This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Saturday, February 1, 2022
3:10pm
All I really wanted to do today was think happy thoughts. Nothing major, just like… seashells.
And pretty lights. I swapped out the last of the Christmas lights for white lights and now everything glows whenever I want it to.
I wanted to hang out with nothing in particular going on in my brain, just letting the flotsam float by.
There’s a meditation technique where you attach your thoughts to fluffy clouds and watch them drift out of sight.
That’s what I was really in the mood for.
As such, I thought of using the word meandering, like meandering thoughts. But what I really wanted was something that implied happy meandering thoughts. Once again the English language failed me. This is why I have to use many, many words. Because if there was a single word for “thinking meandering random happy thoughts on a Saturday morning” then I would use it.
Rambling roaming wandering.
But… no.
I like the word meandering, it implies a pleasant aimlessness.
So my brain is meandering today.
Which means that this will be more fragmented and stream-of-consciousness than usual.
Let’s see where my brain meandered to.
It meandered to the old Pinterest board I used to have, which I defunctly still have, called “Today’s Happy.” I don’t remember when I started it. I don’t remember when I last posted to it. It was long enough ago that when I logged into my Pinterest account to see, I couldn’t actually figure out how Pinterest works anymore. Couldn’t even find my own board. Are boards still a thing?
Who knows. This is probably half the reason I stopped posting, because who wants to keep up with all these technology changes?
But. Meandering. Happy meandering.
The Today’s Happy board-not-board has sat, defunct, for a long time. I think I will resurrect it. I have not even been taking photos lately. There are huge gaps in my album where entire weeks and months go by with no photos. Mostly, I have photos of bread and cocktails in between.
And clouds. I have a lot of pictures of clouds. Maybe there are thoughts on some of them.
Maybe if I resurrect my Pinterest board then I will be more likely to seek and find happy things.
New project! Because do you know what I need more than anything else right now? A new project.
That was today’s first meandering thought.
Then I meandered into thinking about music. Last week I stopped by a coffee shop to pick up a specific coffee that Ralph likes. I say “coffee shop” but what I really mean is “coffee shack”. It was just a box with a window that looked out onto the sidewalk and you walk up to the window and order coffee.
I have never been to their store… window… shack thing before so I didn’t know what to expect. So I thought, “Oh. Shack. Interesting.”
The shack was playing music. It blared out to the whole street in an inviting way, in a “yes, you do want to look over here and see what’s happening” sort of way. I don’t know what it was playing when I walked up. I do know that after a few minutes it started to play Love Shack.
I couldn’t make this up.
The end result is that it is a week later and I am still humming Love Shack to myself every time I make coffee. And while I kneaded the bread yesterday. And when I made the pancakes today. And as I checked the mail this afternoon.
I just cannot get that song out of my head.
I read somewhere that the way to get a song out of your head is to stop trying to get it out of your head. Instead, you should play the whole song from beginning to end, just sing it out loud and then it will be done.
You should ask Spotify how well that worked for me. It has a count somewhere of how many times you’ve listened to a song.
So I started humming Neil Diamond instead.
I remembered the one time I ever sang karaoke. It was when we first moved into our apartment here in Franklin, and there was a social event. Since the apartment complex was new, there weren’t very many of us living here yet, so it was nice to get together with a few of the neighbors.
We had snacks and drank wine, then someone brought over their VR headset and I played an asteroid shooting game that was a ridiculous amount of fun. I mean, it looked like you were standing in a room of asteroids and ships flying at you, and you had to move around and shoot at them to keep them from hitting you. Why isn’t this more of a thing?
And then someone pulled out the karaoke machine and suddenly this thing I have never liked, this thing I would never do, I was standing there belting out Sweet Caroline with a thirteen year old girl and her father.
Badly. Very, very badly.
And it was fun.
Meandering.
I don’t get to talk about cookies again. They are boycotted.
Tea and honey.
I love the ritual of tea and honey. I was sitting on the couch guiding Ralph through some Destiny challenges, our weekend ritual, thinking that I hadn’t made any tea. Something about a day doesn’t feel quite right without tea.
Did you know that honey comes from all the flowers? Not just the clover and the wildflowers, but all the flowers. This didn’t really occur to me until we visited the Heidrun Meadery in Point Reyes. They have beehives on the property and make sparkling mead from their own honey. They also source local honey, and some not-so-local honey, to make mead.
They have mead made from carrot blossoms and eucalyptus blossoms and pumpkin blossoms. Which means that honey comes from all those things. It was from their mead that I learned radishes have blossoms, and therefore honey, and therefore mead.
I mean, it makes sense that growing things have blossoms, from which bees can make honey, but have you ever really thought about that before?
Radish blossom mead is quite possibly my favorite. And then my mother went and found actual radish blossom honey, which is absolutely my favorite. It doesn’t taste anything like a radish, but it’s so distinctive.
None of the honeys taste like the actual thing. Pumpkin blossom honey just tastes like honey, but it is dark and rich. Avocado honey (did you even know avocados have blossoms?) is dark and almost molasses-like. Holly honey is very light and lightly sweet. New Jersey Pine Barrens honey is the honey that tastes most like honey. It’s exactly what I think of when I think of honey, smooth, rich, sweet. It is tied for favorite with radish blossom.
I’ve had orange blossom, macadamia blossom, buckwheat.
You really have to match the tea to the honey. The apple cinnamon tea is just right with the holly honey because they are both light and mild. But the avocado honey is so rich that you really need to have it with the chocolate caramel tea.
It’s a whole art.
Meandering.
Meandering, random happy thoughts.
I made two cups of tea today, both the same, both with Hawaiian Ohia Lehua blossom honey. It’s light and sweet but super thick and grainy. You can practically spread it on toast. I have spread it on toast. With some peanut butter? That’s a happy thought right there.
In the midst of my meandering through blossoms and honey, a friend texted me this:
It’s true about tea and true about writing.
But what I really want to know, is am I broadcasting my thoughts that loudly? How is it that every time I think about or write about something, someone sends me something or says something that is exactly the thing?
Meandering.
Scones. I want to make scones.
Anyone want to send me a scone now?
I have never made them but my mother bought me lemon curd and clotted cream, neither of which I’ve ever had, and both of which have to go with scones because it seems exactly right.
I love this word choice today. There is absolutely nothing for me to make a point about, and no impetus to try.
Impetus. Good word.
Meandering.
Sometimes you just need to have a day of random, meandering happy thoughts. Thoughts on fluffy clouds, drifting by. It’s been a spectacular way to spend a Saturday so far, and since it’s almost halfway through February and I haven’t read a single book this year, I think I will spend some tea and reading time today. I have five started to choose from. Perhaps I will even conclude one.
Photo: an old barn at nearby Harlinsdale Farm, with some fluffy white thought clouds. One of my favorite places to watch clouds.