43things

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.