For years, I would wake up every day with the Jeopardy! theme song in my head. It was funny at first, but quickly became annoying. No matter what I did to combat it, the tune was always there as soon as I got up. It became this ominous thing that reminded me every day felt pressure filled. I hated it. And then it stopped. I just realized this week that I was getting up with different songs in my head each day. Songs I like, songs I had been listening to, which makes so much more sense. I think the Jeopardy! theme left when I finally got used to not working, when I actually felt retired and stopped waking up thinking I had to go to work. The brain is a weird and wonderful thing.
So that was my first joy for a week in which I don’t have all that much to write about it. It was a good week. Therapy was good, I had a good checkup with my pulmonologist, nothing bad happened. This past week was all about the little things.
I got a new storm door and, as a treat, a welcome sign that has interchangeable holiday decorations. My old storm door was from the dark ages. It had gothic spikes that covered most of the window. Now I can get more natural sunlight, more fresh air (it has a retractable screen), and best of all the cats now have a perfect view of the squirrels and birds. They spend most of their day on a rug in front of the door, observing all the animals they would kill if they were just allowed outside.
I watched a bunch of movies this week but none gave me more joy than Arthur Christmas.
Just an absolute joy of a movie. Charming, sweet, and funny misfit-saves-the-day kind of film. I recommend it for your holiday watching. I would love recommendations for more Christmas movies like this.
I cooked a whole bunch this week, making pizza, and chicken Francaise and honey ginger chicken thighs among other things. My meals don’t always come out fantastic, but they are always good. I have found absolute joy in cooking, to the point where I look forward to it every night instead of dreading it.
I’m going to cut this short today because I am going to the diner with my family for a big Sunday breakfast, and then I am going to see Taking Back Sunday perform songs from their new album at a record store. That is an ideal way to wrap up what was a pretty good week. Hope yours was great as well.
I will leave you with music from Birthday Dad, whom I discovered this week and fell in love with.
I have a similar dream every night, right before I wake up: We (family of three) are at the end of some vacation in a small resort town, we are late for our flight, we can't seem to find about a dozen important things that we absolutely need to take home with us, and nothing is going right. And I'm searching for the items in the resort's club house. There's a juke box with the Bee Gee's "How Deep Is Your Love" on and that's when I wake up to my alarm. And that song is then stuck in my head until I'm in my car driving to the train station.
I've tried different alarm songs to make sure it's not my specific one that is triggering this song in my dreams. No dice. I've just learned to live with slow disco music starting my day.
My wife wants to know if you are aware of
a. "The Upanishads" ???
b. the work of someone named "Peggy Rubin" regarding "joy" ??