It's the Little Things

Reason number 5 why I love my neighborhood (and also the Asians who live here): just down the street, you can get tasty Asian food for absurdly cheap. Like, three dollars for eight big balls of dough and meat plus six or seven little fried dumpling things. Or something. Quite honestly, I have no idea what I got for three dollars - the language barrier was far too strong for her to tell me what she was giving me, and in fact anything at all besides the fact that all this food was three dollars. But it was definitely delicious, and assuming that Asian food keeps at all well, I could have lunch again tomorrow as well. Yum.

I was preparing to walk a two and a half mile round trip to the closest Starbucks, but while walking up 7th Avenue, saw a Dunkin' Donuts and decided to save myself the long walk in uncomfortable shoes. I'm not saying their lattes are good, but when you load them down with mocha and whipped cream, it's not like you can really tell anyway. It actually thrills me a little bit that I managed to find everything I needed for my dinner within a five-block radius - it's the little moments, the break-throughs of self-sufficiency that satisfy me.

But while walking down 65th to get back home from the Dunkin' Donuts, keeping an eye behind me as this particular road is not at all safe on the other side of 6th Avenue, I smelled something that I recognized - honeysuckle. Creeping all along the back fence of a run-down Enterprise station, fighting with unripe black cherry trees, a beautiful honeysuckle vine lured me off the beaten path for a few minutes. Something about that little haven for one of my favorite flowers just charmed me, worrisome area and all. I picked a little sprig and brought it back with me - the smell of that honeysuckle makes me smile.

I drove Kevin to the airport today, which was a bit of an adventure - driving in New York is something that I avoid like the plague, and after four weeks of basically not having driven at all, I felt rusty for a while. I made it both there and back with relatively few issues (I hate driving in airports, because they're confusing as hell), and remembered that really specific joy that driving with the music up so so loud can offer. My car is like a sanctuary - to a great degree, I don't have to worry about people looking at me, hearing me, judging me. I sing and I scream and I immerse myself in the music in a way that I've never found anywhere else, and combining that with all the separate joys of driving (shifting, accelerating, calculating), it's one of the most wonderful things on earth. I knew I missed that sensation, but I'd forgotten how much I love it.