Unexpected delights

We had a visitor late yesterday, just as the last light was lingering in the yard - a raccoon had come to scavenge peanuts on our deck. If you've never seen one of these little guys up close, too bad - they are amazing creatures. Their tiny little 'hands' are so gentle as they reach out, searching the ground around them, patting here and there; the mask on their faces and the stripes on their tails a perfect disguise for nighttime burglar activities. So cute.

Our little Maddie has been giving us hints for months now that there is a new creature in our back yard. She sits at the back door in the evening, and when there is something 'out there' her whole body tries to tell you so. While we suspected a raccoon because the neighborhood group-email warned of one, we hadn't actually seen him before. But last night, there he was.

We might regret this later, but we threw out more peanuts just so we could watch him.

The notion that life is full of such unexpected delights - and that the next one is just around the corner if you'll only look - escapes me all too often. I've been caught up in little irritations and annoyances - hassles and disappointments - entirely too much lately. I'm not sure why I have let it get me down and I'd like to say I'm going to turn over a new leaf and rebound here to a happier me again, but... without a cause to point to, a solution is a little harder to find.

I think my expectations are too high. I want the BIG things to look forward to, and there aren't any on my horizon. So I should be looking closer and smaller, since it is the little, unexpected things in life - visiting raccoons - that provide the high spots on a day to day basis. I want to be able to shift my thinking to the shorter term so the little things fill up the spots that seem to be waiting for something else - something somehow BIG enough to attend to.

Right now Frik is sitting on the edge of the desk, purring his little head off at me. That's a wonderful thing! Just outside my kitchen window my new peonies are blooming beautifully in spite of dreary wet weather. I managed to catch my mother at home when I called her a little while ago (to ask about how to make potato salad - a little thing) so we got to visit and laugh together for a bit. The wonderful forest path we hiked on this weekend is only a few miles from our house and we could easily go again and again. Payday happened. Last week I found a new friend to write long, philosophical, thought-provoking emails with; my piano is still in tune and I have time to play it; and it is light late enough at night to see funny little raccoons who come visiting.

Yes - I need to focus on unexpected delights.