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Happiness is Reading During A Storm

What is it about storms that makes reading such a pleasure? Is it that I could be out in the snow or rain and instead I’m tucked in safe and warm with an alternate reality? It’s raining like blazes here this week, and while I am writing a good chunk of the day, when it gets stormy dark, I read something I didn’t write. Reading is always good, but a storm makes it better.

What made you happy this week?

82 Responses

  1. First radish and lettuce harvest from my garden. The radishes are tiny but tasty. Strawberries are in season and they’re delicious. I treated myself to (vegan) ice cream on a hot afternoon – lavender vanilla (also delicious).

    Family shopping trip. Main objective was to get new shoes for DS but he and I wandered around a nearby bookstore while DH ran other errands. We compared notes on various fantasy book series and compiled book lists (photos on our phones). It was a fun way to spend time with him.

    I’m very happy the intense heat has dissipated, at least for a few days.

  2. Just back from a plant fair, where I bought four plants. My garden and allotment are full of colour, salad stuff and fruit – just started eating my first ever crop of apricots, and enjoyed the two ripe cherries (the birds got past the netting and had the rest before they were ripe). Connected with a couple of old friends and made plans with others. I’m enjoying summer.

  3. I’m happy the heatwave has broken. Very happy to be at the end of a too-busy and stressful month, and hoping that some of the stress will ease, and I’ll finally have time and brain space to write, garden, and take walks.

    I go to go to the NY Faerie Fest yesterday, and while I was happy to spend time with friends, I was sad to discover it no longer has the same magic for me it used to (and that I’m just too damned tired for such things anymore). Still, it didn’t storm on us, and I’m happy for that.

    Today my biggest happy is a whole day without PEOPLE or appointments or obligations.

  4. Happiness is having the biggest do-nothing weekend ever. It’s kind of a long weekend here in Canada because Canada Day (NOT 51st state day!) is on Tuesday and not working much on Monday so….looonnng weekend.

    Unhappiness: a snapping turtle laid her eggs on our lawn at the cottage. I even stood at a respectful distance and watched her, creepy voyeur that I am, until she waddled off and left them to their fate. Snapping turtles are a protected species in Ontario because there are so many dangers that they have to overcome to make it to adulthood. We were going to support the eggs with a nest protection box but before we could build it, something dug them up and ate them. We are sad that we won’t see baby turtles hatch in August and make their way to the river. 😢

    2. Happy Canada Day! I apologize on behalf of the United States for the president’s remarks about trying to make Canada the 51st state. He’s an idiot.

      Also, my condolences on the loss of the snapping turtle eggs.

    4. Tammy, how sad that the turtle embryos had such a short life. Nature is cruel, at times.

      1. When I lived in the desert, a quail pair had a large clutch of eggs in their nest under a cactus, and I was counting the days until there were little rolling puffballs, but about a day before they were due to hatch, a Gopher snake found the nest and gobbled down every egg. I was poking at it with a hula hoe, but it was undeterred.

    6. We had 2 clutches of eggs hatch one year. The baby’s seemed to head straight for the road. I was saving them in Tupperware and throwing them into a pond.

      I sent some pictures to a friend. She carefully asked if I was keeping them as pets.

      Do I really seem like the type of person who would keep a few dozen snapping turtles as pets?

  5. I’m currently at the American Libraries Association annual conference in Philadelphia this year. I’m happy for all the books that I have picked up from the publishers. Most of them will go to my nieces and nephews. I too am happy that the temperatures have gone down. it turns out I rented a four story walk up apartment to stay in for these four days and the window air conditioning unit has managed to do OK. I’m also happy that my travel here went well and I’m finding my way around.

    I took the opportunity to go look at the liberty bell. I got emotional thinking about how that has been used as a symbol by women and African-Americans to try and get true equal freedom in this country.

    1. I was at ALA in Philadelphia in 1980? 1982? and took a picture of my hand stretched across the crack in the bell. I blew it up really large and sent it to my almost-blind grandmother who was thrilled.

    2. BTW Deb, your publisher is here. Someday it would be great it you could attend for a book signing. 😊

  6. Happiness this week was booking our flights for our vacation to Italy in October. We’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos about the places we’re going.

    And heard back from the editor via my agent and she loves the story. Good thing since it’s up for preorder on Amazon. She did line edits and sent it to be copy edited. So no big revisions.

  7. I went looking for a Pink Floyd song that I remembered & thought might be relevant for today’s world; Comfortably Numb. And it is BUT there’s another Pink Floyd song that is chillingly relevant: On the Turning Away.

    I’m learning the lyrics because it is so sad but there’s hope at the end. I’ll try to link it in the comments.

    I went to my first secular food addict meetings & I think they’re going to be helpful.

    I’m mostly content but I did have a sad moment when I heard Bill Moyers died.

    2. always thought one needed to be enormously drunk to get into any pink floyd song-especially that one

      and even then i just didnt get the point of their music

  8. I’m having friends over for tea on our deck today. I see sprinkles if rain outside, so I may have to clean inside my house…

    DH de-mossed the roof yesterday. I napped.

    I took Monday off because of Tuesday’s stat (Canada Day), so I have a nice 4 day weekend.

    I made strawberry ice cream and it’s delicious.

  9. I am very happy DH is healing well after his fourth knee replacement. This one is technically called a revision knee replacement. Dr gave him a hinged knee. He is so much better than the last full knee replacement.5 years ago. His countenance is good too. He is happy. Was a little depressed the last few months thinking about the recovery process. Happiness reigns.

      1. First was a partial knee replacement, never get a partial. Always go for the full knee.
        Second the round part between the partial was moving out of place
        Third was a full replacement bc partial wasn’t working. “It’s your anatomy”
        Fourth is revision new technology with the hinge because he was in pain again, his ligaments were stretched. On list for the left knee. Poor guy.

  10. I woke up to a thunderstorm this morning, and it was welcome, as the ground is starting to crack, in places. We could get more rain off and on today.

    I’m happy that the Washington Post subscription that I canceled right after they messed with Ann Telnaes months ago, ends on Tuesday. I will not renew it. The news is sickening. Literally. I kept looking at their headlines, because they were there. This circus is addicting.

  11. Decades ago, the lit book from which I taught high schoolers included an essay by J.B. Priestley, whom I suspect no one reads any more, entitled something like “Reading in Bed About Foul Weather.”
    My happy this week is spending time with a friend I don’t often see any more. Also finding 4-packs of petunias for $1.25–the benefit of procrastinating on buying annuals!

  12. I am happy for storms, too. It rained more than half an inch yesterday (and other people nearby by got several inches) after a week of highs above ninety-five and watering the garden every day.

  13. I’m happy because we had a short but lovely family beach vacation, where we watched a thunderstorm from our balcony. What a view — lightning across the whole sky, and you could see the clouds moving in miles away.

    We ate at a place next to a waterway than had a LOT of snapping turtles asking for handouts. They hover just below the surface, heads out, mouths open wide, reminding me of baby birds. (Evidently snapping turtles aren’t endangered in Florida.)

    1. The Ontario Conservation Authorities site says that it takes 59 years for a snapping turtle to replace itself up here. Incredible.

  14. I bought ice cream on sale so I got two. It was good and I kept eating it. Then I had friends over and got them to eat a lot of it to save me from myself, and they all enjoyed it too so happies all around.

    I am taking my little plastic cotton candy machine (which has been languishing in the basement these many years) to my sister’s 4th of July picnic. She tells me that the one family that has small children are very excited, which makes me very happy.

  15. Happy – I’ve started reading Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead and it is great, very uplifting.

    Yesterday afternoon, we held a celebration/memorial for my mother, and it was lovely, a great occasion to remember her, and to catch up with old friends in Brussels. A friend of ours was ordained a few years ago, and she presided over the formal bit of the day with prayers and readings, followed by a lovely speech from our younger son about missing his grandmother, which warmed the cockles of many hearts there as they are predominantly grandma ages, with a toast to my mother and a slide show of pictures of her at various events over the years. It felt complete and warm and comforting.

    1. Brene Brown spoke at my conference this afternoon. Sadly, I did not get to attend due to a conflict in scheduling. (The session I ran overlapped.)

  16. Really happy to have a veg garden again. I quit gardening four years ago, when I had a heart attack, and the combination of heat and strenuous work made it too risky. But now I have a metal raised garden, where I’ve planted four times as much stuff as it can really hold, and it’s making me so happy. You can get an idea of the chaos here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLV47sGyBab/?img_index=1 Less than pleased with the pepper plants (and peppers are my fave veg), which are puny and yellow-leaved, but I’m hoping some fish gut fertilizer and time will fix that. Not pictured is a separate bed, not raised, filled with several varieties of tomatoes that a friend gave me.

    Also happy (and relieved) to have reached the end of the third (final or penultimate, not sure which) draft of my secret project WIP. Should be ready for a beta reader by Friday, and my agent by mid-July.

    1. Yellowing leaves is usually a sign of cholorosis. Lack of nutrients tends to be the cause but notice that your peppers are quite close together which can stress them out. They’re also competing with other plants for nutrients. Regardless of the cause, fertilizing them will help and other plants will be happy too. I recommend Fish Emulsion solution – available on Amazon and nurseries. Smells awful but plants love it.

      1. Great minds think alike — Already got the fish emulsion! Just haven’t had a chance to apply. Spacing’s an issue too, but I’m pretending I did it on purpose, following intensive planting rules, when I really just can’t bear to throw away left-over plants, so I always plant too close together to fit more! I know it’s self-defeating, and reduces per-plant harvest, but I just can’t help myself!

    2. I don’t know why that link won’t go directly to your account, but I found it and realized I’ve missed quite a few updates. The garden is looking full but great!

  17. Happy was getting the front yard “fixed” in 2 hours yesterday, watering everything, and measuring the corpse of the tallest sunflower: 10 feet 4 inches.

    Also happy: getting my camera downloaded, backing up, then reviewing my Alaska pictures and finding very few that were so poorly composed or focused that I needed to delete them immediately. 😀

    Happy later today: dinner date with our BFFs.

  18. Lately my happiness has come from looking for little pockets on the web like this one, where small communities gather and people have fun with web design and making good content instead of trying to do the Miserable Ms: Monetize, Minimalize, and Monetize More.

    Another piece of happiness: my cat’s incredibly rare cancer that the doctor says they know very little about (it’s a research facility so if they know very little about it you know there just isn’t much to know out there) is responding very well to treatment and he’s in no discomfort from either the cancer or the chemo! It’s been a short but intense period of stress and to come out of it with some good news is a relief.

  19. After having the stitches removed earlier this week, I was given the go ahead to take a shower instead of sponge baths. Now, that is a happy.

  20. I finally took my computer in to Geek Squad to see if they could get me into my locked email. What they did was so ridiculously easy (and free!) that I was embarrassed that I didn’t already know it. Since then I’ve been deleting stuff like crazy, but if I spend too long doing it, my eyes have trouble focusing. I was frightened yesterday that I had done some permanent damage to them or I needed new glasses, but I seemed to have dodged that bullet for awhile. I’m also going to swear off sweets for a week or 2 to see if that helps.

  21. Happiness is staying woth kiddo and her host family. Best people ever
    We went to my first Drag Brunch, the three of ud (parents). Wonderful experience!!

  22. Finally getting to read Rocky Start is a big happy. I just started on book 3. Thank you, Jenny and Bob.
    Switzerland (from here on referred to as Swizzie) and her wife Queenie were here today. They are the best kind of people. I got hugs and I also got a surprise dinosaur/dragon figurine of Swizzie’s which made me extra happy. There’s been a lot of good talks and laughter and hugs and the best of times. So much love.
    Still so very happy about the box of knitting-looms and yarn that came in Tuesday. Also done great work on the knittycat, just half of the body left to knit. That’s also a happy. Now starting to worry though that perhaps combining colours without checking with a sighted person first was… maybe risky, but I’ll just have to have faith in things looking all right, because I’ve put so much work into this already.
    Mum called me Friday and told me grandma is in hospital yes, but she’s doing fine except for being bored. Turned out the wound from her hip-replacement end May had got infected, so they had to open everything up again and do the same surgery all over. I have tried to call her but no luck, but I hear she’s doing all right. Happy.
    Happiness is also remembering having a weighted blanket and using it. Sleep is still not optimal, but at least it’s better than earlier this week. Happy plus is that Matcha, who has only slept on the bed twice in 2.5 years, discovered that the top-layer of the blanket is made of fleece, and she’s a huge fleece-addict. Thus, now I get to have two snuggleballs that can put some extra weight on the extra weight and purr and snuggle me to sleep. Happyhappy.

    2. Shass, I’m sending Grandma healing energy. How awful to have to go through that surgery again.

  23. I’m happy that my three month Beginning Sewing class is finished. I was just able to get the final project done. I burnt my arm on an iron at the pressing table, but not as badly as might have been. From now on, I can pick my own projects and work at my much slower pace. Eventually, I may sign up for the course in how to sew knitted fabric, but I need a good chunk of time to decompress. The class was very fast-paced and full of exhortations to “be fierce” and “get it done” and it was a lot more stressful than I’d imagined it would be. I learned a lot, but mostly just happy it’s over.

    1. Wow… that sounds pretty high pressure given it was a craft class. I like my classes more leisurely.. since it is a hobby and supposed to be relaxing. Hope your arm feels better

    2. That pressure doesn’t sound like a good way to encourage new sewists! I love to quilt, but I’ve mostly given up what I call “commitment” quilts (projects for a deadline, like a wedding or babies), because it makes what’s supposed to be fun or at least creatively rewarding projects into a chore, and I have enough chores in my life already without voluntarily adding to them. I do still give baby quilts, but only because I have a stockpile of them, made when there was no pressure and then set aside until needed.

  24. As part of cleaning up my parents’ house, I found a place that can take and use the fabric that’s been stashed in the study closer for the last 15 or twenty years. It’s still in good shape, and I would like someone to use it. I bit the bullet and started to take apart her desk book shelves; I realize we are so much alike, with bits and bobs that meant something, still in place and covered in dust. Many photographs, the letters from my Dad to her when he was overseas, her high school year books, hers brother’s high school year books. Some of these things I bring to her to look over, which she usually enjoys.

    I see a ceremonial bonfire, with incense, poetry, and whiskey in our future. But not now.

    1. Don’t be in any hurry to burn the ketters from overseas. Before my parents moved into their last apartment together my Father refused to go through anything he put into the storage locker before the move. We threw it into a box and had to rent a storage locker for all the stuff he refused to go through. After settling into the new apartment and reconnecting with people he hadn’t seen in decades, he remembered that the letters my Mother wrote to him while he was overseas were there. It took us several trips with younger and stronger relatives to find them, but they gave a great deal of comfort to him in his last years.

    2. My mother shipped me a box of photos and other oddments when she decided not to keep the family photo albums. I’ve scanned most of them into my digital archive, have one batch left to go, and wish I’d taken pictures of some of the (many) three-dimensional sentimentalia she’s let go over the years. Not so much that I want those things in my house for the next 30 years but I have only vague memories of when they first appeared and then disappeared in the family home. Now she’s 85 and memory occasionally slips. Once we move in I’ll have to arrange some low-pressure “remember that? what was the story on that?” sessions. Without, of course, saying something that could be construed as blame a la “why would you get rid of the thing Dad got you when he was stationed overseas?”

  25. Happy that Pixie’s surgery went well; she gets the drain removed tomorrow and the staples on the eleventh. And she gets pain medication. Mean while, I’m sleeping on the couch since she can’t do stairs and I don’t want to leave her alone at night.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/DLgO_OYselE/

    And she’s managing the come of shame. I’m going to look into one of the ‘donut’ types.

    I’m happy I got the lawn mowed another week. And my driveway, not paved just stone, is half very tall weeds. I started pulling them up. Finally.

    4. Pixie is eating, drinking, peeing, pooping and begging treats. She had her drain removed and everything is as it should be.

      The vet did advise we keep the cone of shame instead of moving to a donut-style.

      She’s managing the cone pretty well. She’s the most scent-oriented of all the Shelties I’ve had. She bends her head when she wants to sniff something and seals the cone around the spot for a better concentration of the smell, I guess. Only 12 days until the stitches come out and we can ditch it.

  26. Hey all- BOB MAYER has a free book! on Amazon- The Green Beret Guide To Success; The Strategies Of The Quiet Professionals.

    Today for sure. Don’t know how long after that.

  27. We had our offer on a house accepted, so there is a chance I won’t be homeless for too long after moving

  28. Happiness was going to the aquarium with a friend – haven’t been for years and it was lovely wandering around. The stingrays were my favorite, or maybe the seahorses; my friend decided on the leafy sea dragon.

    Lots of small children – which was lovely to see their excitement – but we were also quite happy to have lunch at a local creperie and get away from the high pitched voices 🙂

  29. Happiness was a road trip with my girlfriends. We got up early on Saturday and piled into the car for a drive to Richmond. We visited the “Road to VA” quilt show and had a wonderful time viewing and shopping and eating and shopping and driving home again.

    And today (Monday) is my birthday, so that makes me happy.

  30. I am happy that my cousin’s wedding is over without major incident. We got rained on, but it passed. My sister’s car broke down en route, so she missed the ceremony but made it to the tail end of the reception. Given the still fresh dissolution of her own relationship, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but it added stress to the day, especially for my dad who has a lot of anxiety and works himself into knots. The aunt who isn’t talking to my husband was seated at our table and still won’t engage. That was awkward and she was working herself into knots. But we survived with no scenes. I was happy with my outfit and my jelly shoes were comfortable, practical and appropriate. This is all I ask. Except to maybe not do it again.

    1. The aunt actually sat at the table with you and didn’t talk to you? Good grief, Maturity Girl.

      1. My Dad did that to me and I guy I brought home for the weekend. Admittedly the guy was a dud, but yeah, my dad didn’t like him and refused to talk to him. It really made it a bad weekend especially when the 4 of us (mom came too) went out for dinner.

  31. DH talked to his surgeon who didn’t exactly back off his measurement of DH’s aneurysm but couldn’t replicate it. So we feel more confident that canceling surgery was the right call but until we meet with the cardiologist and get good advice on activity limits I’m still mowing. We are both sleeping better.

    We had my cousin ( first, once removed) and wife over for dinner and it says a lot that we had dinner with them twice in two weeks and never ran out of stuff to talk about.

    Making progress in the garden on weeding and sowing zinnias and nasturtiums —but between our 10 day trip and the challenges with DHs surgery it’s not getting the usual attention and I’m not sure it’s going be be as full as usual.

    Looking forward to my three nephews visiting and taking them to a nationals / Red Sox game on July 4.

    Went to the farmers market Sunday and have moved into summer meals (pistacho scape pesto, squash blossom soup, squash blossom quesadillas, sorrel soup, gazpacho, uncooked tomato sauce, corn, shrimp salad on sour dough). Would welcome anyone else summer foods!

    But watching the big brutal bill move through the senate is a heavy weight to lift emotionally.

  32. I mistakenly posted the below under Thursday yesterday. Reposting here where it should have been, not that there’s anything super exciting in it. Note that time references are as of Sunday:

    Devoted most of my writing time today to administrivia and to writing up one book so it can go back to the library. I’ve finished others but they’re not yet written up.

    My planned Thursday grocery run turned into a Friday prescription pickup plus three most-wanted grocery items, which the pharmacy clerk kindly rang up to spare me a second wait in line. Too tired for a second full grocery run in the same week. I did park at the far end of the far lot and thereby got a bit of a walk in during my pharmacy run. I think my stamina is up a bit, but it’s slow progress and the hot weather makes comparison difficult. Dental checkup next week. My most problematic teeth are already extracted, so I hope the bad news is over!

  34. I went to the library this afternoon and bought myself some asparagus on my way home. It wasn’t very great looking and the price wasn’t particularly wonderful, but dinner will be fun for the next 2 nights.

  35. It was our anniversary and we went to a movie and out to dinner. I’m happy.

  36. Thunderstorms and I have a history, of sorts. At least, I have memories of storms coming from the Atlantic and blowing ashore at our house in Sigsbee Park Naval Housing, Key West, FL. I would sit outside for an hour, watching the lightning, until the actual rain marched up the shallows, into the yard, before I’d go inside.

    Next memory is the afternoon shower in Jacksonville, FL. They said you could set your watch by it, from 3 to 6 PM. Some strange effect between the St. Johns River and the Atlantic again. I lived there three years.

    All that was back in the ’60s. The next nearest consistent rain was in Bremerton Washington, where it rained some every day, 350 days a year. I was there in the ’70s.

    Rain’s good for growing things. Not for my indoor hydroponic things, though. You can see my ‘ponics at July 2025 Farm Report. I put it up a few days early. Lots of pictures.

  37. Back-to-back posts. The sign of an attention hog? I can’t remember. They say memory is the third thing to go. I can’t remember the first two. So… I wanted to chat about my gardens, and other than blathering on my blog, Argh Ink is where I blather most. For example, I have seeds for tomatoes. Two varieties are AeroGarden Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes and AeroGarden Golden Harvest tomatoes. I’ve grown them. I’ve eaten them. Their drawback is that they are intended for the tall gardening units, like the AeroGarden Farm or its equivalent. Sprouts have ten inches of room under the lights. Harvests have twelve inches. The tallest unit I have has only twenty-five inches, and the tomatoes grow taller than that by at least a foot.

    So I did some research, and found some varieties that fit with the Sprouts & Harvests. Made an error, of course. Two types fit. The third is like Kudzo, growing up and out and threatening to take over the world, or at least my gardens. I was misled because the Tiny Tim variety grows the smallest tomatoes of any of them, and in large quantities. I just didn’t expect the tiny tomatoes to grow on huge bushes.

    If those plants get any larger, I will prune them to death. And oh! The tomato plants are all fruiting. Lots of little green balls. They always precede the peppers, and now is no different.

    The memory thing has to do with moving some plants around and forgetting which ones where before I update the Farm Report. The lettuce is easy, you can just look and see lettuce. The rest… not so easy.

    Happy Indy Pennants day to all the NasCar fans.

    1. I am so stupid and forgetful!

      The Tiny Tim is a 12″ plant.

      The “World’s Smallest Tomato (Tomberry)” is the out-of-control plant.

      I sincerely hope nobody is buying seeds based on my previous post.

About the Author

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and co-author of twenty-three novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, novellas, and short stories, and the editor of three essay anthologies. She lives in a cottage in Pennsylvania, where she often stares at the ceiling and counts her blessings.

Find out more about Jenny’s published works by visiting JennyCrusie.com

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