Snapshots of Happy

I don’t have my camera anymore. I miss it, but not as much as I imagined because as much as I like photography, I’m not very good at capturing the moments I actually want to remember. Often I think I engage in art simply to remember, so here are the moments from today I want to remember.

The mortar and rock wall stood cool, practically crumbling, on my right with a fancy new apartment building on my left as I walked down the narrow alleyway to the bus stop.

Reading emails from my parents promising a skype date  today and a kindle in the mail soon while snuggled in my enormous pink hoodie, coffee steaming up my glasses as the morning sun warmed up my room with ambiance if not actual heat.

Four perfectly-timed bus transfers in one morning. Glory.

My violin sang this morning with everything my heart means when I pray.

Costco pizzas—with bulgogi and sausage and green pepper and onions and pepperoni—the size of hubcaps arrived after an hour’s wait, prefacing a lunch with my family here in Korea where our mouths were filled with laughter (and pizza and trailmix) and our tongue with shouts of joy, saying the Lord has done great things for us (Psalm 126:2, ish).

Telemann’s Fantasia in E minor shivered as I burned through the last 250 pages of my second novel this week wearing my new cutie bear socks and mismatched striped pajama pants.

Delicious, sickly sweetness of an irresistible nap.

My parents poking at one another in front of the webcam, all cute and happily married after a long time like you always dream of, sweeter than Ben Folds’ “Luckiest” lyrics.

Vocabulary study in my little notebook that claims, “Light a Lucky and you’ll never miss sweets that make you fat!” (because Korea doesn’t know what it prints on its notebooks), and learning how to use “fulgurant,” “sesquipedalian,” and “lambent” properly in a sentence.

Yawning with Hilary over skype, fighting sleep, content.