Yes, there is more than one thing here today, but doesn’t life seem so much sweeter when the weather is good (however you define that)?

The weather is beautiful here: low-80s, low humidity (and no, not just for DC), and one of those magnificent, random breezes, the kind with no descernible direction or purpose that hints at powerful weather to come, blows. For me there’s something life renewing about weather like this. It makes me want to expose every inch of skin I reasonably can and only reenforces my dislike of shoes and socks.

So today’s things:

• Beautiful weather (and being able to work at home to enjoy it)
• That the emergency visit to the vet this morning only cost me 5 hours and $180 and that the cat is OK (he should drink more water, but who shouldn’t)
• Getting a decent night’s sleep last night (’cause tired = stupid for me)
• Knowing that I have at least one friend in the world who is willing to give help when I can bring myself to ask and to ask for help when she needs it.

These things make me happy today. More than I have most days. I must be lucky.

*Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts, Ranked #2 single for 1973

Working at home has its advantages: the ability to open the windows, access to sunlight, myriad choices for lunch, not having to share your bathroom with the whole office building.

And then there are the little bunnies.

At some point during a conference call this morning I found myself staring out the window wondering if I was seeing what I thought I saw.  Yes, helping herself to a little honeysuckle was the smallest wild rabbit I’ve ever seen.  I don’t think she was any bigger than my hand, which, while not small, isn’t all that big.

It made me smile, so here it is.

My desk overlooks the back yard at my house. Most days I’m at my desk some time between 5:45 and 7:00 which is just in time to catch a lot of the avian life that flocks to the little woods I call my back yard.

This morning in the 4+ inch tall grass that surrounds the cover to my neighbors’ water meter which is, yes, inside my yard (don’t ask), was the dull red breast of a small robin. The bird didn’t move for a full five minutes and my first thought was that I’d be doing GRU duty before breakfast because one of the neighborhood cats killed but did not eat this robin.

Then the bird moved suddenly in that ridiculous hopping way they do when they can’t decide if they’re going to use their miracle powers of flight or not. It hopped over to the fence and flapped its wings a couple of times. Fluffy white down protruded from “underneath” the robin’s red vest at the bottom near its legs which leads me to believe that this was not a very old animal at all. It sat by the fence for a good ten minutes turning its head this way and that but mostly just staring off into some point in birdy space.

It’s an odd thing to make me happy, that I didn’t have to spend my morning with rubber gloves and a plastic bag (I know, fun for some people; for me, not so much) but more, I think, what made me happy is that nature, often so harsh, managed to surprise me not with death but with a calm individual in a species not exactly known for its attention span.

You can learn a lot of things about a city when doing research before you move. You can look at photos, read restaurant reviews, check out crime reports, look at rents, and find population statistics. There are innumerable cost of living calculators that tell you how far your current salary will go in a new city. But the one thing you can never find out without visiting a city multiple times is how it smells. And every place smells different at different times.

In the spring DC smells like flowers in just about any part of the city. Sweet, soft scents float on the warm wind and give the brain happy, happy thoughts. You can always tell when summer has finally arrived. Not by the calendar, not by the temperature, but by the change in smell: in the summer the city smells like sweat and warm tar; pavement and car exhaust and just a touch of bar-b-que (don’t ask me how, but it does; I wouldn’t want to be a vegetarian in a city that smells of roasting pork).

I went for a walk today and while the azaleas are already on the wane a couple of weeks early due to late cold and early heat, there are still plenty of flowers to be seen and appreciated. I was surprised by something at eye level and above that I think is a variety of honeysuckle but if it is the flowers are like nothing I’ve seen before in my life. No stems to pick and suck the juice from; just flat, white flowers on a vine. The scent, though, the scent was as sweet and surprising as that of a new lover.

Yes, it made me happy. It made today not a waste of time.

In the “find at least one thing each day that makes me happy and record it every day for a year” quest:

There is an apartment building I walk by regularly which boasts in its yard a cherry tree of the variety most prized by so many visitors to my town. The other day when I walked by the wind was blowing and the tree was raining soft pink petals everywhere. The sidewalk, steps, and yard of this apartment building were covered in them. It made me smile. Don’t know why, but it did.

BDU cargo shorts are, apparently, the key to looking like you work at the garden center. I must have gotten asked a dozen times this morning “Do you work here?” or “Where can I get basket?” Thankfully no one asked me what plant needed what because when it comes to flowers once you get past “pretty” and “soft” I’m pretty much at a loss. I guess I didn’t look as confused as I felt. This is probably a good thing.

In today’s list of things that made me happy this weekend:

• Getting the chainsaw started (’cause the arborist’s helmet in safety orange with the face screen and the built in hearing protection is so sexy).
• Watching for a very long time and at quite a close proximity a honey bee pollinating the phlox I was planting in the newly expanded front flower bed.
• That a very large racoon successfully made his way head first down the oak tree across the street from my house.
• Home made waffles with bacon in them (yes, bacon).
• The fact that good weather has, finally, arrived, and literally every window in my house is open.

These are, among others, the things which made me happy this weekend.

I’ve been mucking about with 43things.com and I’m finding it rather neat and motivating. Yes, I used the word neat.

As near as I can tell 43things was developed as more of a “getting things done” site than it was as a social networking or peer support site. It seems to have evolved, though, into something that can be used to effect real personal behavioral change with the support of random strangers.

Oh, sure, there are the standard number of those with short attention spans whose biggest dream is to “meet [insert celebrity here].” In the past few days I’ve seen that celebrity be anyone from Kiefer Sutherland to Richard Gere to Jimmy Carter. There are also more than a fair number of get a tattoo or have [name your body part here] pierced goals.

But there are other goals listed too, things like “take more pictures,” “find new music,” “be nicer to my parents,” and “live less inside my own head.” Nebulous things that may mean a great deal to the person who originated the goal and which express something meaningful for those who have glommed on to it since.

Right now I only have three things on my list and it is here that my goal intersected with my day. Today I walked by the Marriot Wardman Park in Woodley Park. The hotel itself is up a hill from the sidewalk and the gardeners who keep the grounds are diligent about making sure the flower beds are weeded and mulched. One section of the flower bed has been given over to bulbs, tulips at this time of year, and it is clear that whoever planted it was going for effect with alternating white and red groupings. This gardener succeeded but not totally. There, in the middle of nicely planned arrangement of red and white lurk the tulip ninjas. Purple tulips dark and mysterious against the bright backgrounds of their neighbors. It made me smile to think of them waiting underground all year to bloom.

And that is one of the things that made me happy and here I’ve written it down.