My Sirius satelite radio. I got it for Christmas last year at the same time – through an accident of planning and communication – that I got my ipod. At the time I thought it was ridiculous to lay out that much money just so that I could never ever at any moment be without a musical soundtrack to accompany my movements, but I take it all back. They are two of the best gifts I’ve ever received.

We had to return the first Sirius a few months ago for a warranty issue, so the whole time I drove back and forth to work at my temp job I was forced to listen to drive time DJs. I shudder just thinking about it. Why do DJ’s suck so very hard?

It has 30 preset stations and I’ve got them all filled up (but I was kind enough to give Bear 5 of his very own. Even though one of them is used on *deep breath* Hair Nation. *shudder again*). It even comes with a tiny little remote which I mocked at first, but my goodness is it ever handy to not be constantly reaching for dials while you’re trying to drive. I’ve discovered so much new music off of it, my CD want list has tripled. And I never have to listen to inappropriate sex talk at 7:30 in the morning or any other wacky hijinks in between playing the same four songs right into the ground.

A wonderful part of living in San Diego? Costco carries flats of Coke imported from Mexico. This means that they not only come in a bottle (everything should come in a bottle – it gets colder and tastes way better) but they are made with real sugar – not corn syrup. Wicked good stuff.

Ah, freshly made Dilly Bars, how I love you.

Our local Dairy Queen seems to be having some issues. Their main freezer is broken so they can’t do any cakes (and oh man a dairy queen ice cream cake with the carmelly crunchy center is just one of the very best things a person can eat) and they can’t keep boxes of novelties on hand. This was a major major source of frustration for me until recently.

We’d go there about once a week asking for dilly bars, and every time they’d be all out, or the bars were just then being made, or they only had two left. I got so frustrated we drove to the next town over to get boxes of dilly bars from them. They were disgusting.

The other Dairy Queen sold us boxes that had been made by corporate and sent in. They were the same kind that you can occasionally find in grocery freezers. Made with really heavy ice cream and stuck in that freezer for who knows how long. They were gritty with freezerburn.

The dilly bars from our Dairy Queen were freshly made on the spot with their delicious light soft serve that tastes like ice milk. A dilly bar is huge and when it is a hot summer day I want something light and wonderful, not two solid cups of thick vanilla ice cream.

My Dairy Queen’s broken freezer turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Now we’re just smarter and we call ahead.

I’m not a fan of most of our landscaping. I’m actually not a fan of a lot of Southern California landscaping, because so much of it consists exclusively of palm trees and birds of paradise. Our backyard right now is a random mix of a million tiny palm trees, some tall grassy things, the obligatory birds of paradise and some random climbing thing. After my visit to the flower fields, I just can’t wait for next spring to plant loads of sweet pea and ranunculus and roses, but even if I had the funds, mother nature just won’t cooperate with my timeline. But I want an Oompa Loompa, NOW.

In the meantime, I have discovered two little gems in my yard that I’ve grown to love. The first is a huge jasmine bush just outside one of the sliding doors, and when we open up to get a cross breeze on a warm night, the whole house takes on the sweet smell. It’s heavenly.

We also have a large tree in one corner of our yard (well, large for a tiny suburban SoCal plot) that I thought was some kind of a citrus tree because of it’s large waxy leaves. When the good twin came over she immediately spotted it as a magnolia tree, and sure enough there was a big fat bloom hiding just above the leaves.

Now I’m finding all kinds of these cone-shaped buds on the tree, which I’m watching closely to see how they grow.

With everything else we have to do to the house, landscaping is a really really low priority, so luckily I have a few wonderful little surprises to tide me over until I can turn the whole place into my own private flower field.

There’s a little birds nest that hangs under the eaves of my roof. When I first saw it I thought that I would have to find a way to move it, due to the enormous pile of bird poo that sits directly underneath it, right outside my back door.

After living here for a couple of months, though, I wouldn’t dream of it. I know nothing of birds, so I couldn’t begin to tell you what kind they are, but they are not so loud as to be disruptive, I just get to hear a quiet hum of bird chirps all through my morning. As someone who tends to find mornings themselves to be pretty darn disruptive, (Light! Someone turn it off!) I just adore having little feathered companions singing me into my day.

We’ve also learned the hard way that the people we bought this house from did absolutely nothing and I mean not One Darn Thing to keep this house up, so I now suspect that enormous pile of poo to have accumulated over several years. I think I’ll deal with hosing my patio off every once and a while.

I’m a big believer in the theory that some books come to us when we need them. It’s happened over and over again in my life; lessons come from literature for me.

This weekend as I was whimpering in pain from my own stupidity, I finished off a book I just bought the other day.

Elizabeth Berg is an author I love because her books are like homemade whipped cream. They’re light and fluffy, but with a surprising richness. She’s about the only real “novelist” I read because I am an insufferable snob and don’t usually want to waste my time on books that aren’t “serious literature.” But her books always suck me in because her characters are so good. Particularly the women she creates. A few months ago I read a Hemingway book where the main woman goes crazy after deciding that after three months of a blissfully happy marriage she wants to turn herself into her husband and even goes so far as to find him a new wife to take her place and then tries to seduce that wife away from him, so a light happy book about a woman finding her way in the world is quite a refreshing palate cleanser.

A Year of Pleasures is about a woman named Betta who loses her husband John to cancer and is left to find her way on her own. She and John had a unique and complete relationship, so satisfyied with each other that it led to the exclusion of all other friendships. They were unable to have children together, so when John dies, Betta loses all ties to the world.

She ends up moving suddenly from Boston to a small town in the midwest where she meets a quirky cast of small town characters, reconnects with long lost friends, and discovers how to get by without her soulmate.

While reading this book I just sobbed. Nearly every time I picked it up it ended in tears. Bear even began referring to it as “the book that makes you cry.” I would find myself stopping every few pages to look over at my sleeping husband and stroke his sleeping face or to wrap my arm around his broad back and whisper fiercely into his ear, “Don’t you dare die.”

The book scared me deeply because my absolute greatest fear is that something will happen to Bear and I will be alone. I have great friendships, but we’re all enveloped by life and demands and responsibilites; I have no family to count on. I would be alone and utterly adrift.

Reading the book with wide-eyed terror made me pay attention. It made me consider things suggested by the book that I probably would have just glossed over in my search for a nice lightweight beach read.

At one point, Betta and a friend were discussing the grieving process and the fact that ettiquite dictates a year of mourning. Her friend suggests that instead of a year of grief, she make it a year of pleasures. And by that she means more than just counting your blessings, but by creating pleasures to feed your soul. Whether that’s buying something lovely and actually using it instead of stashing it away because it’s too good, or making a really wonderful dessert just for yourself, or spending time appreciating a small work of beauty, it’s about surrounding yourself with what is good for your spirit so that you have the emotional resources to remember and grieve and get by.

I read that and it seemed like the room got brighter from the lightbulb going off over my head. Aren’t I always saying, “I HAVE NO MORE RESOURCES!” A few weeks ago I got a speeding ticket under circumstances that I thought were unfair and I sobbed the whole way home. The painters canceled for the second week in a row and I launch into a major depression where I don’t even want to get out of bed. I can’t bring myself to go to work at a perfectly fine but boring job where I’m surrounded by delightful people.

Of course it’s not about any of those things. It’s about the fact that this year has brought a lot to grieve, and I’m not coping as well as I think I am. The trials have come so swiftly that I have had no time to recharge and every tiny inconvenience becomes a new rock bottom for me.

I think I need to take a lot better care of myself than I have been. I need to hurry up and get my craft stuff unpacked so I can create something. I need to cook something wonderful for dinner, even if I have to push the paint brushes out of the sink first. I need to spend some time outside without thinking of all the changes I want to make. I need to get out of the house every once in a while.

I’m toying around with the idea of starting a second blog to record my year of pleasures, but I’m still struggling along with this one, so I think I’ll just try to record them here every once in a while.