30 Beautiful Things

My friend Clare, who writes Three Beautiful Things, is off on a ten-week beautiful trip to Africa. In her absence, and in keeping with my current practice with The Artist's Way, I've decided to compile a weekly list (there's no way I'd be disciplined enough to do this every day, like Clare does) of things I've noticed or experienced that have given me pleasure, which I shall put on on Fridays, as sort of a counterpoint to Monday Moaning (which is actually one of my pleasures, because no one can complain like Clevelanders -- except maybe New Yorkers when it goes below 40 degrees. Pansies!)

Here's my list for the week of January 22:

1. old folks laughing out loud at a screening of The Foreign Correspondent
2. the way the Aleutians trail off the Alaskan peninsula in a graceful arc
3. spontaneously picking up a dinner of fresh empanadas after a day out and about, then eating them with a nice arugula-and-apple salad, spiced up yogurt sauce, and bananas foster ice cream for dessert
4. the hilarious ways in which making caramelized bananas can turn spectacularly disastrous
5. water buffalo yogurt - it's rich and creamy like the filling of a cheesecake and comes in flavors like chai and blackcurrant
6. scrubbing the stove until it's gleaming white
7. a very "financial district" couple got on the train after work - the man was holding a Ben and Jerry's milkshake. every time he'd take a sip from the straw, he'd say "yum" in very childlike way, and then offer it to his companion
8. eating nothing but a bowl of very delicate, creamy herbed mashed potatoes for dinner
9. the smell of vanilla almond coffee; it smells better than it tastes, but the smell is worth it
10. taking a long, hot shower late in the evening, putting on pajamas, and then settling in for my weekly hour of "family guy"
11. a woman on the subway had a bag with a b. kliban cat on it that was wearing a crown of psychedelic flowers
12. stringy bright red veins running through the pure white flesh of a macintosh apple
13. eating a tiny dinner of half an egg salad sandwich and homemade soup; I didn't want a lot, so I ate the soup out of an elegant ceramic custard cup and served the whole thing on a salad plate
14. the conductor on the train i take has an old timey, world-weary brooklyn accent; he announces my stop as "dirty forf street, transfeh heah f'yeh B train, yeh Q train, yeh PATH trains to New Joisey"
15. there's something uplifting about wearing bright green pants even though you know the color doesn't look that good on you
16. dramatic clouds hanging over the midtown skyline
17. homemade fresh egg salad with tons of fresh dill and parsley, eaten on fresh bread that i grated tons of asiago cheese into. even though the bread didn't rise like it ought to have, it was still fresh bread
18. spying a guy talking very animatedly on the phone on a fire escape several floor below me...you could tell he didn't think anyone could see him
19. i found that someone had left half a krispy kreme doughnut in the kitchen right when i needed a little something sweet late in the afternoon
20. sauteed red and yellow peppers sprinkled liberally with fresh cilantro
21. a surprisingly ripe out of season avocado
22. Jim made a pan of off the cuff brownies for us on a weeknight
23. the little grocery near us leaves a lot to be desired, but they do carry imported horchata, which I'm drinking out of the cup I normally reserve for that rare fancy coffee drink
24. this morning I used a hair conditioner I first used on a fun trip to Portland; the smell of it reminded me all day of farmers markets, microbrew, and well-made lattes
25. sometimes it feels good to realize that everything you're wearing is something you've bought within the last six months
    
26. watching a rat dart in and out from under the subway tracks; there's not much beautiful about rats, but sometimes it's nice just to see an unexpected living creature. it was funny too that a lady waiting for the train saw it and shrieked, then she and her friend laughed and laughed about it
27. seeing a man who was at least 75 listening to an iPod
28. being given a proofreading project at work that let my inner grammarian go wild
29. i had my hair up in a bun all day and when i let it down, it looked like i'd had it in rollers
30. having a tiny goya malta soda with my lunch, a small pleasure i first discovered at Lelolai