10 Quick Paragraphs of Barely Important Things

Everyday texture

Handmade soap is a favorite indulgence. I used to partake of it only when traveling but it’s become an occasional treat at home for a Very Tiny Pick Me Up. A wonderful human I know makes, or rather made, good soap. They aren’t doing it anymore and I loaded up in the final sale.

Yesterday morning, the morning after a thing I’m not talking about because I’m trying really hard not to fondle the anxiety monster that aches in my chest, I got in the shower and wondered if hope was so threadbare I might accidentally wash it down the drain. Eric’s Forest Bouquet soap took good care of me.

I am not gardener material. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that outdoor gardening is overwhelming in a way that neutralizes any satisfaction involved. We’ve let a big portion of the front yard re-wild itself. It looks like a hot mess a lot of the time, especially relative to neighbors who have the resources and need to conquer nature. But my houseplant game is strong. If it were up to me, Big & Tall would sell plants, not menswear, because those are the ones I like. There was a massage studio I visited in a French village years ago that had a loft area full of plants, and one was more like a tree with enormous stems arcing down to the ground floor. It wasn’t hard to imagine that this beautiful plant could hug a person. It’s been mentally filed ever since under GOALS.

I’m fond of alocasias. I have six, maybe seven. When I repotted one I found corms. I wrapped them in a damp paper towel and tucked them into a lidded container with a couple drops of liquid plant food. Then I forgot about them which was probably for the best because nature did its thing and awww, plant babies!

A magazine paid me for use of my artwork and I put that money towards supporting some writing-based Kickstarters. I backed The Flytrap: Bringing Back the Feminist Blog and Love Letters: Reasons to Be Alive. I consider this gardening, too.

It could be the influence of listening to the first five audiobooks in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series but hot tea with milk and sugar has become a comfort for this time of year. Granted, I prefer a temperature just above warm and oat milk and honey and the tea is a decaf spice blend, but it’s a comfort nonetheless.

Some people nerd out on the flavor profiles of various wines or coffees. For me, it’s raw honey. BeeWorks in Bellingham, WA has a fireweed honey that is high on my list because the flavor all-out blooms. The honey I get at the hardware store from a local beekeeper in the Snoqualmie Valley is at the top because the bees enjoy the area’s huge flower and vegetable farms. I also have a small jar from a friend’s hives in New Mexico that soothed coughing fits last month better than any OTC remedy I’ve tried.

The Anna’s hummingbirds that overwinter in the Puget Sound area have returned to the feeder outside our kitchen window. The morgansers, buffleheads, and wigeons showed up on the lake within the last week. A heron and the cormorants are here, too. It’s cold enough to no longer hear frogs at night but the owls have been especially active, their sounds a concert along the edges of the forest. There enough leaves on the maple and larch trees still to read the lumbering, hilly tongues of a landscape carved by glaciers. Enough of the leaves have fallen to open up the forest with light.

There’s a shirt I bought for me and my besties from Monster in Seattle. It was designed by Cat Coven and it reads The horrors persist but so do I. I’ve repeated that phrase to myself at random over the past month, and taking notice of barely important things that bring tiny doses of joy into my life are evidence that I persist. By the way, for some levity, you should check out Ugly Baby’s shower art at Monster.

I forewarned you in the title that these were barely important things. They are the smallest details, little tidbits that might pop up in conversation should we have the luxury of time to hang out and talk about all the things, the mortar holding the larger, weightier bricks in place.

What’s in your mortar?