Weekly Small Pleasures #111

111. Nice number huh? I haven’t been sleeping very well, and work was slow this month, but this week brought a few small pleasures worth noting. 

1. Furniture shopping! 

We bought a sofa + coffee table + side table last weekend, and they arrived on Tuesday. I love IKEA, but sometimes it’s nice to get something more unique and longer lasting. This apartment feels like 80% more homey since this week. It’s amazing what a difference it made to create a living room in the small space that used to be just dining table + plants + desk.

We move so much that we hesitate to buy anything that we don’t need, anything extra. But this way, it’s hard to make a place feel homey. I realized that even if you plan to be in a place temporarily (less than a year), it’s best to make it homey anyway. I also learned this from a recent conversation with a military wife.

We have only a few months left in this place, (we’re planning on moving again, we need to get a bigger place), but it was still worth it. Plus we’ll bring the new furniture with us because we won’t move too far. Unless our plans change unexpectedly in the next few months. Our life is very unexpected.

2. A very good friend is releasing their new album on vinyl! 

It’s very exciting enough that they’re releasing their new album after a year of working on it, but doing it on vinyl makes it extra exciting. So proud of them.

3. I have been significantly increasing my reading time.

I accidentally realized that less TV watching means more time to read. I’ve been enjoying reading in the afternoons and going to bed earlier than normal and reading before bed for 30min to an hour. I even read for a while one morning this week when I woke up pretty early.

I love physical books, but using my kindle to read at night allows me to turn all the lights off. It’s very convenient.

4. Weird introvert moment.

I say this a lot: I’m a walking paradox, and things just keep reminding me of this statement. So I have social anxiety; meeting strangers, talking to strangers, and making phone calls all require mental preparation and some anxiety. Also, I’m weird. Period. Family and friends will attest to this. And then add that I’m a paradox… you get what I’m calling a weird introvert moment that happened this week.

For reasons I won’t mention yet I needed to weigh myself. I haven’t owned a scale in years. But I needed to see if I’m on track with my weight gaining. I didn’t want to buy a scale. Cause I’m frugal and just don’t want one. So, you know what I did? There’s a dentist walking distance to me. I was out and about and I went in there and told the receptionist “I have a crazy question for you.” So I basically asked if I could use their scale. I assumed they had one being a medical place and all. So they said yes, I weighed myself while responding to their small talk, and then I left.

Doing this random thing made me chuckle inside. My social anxiety would never allow me to do something like that, but the fact that it was such an out of place question (a weird question) made it easier somehow. I guess weird just comes naturally to me haha. I think I just solved the social anxiety problem. Just embrace the weird and pump it up instead of trying to act normal in social situations. Hmm.. I’m totally on to something.

5. A few more typical small pleasures…

Solo walks by the river (it’s a lake but I can’t stop myself from calling it a river cause it looks like one), and tea and chocolate, oh and this week I was inspired to make myself a morning mango lassi. It was great.

6. Mandolin lessons.

You know that social anxiety I mentioned? I take mandolin lessons once a week, and every day that I have a lesson I’m not excited about it. I have anxiety about meeting one on one with this guy I’ve known for a few weeks. But I always end up enjoying learning and progressing some more.

My fingers no longer hurt from pressing the strings, and we’ve moved on to learning simple 7 chords (and three songs), to scales. Still need to work on a few of those chords, my damn left pinky is too small. My hands are very small, but my left pinky is extra small. Smaller than my right pinky. The poor thing couldn’t grow well because it got stepped on by my older brother while I was randomly lying on the floor when I was little. He denies the blame and forever will.

7. Catching up with an old friend. 

We used to be best friends in early high school. We even moved in together when we both moved to a foreign country for our first year of college in London. She stayed in London, I left. Communication decreased significantly. This week we caught up on chat and it was very nice.

Have a great week!

See what others were happy about:
Tiny Pleasures #11 – My Tiny Obsessions
This week’s small pleasures #46– Thistles and Kiwis

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Weekly Small Pleasures Blog Event

Share your happiness!

I find that the small things that make us happy every day are easily forgotten.

This blog event is simply about remembering and sharing those small things that made you happy during the week; things that made you smile, made you laugh, made you do a happy dance, made your heart smile…

You can share in any format you like. For people to find your post, tag your post “Weekly Small Pleasures” and link to my most recent post for a pingback! You can also just share in the comments.

Read the full details, and see previous posts.

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