In an attempt to revolt against the almost constant stream of negativity that tends to appear in these lounge threads, I want to have a direct opposite to the Things That Annoy You But Shouldn't thread. What makes you almost incomprehensibly happy, even if it's so minor and miniscule that no one else would get it? I have a few: 1). When the air temperature is not quite low enough in the day that your sweater isn't enough, but also never gets too high that you have to take it off. 2). When lizards do their little push up thing to establish dominance. 3). The resonant acoustic drumming of air intake engines beginning their turn up to speed. I'm excited to see your little nuances that forever will make you smile!
Moderately gross but it does make me happy: Spoiler When a zit pops on the first try and is gone without a trace a few hours later.
I always love standing out on the covered porch on a rainy day, being sort of in it but not getting wet. Also being outside when a storm or tornado is whipping the trees around. Also, conversely, putting on a good movie, pulling my padded coffee table/ottoman up almost against the couch, and getting under a comforter to settle in for the night. With snacks. Oh, also the smell of crayons.
Might just be a midwestern US thing, but we have a couple of nights every summer when the temperature is in the '80s, humidity is high and it's breezy, with a threat of thunderstorms. Blasting down a two-lane road with the convertible top down or all the car windows open, singing along to Radar Love blaring on the radio.
When I'm in bed late at night, especially if the window's open, and I hear a train outside. it pulls my attention out into the night, and I can imagine the train hurtling through various landscapes along the gleaming rails—open fields, alongside a river for a while, maybe beside some bluffs, then it plunges into the dark woods for a ways and bursts out to roll through some subdivisions and to a depot at the edge of a massive city like an earth-bound constellation of lights and activity.
I like it when I'm sleeping in a motel by the highway and hear the big semis barreling through the darkness.
I am the opposite here. I get so sick of hearing city or highway noise when I'm on the road for work. In the spirit of hotel happiness though, I specifically find myself very happy when the air conditioner is so quiet you can barely hear it and that it blows away from the bed. So many hotel rooms have this loud ass, rattling air conditioner that blows directly on the bed and I hate it. Dry out so fast.
I recall staying in hotels in Thailand, where the default air conditioner setting is 10 degrees below freezing. So I usually turn it off for a while. Did that once, went out, came back to find that the cleaner, being completely unable to comprehend why someone could have air conditioning and not want it on at full blast, had turned it back on again.
Roses. Smell of rain. The feeling when a front sweeps in, rattling trees branches as it comes. A brand new wire bound 7.5" x 9.5"notebook with soft covers. The first snow of the year, as long as the trees have lost most of their leaves. Snow on Labor Day is a downer. Puppies. Kittens. Porch swings. The first glimpse of an antelope fawn in the spring. Seeing the first rattlesnake of the year. Pressing my face against my horses shoulder and smelling that wonderful horse scent. And, of course, a brand new box of 64 Crayola Crayons.
I've never seen a box of 64 Crayola Crayons that didn't have a sharpener. Poor Xoic, were you once thus deprived?
Back in my day, they didn't come standard. Things that make me happy: Books, my niece calling me a different name each time she wants me to pay attention to her, bad Kung Fu movies (the kind that are so bad they're good), rain in autumn, the smell of sweetgrass, hopscotch boards drawn in chalk, finishing a project no matter how small, seeing my best friend after a while of not seeing her (and subsequently her kids), riding a bike, and the last one I feel like giving is knowing I will be single forever.
Lol, I didn't pay all that much attention, but some had them, some didn't. The ones that didn't were probably the cheap little boxes of like 12 or 24. You had to shell out for the Criterion box set to get a sharpener, and my parents didn't do that often. Maybe I only saw a sharpener box at a friend's house or something, I don't remember. Why do you dredge up these memories? This is supposed to be a HAPPY thread!@!
I specified 64 crayons. I'm 66 and don't recall that size ever not having a sharpener. That size was the Cadillac of crayons. Sorry to bring you down, Xoic. Go buy yourself a new box of 64 Crayola Crayons, a fancy coloring book, and recover soon.
Oh I've moved on to the harder stuff. My addiction now requires a digital tablet and Photoshop/Clip Studio Paint. Still doesn't come with a sharpener though.
When my friend does or says something that shows me once again that he is my friend (still amazed that he is). Plans for the future, things to do and see together. The call of a Hadida bird (when I realised that I'm missing a bird that is considered a nuisance in its land of residence, I broke down and installed the mp3 file to hear it whenever someone calls me ). A great speckled woodpecker which comes more or less regularly to a specific branch of a tree in our neighbour's garden. My pillow (it has just the right hardness/softness to support my neck), and the featherbed (it is so big that my toes never peek out). The grandfather's clock, ticking away in its corner.
Ooo, the smell of roasting cotton seed. Forgot that one since I haven't had a chance to whiff it for years.
