Jane O'Reilly (unknown) | American | Published: unknown
1. Waking up an hour early and going back to sleep.
2. Having enough. Of anything. Toilet paper, tinned soup, extra typewriter ribbons, shampoo, toothpaste.
3. Buying Nova Scotia salmon instead of lox.
4. Getting the kite into the air (a triumph).
5. Finding a newspaper someone left on the train when you were too cheap to buy one.
6. Subscribing to something like Bouquet-of-the-Week, and getting flowers delivered to your door.
7. Going to a duty event, such as a political rally, or a volunteer meeting, and having it turn out to be fun.
(I once got to hear Bella Abzug play her mandolin.)
8. Owning both cross-county skills and downhill skis.
9. Setting, or sitting down to a beautiful table.
10. Opening a bottle of wine just for yourself, and cooking a good dinner for one to go with it.
11. A day when you serve is going in.
12. Naps.
13. A new pair of pantyhose (alas, this pleasure usually doesn't last very long.)
14. Having the time to read an old favourite. Jane Austen or Dorothy Sayers or Mark Twain, or whoever.
15. Having a marvelous drink in a glamorous place before going to the theatre and sitting in the cheap seats.
16. Spending a day when you take cabs everywhere. (Or walk everywhere.)
17. Renting a small airplane.
18. Swearing out loud in the subway.
19. Going to the movies in the afternoon when you are suppose to be at work.
20. Reading someone else's diary (dangerous this one.)
21. Renting a car at the airport, and driving onto the freeway with the radio playing very, very loud. (Best in Los Angeles).
22. Buying five T-shirts, in five colours, instead of only one. Buying a bunch of anything that is useful and nice.
23. Escaping from an overwhelming department store, and buying an armful of daffodils from the vendor on the corner.
24. Having the windows washed.
25. Real percale sheets, ironed at the laundry, slippery and icy to slip between.
26. Stocking up: filling the shopping cart at the market and then putting it away in the
larder so you can open the door and see rows and rows of provisions standing ready against a
natural disaster or a houseful of surprise guests.
27. Getting really good meat from the butcher instead of from the plastic-tray packer at the supermarket.
28. Knowing there is a new copy of a professional journal waiting at home to be read in the bathtub.
29. Soaps. All kinds. The fancier and more expensive the better.
30. Cans of exotic fruit juices. Or the fruit.
31. Fresh herbs and spices.
32. A really nice cotton lawn shirt, which can be washed and ironed in a flash.
33. Wonderful olive oil.
34. A lovely day.
35. Getting fresh fish from someone who just caught it. Or being given picking privileges in a
neighbour's organic vegetable garden, without being asked to help weed.
36. Seeing someone off on a boat. (Not airplane.)
37. Watching other people's travel pictures.
38. Smells: sudden hints of other places.
39. Filling up photograph albums.
40. Having a huge blow-up of a colour slide you took.
41. Throwing an avocado in the blender, opening a whole bag of corn chips, opening a beer, and turning on the evening news.
42. Getting even.
43. Sneaking into the front of the line.
44. Telling off an offensive person/spouse/houseguest/stranger.
45. Outsmarting Smokey with your CB.
46. Telling your friends you paid 8% less for whatever it is they just bought at a bargain place.
47. Threatening suicide by long-distance phone. (Not funny, but some people get a big thrill out of such emotional extravagance.)
48. Not wearing underpants to work.
49. Getting paid with at least one one hundred dollar bill so you can say to someone "Can you change a hundred?"
50. Going every morning to the same coffee shop for breakfast and ordering the same thing,
so that, after months, they will say to you," The usual?"
51. Going three times a week to the same restaurant so they will always give you the same table.
52. Not picking up pennies you drop, if anyone is watching.
53. Eating salad with your fingers in nice restaurants so people will wonder who you are.
54. Saying yes.
55. Saying no.
56. Sewing all your loose buttons on.
57. Running your first mile.
58. Old books, old pictures, old records, old clothes, old friends.
59. Exploring a neighbourhood you've never seen before.
60. Renting a limousine.
61. Hiring a tailor to make all your clothes fit.
62. Using the laundromat, which also folds the clothes.
63. Having someone else's small child think, for just a moment, that you
are its parent, and feeling those small arms hug your knees just before the wailing begins).
64. Buying a wonderful piece of furniture, or a highly pedigreed dog, or something else very expensive,
when you have no money at all. And then enjoying it for years.
65. Eating on a train.
66. Traveling first class.
67. A tulip plant. Or any new plant.
68. Buying hardcover books.
69. Wearing handmade silk, embroidered underwear.
70. Being able to say, about anything, "I made it myself."
71. Just for the record, there are huge extravagances, which will also give lasting pleasure.
My particular delight comes from being able to say, Last summer, when I was in Sri Lanka.
(sorry, last four are missing)