have *sticks up hand* I had surgery yesterday under sedation yesterday and now I'm awake and stoned-posting and hoping I'm stoned-posting on AW because otherwise people will think less of me or be very confused or something, but my new plan is to live the rest of my life under sedation ok? This has been my first TED talk.


I was going to write you a poem but this will have to to do.

ETA: And I just came back to tell you it's sedation stoned, not like illicit drugs. Just in case you don't know me. And I think this post prolly should be removed - or we could keep it us as a little cheer-up for all the old writers who live on their own and have to have surgery with sedation and are worried about it. They should stop worrying. I have stopped worrying.
 
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jennontheisland

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Yes I have *sticks up hand* I had surgery yesterday under sedation yesterday and now I'm awake and stoned-posting and hoping I'm stoned-posting on AW because otherwise people will think less of me or be very confused or something, but my new plan is to live the rest of my life under sedation ok? This has been my first TED talk.


I was going to write you a poem but this will have to to do.

ETA: And I just came back to tell you it's sedation stoned, not like illicit drugs. Just in case you don't know me. And I think this post prolly should be removed - or we could keep it us as a little cheer-up for all the old writers who live on their own and have to have surgery with sedation and are worried about it. They should stop worrying. I have stopped worrying.

This post cheered me today. Thanks.
(also, I was stoned-reading when I read it)
 

Chris P

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Yes I have *sticks up hand* I had surgery yesterday under sedation yesterday and now I'm awake and stoned-posting and hoping I'm stoned-posting on AW because otherwise people will think less of me or be very confused or something, but my new plan is to live the rest of my life under sedation ok? This has been my first TED talk.


I was going to write you a poem but this will have to to do.

ETA: And I just came back to tell you it's sedation stoned, not like illicit drugs. Just in case you don't know me. And I think this post prolly should be removed - or we could keep it us as a little cheer-up for all the old writers who live on their own and have to have surgery with sedation and are worried about it. They should stop worrying. I have stopped worrying.

Took me three times reading that to know what you were talking about. Completely sober, etc., just my normal clueless "Huh?" self. Big silly smile on my face now. Thanks!

And best wishes the surgery went well and that you're all on the mend now.

For me, my wife and I are starting to look at houses (not a small or cheerful thing! But prices are beginning to fall a little). To see just how much noise the interstate produces we got take-out from our favorite sandwich place (something we've only started doing again recently) and sat in a city park (city parks only recently reopened) just on the other side of the sound barrier (not much noisier than all the HVAC machinery in our high-rise apartment cluster), and watched little league baseball practice (practices just now resumed although no games scheduled).

We'd forgotten what that all was like.
 

Maryn

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How about a really small cheerful thing? Weekdays we feel safe walking on the rail trail in the area. (Weekends it's too busy, impossible to social distance even if the other person is trying, too.) Today, right at the start of the walk, motion caught my eye.

A toad was hopping in that distinctive this-is-how-toads-move way. He was all black and, by my estimate, somewhat larger than a quarter inch but short of three-eighths. (I sew, can you tell?) Just charming. A runner passing behind us saw us bent over and asked if we were okay. He was satisfied with, "Fine. Teeny tiny toad."

Maryn, who did not have her phone, so no picture
 

kinokonoronin

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Well I take one Friday off from work for every two weeks (it's a quarantine thing to help care for my son, as my spouse is absolutely knackered at this point).

My son and I make a to-do list at the beginning of the day and then we set out on those tasks for the rest of the day. He'd been badgering me to "help him make a Mega Man game". He's six years old. To him that means drawing out the stage select screen on a sheet of 8.5 x 11. I finally gave in today, hoping to make his day nicer. I committed to drawing a boss enemy sketch, and apparently he liked it so well that he skipped an activity he normally holds sacred in order to reserve time for me to draw another one.

They're stupid, amateurish sketches but they made my son happy and he won't stop talking about them. :Trophy:
 

Tazlima

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My quaker parrot, Gus, came to us knowing how to say "Good Boy." Over time, I also taught him to say Boyfriend's name, which happens to start with a B.

Gus recently portmanteauified the two into "Good [Boyfriend]."

Whenever the bird praises him, Boyfriend get all happy/bashful and even a little flustered (think Chopper from "One Piece"). It's quite possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.
 

Tazlima

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Yes I have *sticks up hand* I had surgery yesterday under sedation yesterday and now I'm awake and stoned-posting and hoping I'm stoned-posting on AW because otherwise people will think less of me or be very confused or something, but my new plan is to live the rest of my life under sedation ok? This has been my first TED talk.


I was going to write you a poem but this will have to to do.

ETA: And I just came back to tell you it's sedation stoned, not like illicit drugs. Just in case you don't know me. And I think this post prolly should be removed - or we could keep it us as a little cheer-up for all the old writers who live on their own and have to have surgery with sedation and are worried about it. They should stop worrying. I have stopped worrying.

I love it! Don't delete it! Here's to a quick and thorough recovery.
 

Chris P

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The fact that Pet Finder exists. I get to spend hours cooing "Oooh, look at the good girl! She's so sweet! YES SHE IS!!!!"

I can only take a few minutes though. It's time to leave when my cursor hovers over "Inquire to Shelter about Quincy." That's a Rubicon best not crossing until I have a lifestyle that can be fair to the animal.
 

Maryn

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Our daughter replaced her 26 year old car yesterday. The new one is blue and shiny and has only 17K miles on it.

Maryn, excited on her behalf
 

Chris P

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Liz_V

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So, I started this thread talking about my pink flamingo flock. During the shutdown, one of the big craft stores had large metal flamingos that would have been the perfect addition, sitting right there in their front window. Taunting me! The store was closed, and they weren't available from the website. I waited, and waited, and then one day I saw the store was open, so in I went... and they'd already sold out all 20+ flamingos, with no more to come.

I admit, I pouted. But then... I had this old sheet of plywood in the garage that I wanted to get rid of. And I have a jigsaw. So I bought a little paint, and now I have a giant plywood flamingo!

I can't seem to get AW's image posting to work, but you can click here.

You can't really see them now that the balloon flowers have taken off, but there are stealth flamingos hidden amongst the greenery. And, yes, a nearly eight foot tall "plamingo" watching over all.
 

Maryn

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I click and it says the image can't be displayed because it contains errors. Wrong shade of pink, maybe?

Maryn, ducking
 

Maryn

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First out-loud laugh of the day!
 

Liz_V

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LOL!

Sorry about the link trouble; it seems to work for some people, but not others. If you copy the text of the URL:

https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/file/837.jpg

and paste it into your browser, the image should display just fine.
 

Liz_V

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Aw, that was so cool!
 

Ari Meermans

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You're welcome, Taz. I keep going back to it—not only is it lovely, it stirs the imagination too, doesn't it?
 

mrsmig

Write. Write. Writey Write Write.
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Her startle at the end of it is magical.