Simple joys.

Happiness is a place between too much and too little. ~ Chanwit Whanset

I saw this quotation today and decided I was going to incorporate it into this long-overdue post. I took these pictures of this sweet black squirrel several weeks ago (even before the garage door debacle, the finger fiasco, the computer meltdown and the hot as h*ll heat dome, all ugly incidents which seemed to encompass most of my July). But, every time I planned to do this post, it was either storming, or I stayed late at work, or I felt badly because I was so far behind in Reader, I couldn’t justify doing a post, so I just let it go.

There is no happy medium for anything these days, especially the weather. But, I have experienced joy this past few days as the weather has been just perfect … perfect to savor Summer as it was meant to be. I made up for Sunday’s lost miles by getting extra steps in each morning. On Sunday, I could not walk at Meijer, my go-to spot in hot weather, because the store was just one of many along Dix Avenue that lost power for two solid days.

Savoring the small things.

So, I have walked my socks off this week, savoring each step along the way. Unfortunately, the heat will return by the weekend, but it is supposed to stay sunny and rain-free at least (as of today anyway).

Just as walking in my favorite nature nook brings happiness to me, a single peanut gave a lot of happiness to this little black squirrel. Even though I dumped eight peanuts at her feet to enjoy, she took this one peanut and ran around on the ground as she circled the tree, while trying to decide whether she should bury it, or just eat this treasure. She went up and down the tree, looking coyly at me, while I kept saying: “Honey - enjoy that peanut because you’ve got plenty of other peanuts here for later!" She was full of energy and I had to grin at her antics and stop myself from gifting this little soul with the rest of the Ziploc bag of peanuts.

My squirrels are back on the path, lively as ever, although they didn’t come back right away after the Heat Wave of 2019. No, they stayed up in their nests until Wednesday morning. I fretted about their absence on the perimeter path, and when they returned, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, believe me when I say I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

You can catch up on my blog posts before I started blogging at Patch in August 2013 by going here: http://lindaschaubblog.net/