Tag Archives: small things

Whatever Wednesday: Doughnuts at the Carwash

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Do you remember when you were a kid? The littlest things made us happy, didn’t they? Like those machines that you put quarters in and get tiny toys that break the instant oxygen hits them? They were fabulous for all of 1.5 seconds, right? Or how about sitting in your room, building things out of Legos or playing with Play-doh? It did not take much to put a smile on our faces. Ahhh, those were the days.

Flash forward to adulthood. Get up at the break of down to drink did coffee, run around like crazy to get ready for work and/or get the kids ready for school and/or both, ultimately forget something, have to go back for it, drop the kids off, go to work, or run errands, then finally get home at the end of the day, dinner, maybe a little time to yourself, and then bam. Bedtime. How the hell bedtime get here so fast? Close your eyes after setting your alarm so you can do it all again the next day.

Did you take any time for joy? Any little things tucked into your day that made you smile and giggle as if you were a 5 year old who just got the toy you wanted out of the quarter machine? No? Well, that’s a damn shame.

The key, as a lot of people will tell you, to staying happy, is to maintain a stranglehold on that childhood innocence and wonder. Pick up just enough common sense and cynicism to function in the grown up world but dear GOD don’t let that childhood innocence and wonder dissipate. Do stupid stuff. Let go. Have fun. Laugh inappropriately and loudly at everything, anything, and nothing at all. Do things that make you smile, often, with people you love.

Stuff like I do with J.

Stuff like what we did tonight at the car wash.

We ran to the grocery store to pick up a few things to finish off dinner. Then, we spotted the doughnuts. Lately we had denied ourselves this guilty pleasure but tonight they were salacious sirens nestled in a forest of sweet treats, begging to be rescued. We reluctantly (okay, not so reluctantly) rescued six of them, planning to take them home and hug them ever so gently with our stomachs after sending them for a ride down the esophagus flume.

After the grocery store, we checked to see if the car wash was open. The past week and a half has covered the car in salt, snow, and other random ick but because of the frigid temperatures, we have been unable to wash it because well, the water would just freeze instantly.

The car wash was open, so we turned in after a horde of cars passed by. Two lanes were open, and we, we chose the one with the idiot. His driver side door was open, his feet on the ground, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip as if it were a man clinging to a cliff waiting for a stiff breeze to come along. He wore a hat, a fedora style hat, and glasses. He slid his card into the slot, tapped the screen, and stared curiously at the screen. One of the employees came over to help him, sliding his card in for him. As we idled behind him, we watched the vehicle in the other lane surge forward.

I evaluated the situation after we sat there for a couple more minutes, put the car in reverse, and headed for the other lane. We pulled up, I activated the screen, made my choices, paid, and moved forward as the winner in the other lane sat there, continuing to struggle with the machine.

An employee directed us onto the auto-fed car wash. As I popped the car into neutral, J grabbed the doughnuts.

“Which one you want? The cruller?”

doughnut in carwash“Sure! Just a minute.” I put my wallet away, then took the doughnut. I squealed like a little kid. Doughnuts. In the car wash. I took out my phone and snapped a pic. There was just something so gleefully delicious about eating a sweet donut whilst hidden in the soapy flaps and rollers of the car wash. It felt so wrong yet so damn good. Best damn cruller ever.

Joy in life is found in the simplest of things, the things we forget how to see when we get past a certain age. Just like Journey advises… don’t stop believing.

And now? I’m gonna have a doughnut at 10pm at night.

Because joy.

Making Small Moments Matter

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There is no inspiration like a deadline for a writer.

I’m up against a personal one at the moment. I don’t have to sit here and write for anyone beside myself. But yet, I dragged myself out of bed because I realized I had not yet written my 500 words for the day.

Know what I did instead?

I had a great day.

I woke up at 8ish, and as the world came into focus, I noticed snow had covered the world outside just enough to turn everything white. I got up and opened the blinds all the way to savor the crisp white landscape greeting me. After crawling back into bed,  my boyfriend completely surprised me and brought coffee upstairs. We sat there, the two of us, his daughter still asleep, and talked as we stared out the windows at the snowy scape.

As we chatted, the snow began to fall again. Softly at first, then it increased to the point that the houses across the field were barely visible. A knock at the door let us know his daughter was awake and he left to go downstairs with her.

I got dressed and made myself breakfast. We would be heading to the gym soon and I did not want a full stomach when I got into the pool.

They ate shortly after I did and then we all got ready to head to the gym.

One of my favourite things about swimming is the meditative quality of the water. Sometimes, I do entire laps with my eyes shut – on purpose. I focus on the movement of the water around my body and the grace of gliding. Today was my third day in a row back at the gym. I had stopped for multiple reasons but am glad I am going back. It is a slow start, much like this writing has been.

When we got home, the girl and I made marshmallows. She read the ingredients and the directions, eagerly wanting to taste each and every ingredient. The only one she did not like was the dab of vanilla extract (which, let’s face it, isn’t delicious until it’s been added to something anyway).

As we prepared the cornstarch & powdered sugar to coat the casserole dish the marshmallows would rest in, we happened to accidentally get into a snow fight inside and somehow ended up with it all over ourselves, laughing like the happiest of fairies the entire time. Cleaning up the mess wasn’t annoying at all (the old me would have never done something like this). She was blissfully happy at tasting the marshmallow fluff and proudly took a spoonful up to her dad for him to taste.

It’s tiny moments like these which took up my entire day and are the reason that I am sitting here, in the dark, listening to When Doves Cry by Prince, typing like mad into WordPress to make my personal deadline of writing 500 words before midnight.

Like going to the gym, I need to get back into writing every day. So far, I have done just that with my words. I have also been okay with just WRITING and not organizing. Hitting publish even if I am not sure that it’s something I want out there.

A life is meant to be lived and you should do what you are called to do. For me, that’s writing. This month, all these words which have poured forth have been therapeutic. After my divorce, I stopped writing prolifically. I felt I had nothing to say or no right to say what needed to say because I was an absolute wreck. Turns out, I have a lot to say. I just had a lot of internal bullshit to wade through first. I may still be wading through it but that’s okay too. Because we are all just human and we all have our own bullshit to wade through.

What matters is that you get it out and have people to share your bullshit with – even if they just sit there and wrap an arm around you, saying nothing at all because sometimes? Sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

Other times, however, exactly what you need is a snowstorm in the kitchen with a child.

That’s exactly what I needed today.

And now? Now I’m going to sleep.

G’night, y’all.