Hello, friends. No, I haven’t abandoned the blog – I just haven’t cooked anything new or original in a few weeks, and I’ve been fairly busy. I don’t have a recipe for you tonight, but to tide you over, here’s a personal post. Seemingly ages ago, Zoa at The Airy Way passed on a Happy 101 award to me, which means I have been requested to list 10 things that make me happy. Because I’m very shy – you may not believe it because I do share personal stuff periodically, but perhaps even more shy online than in person – and because I find it hard to believe anyone cares what makes me happy, and actually I bet most of you can already list 10 things that make me happy anyway, I would ordinarily have been happy to “forget” to address this. But for some reason, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. So I’ll do it – I’ll tell you 10 of the things that make me happiest. Mostly I’m doing this to pimp Zoa’s blog, though, because I think she is incredibly creative and she’s always doing amazing things, like making realistic poached “eggs”, and doing mind-blowing things with my nemesis okara. Really, you need to check it out if you don’t already – she has one of the most impressive blogs I’ve seen. I wish she lived in Virginia instead of Canada so she could cook for me!

So, on with my list of things that make me happy. I think you know what #1 is going to be. Really, if you’ve read more than two of my blog posts, you know it’s all cats, food, and books, right?

1. Gomez and Torticia.
   
   And memories of Tigger and Brachtune.
   
   I am awed by how much I love these cats and no matter how bad my day has been, they make it better. More broadly, though, I would say that all animals make me happy. I am far more relaxed going into a home that has pets than I am one without. If I am walking or driving down a street and spot a cat, I’ll point and shriek, “kitty!” like a 3-year old – and if I’m walking, I’ll follow it. Though I’m partial to cats, large and small, bats, and otters, I simply love all animals and being around them or just looking at pictures of them makes me happy. Conversely, though I have a reputation for being unemotional, animals in cages make me cry.
2. That moment when you are reading a book and you realize you really, really like it. Also, every other moment of reading a book. Also, being near books. Okay, books in general. I love reading. I’ve read 78 books so far this year. According to the database I created to log them, that’s 2.29 books a week. Few things in life make me happier then curling up in my reading chair with a book, gazing at my bookshelves, being in a bookstore, or frankly, even ordering books online.
   
3. The smell of: onions sautéing, basil, bread baking, chocolate, lemons, coffee, garlic on my hands (not so much my breath). In general, cooking. Well, obviously. I have a whole blog about it. But it makes me happy. On the rare occasions I don’t make dinner when I get home from work, I’m actually very disoriented. It feels quite wrong to not spend at least an hour in the kitchen every night.
4. Sitting down to a good meal, with wine. Nothing says relaxation to me like dinner and wine. Good dinner, made with fresh foods. It often takes me an hour to eat dinner because I savor it. I love to eat. I love to eat a little too much.
5. Old things. My kitchen is full of vintage Pyrex and antique cast iron. I am distrustful of new things. I want to live in an old Victorian house, filled with antiques and oddities. Not particularly nice antiques, though; I don’t like expensive things. Just well-made, sturdy, unique things with a history. My latest thing is vintage mason jars: I’ve bought a bunch of them to store my dry goods in.
   
   I’ve tried saving jars from food I buy, but I make so many things from scratch I really just don’t accumulate that many jars, especially of the sizes I want, so I’ve been storing grains and things in plastic containers. I have wanted to switch to glass for a long time but thought it would be kind of costly to buy old jars in the quantity I need. Turns out they manufactured so many canning jars in the first half of the 20th century (and earlier) that they are actually pretty inexpensive. It would have been even cheaper for me to just buy a couple of cases of new canning jars, but you know, I didn’t even think of that until I’d already placed bids on old ones. And I don’t care; I just prefer the older ones. Not to collect – I’m not really a collector of anything – in fact, I prefer whatever is common or imperfect just because I’m less ill at ease about breaking it. I just like knowing my jars were used by someone before me. I like it best when I have old things that come from my own family, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t know who had the thing before me. My jars are almost 100 years old. I find that comforting for some reason I can’t explain.
   
   By the way, another cool thing about storing stuff in these jars is they are so pretty I’ve put many of them out on display in the dining room, which freed up a lot of space in my rather small kitchen! And here’s my newly organized baker’s rack in the kitchen:
   
6. That “a-ha!” moment when you are learning something new and it suddenly clicks. I love learning. I love school. I even love taking tests. It’s my life’s mission to collect as many Bachelor’s degrees as I can. I can’t decide if Physics or Neuroscience should be next!
7. The sound of Nick Cave’s voice. The music of Einsturzende Neubauten. The Smiths. Morphine. And hundreds of other bands – music in general, really – but if I need to MAKE myself happy, or sooth myself, I’m certain to pick one of those four.
   
   _{This is me buying a Smiths poster that is bigger than I am, in front of my first car.}
8. This may make me a terrible person, but my car. My non-hybrid, not-particularly-fuel-efficient, non-vegan (it has leather seats, which by the way I HATE, not just because I’m vegan but because they are hot in the summer and cold in the winter – who thought that was a good idea?), lovely little tiny car of joy. It’s a 1995 Mazda Miata that I bought used (the only reason it has leather seats) ten years ago. Driving around with the top down on a warm summer day is one of my favorite things. So is driving around with the top down on a crisp autumn day. Especially so is driving around with the top down on a sunny, fragrant spring day. Winter…not so great for the Miata.
   
9. Taking off in a plane, and any travel by train. No matter how much I travel – and how degrading and awful TSA makes the experience – I still find it exciting to get on a plane. I just love going somewhere new – or familiar – even if it’s just for work. I especially love travelling by train, though, particularly in Europe. Not that I’ve done a huge amount of train travel in Europe, but I’ve done enough to know I love it. If I lived in Europe, I’d be on a train every weekend going somewhere new.
10. Watching TV with Mark (and kittens). No matter how stressful my day has been, I heave a huge sigh of relief when I collapse on the sofa next to Mark to watch the X-Files or whatever we’re into at the moment. I also like coming home together late at night after we’ve been out somewhere and just being glad to be home, together.
    

So, that was way more than you cared to know about me. I had a hard time narrowing it down to ten things. I’ve left so many things out. These, though, are all things I do every day (except travelling), which I guess means I’m one very happy person – who knew? I’m supposed to pass my award on to other bloggers, but I’m afraid I had enough trouble working up the nerve to drone on and on about myself. So I’ll do the cop-out thing and say I award it to all of you: if you are reading this and you have a blog, I really do want to know what makes you happy, so post me a link.