Lend Me Some Sugar--I AM Your Neighbor!

Oh, you guys.

Please bear with me...this work schedule plus parenting class plus teething/cold-crummy naps is just killing me over here, and I'm woefully behind in reading, commenting, and writing. Does it help if I tell you that I feel disproportionately guilty about it and often have fits of pique where I'm all, "Goddammit! If I can't handle the responsibility of a blog, then maybe I don't deserve to have one!"? And then I throw things.

Anyway, I didn't mean to (um, again) post this big ol' dramatic Dead Mom post and then disappear. And I wanted to thank you all for your--for lack of a better term--positive vibes and thoughtful responses to my Mother's Day post. MOTH mentioned that it made him sad to read it, which, of course, wasn't my intention, and I actually had quite a nice day with minimal wallowing. But, as I noted in the comments in response to Fie, I'm trying to sort out my ambivalence about it all. Also, maybe Anne Lamott will Google herself and find that post and be impressed and then we'll be BFF writing friends. You think?

I have eight million things I could write about, and I want to think about none of them. My head is full of friends in unfortunate situations, of oil spills and floods and fucking Tea Partiers who have a shot at political office, of this horribly sad drama around a family I work with where the kids just got pulled into foster care, of the fact that three of our big bosses at work are taking early retirement in quick succession because of the changes being wrought upon us, of union meetings and vet bills and did I mention the baby with the cold and the up-all-night thing? Yeah, I'm a regular Typhoid Mary Sunshine over here, and I just haven't wanted to go there. (You know, more than I did just now in a weirdly passive-aggressive run-on sentence.)

So instead, I'm listing a few things that make me happy no matter what. In no particular order, and just now off the top of my head:

1) A bike ride in the sunshine. I went out again last weekend, and that 30 minutes totally recharged my soul and smoothed out all my rough edges.

2) The sound "Hey Ya" by Outkast. I can't help it...no matter where I am or what I'm doing, you play this song and I will shake it like a Polaroid picture. I will sing along in my white girl way about my baddest behavior. And it will always, always cheer me up.

3) Talking to my dad. He's hilarious and he's wise and he's coming in two weeks! Whee!!!

4) The way Tankbaby laughs when I read Sandra Boynton's "Blue Hat, Green Hat." For the uninitiated, basically each page shows three animals wearing some item of clothing correctly, and a turkey wearing it incorrectly. The text is minimal: "Blue hat, green hat, yellow hat...oops." It tickles me to no end that Tankbaby gets that there's something funny about the "oops" part, even though he likely doesn't get what's funny about a turkey with a hat on his foot (to which the correct answer is, "hell, what isn't funny about a turkey with a hat on his foot?"). He waits for it and then he laughs this Ernie-esque chuckle that just slays me.

5) Calvin and Hobbes. Unequivocal brilliance in each and every strip.

6) Rereading a book I've read a dozen times already. When I'm stressed or depressed, I don't want some new book with its potential for unpleasant reminders or less-than-perfect dialogue. I want a book I've read over and over again, that I know chunks of by heart, that won't surprise or disappoint me. Give me my Fannie Flagg and a warm spot on the couch and I'm good.

7) Mike & Ike candy. I can't have it in the house because I literally never get sick of it. When I was in college (and had the metabolism to match), my parents would sometimes give me the 5-lb bag from Sam's Club at Christmas. It was always gone before Valentine's Day. But diabetes-causing-gluttony aside, the fruity chewy goodness of Mike & Ikes will always cheer me up, even as I'm mentally prepping myself for eventual insulin shots.


OK, now your turn. What random things cheer you up?