Little things

I was in a good mood this afternoon for no particular reason, so in the spirit of Jackie’s admonition the last time I went listmaking, here’s a list of little things that have been making me happy recently:

A stack of blue & red checked airmail envelopes I bought for just ,50 céntimos.

Getting my first roll of 35mm developed, & having some of the pictures come out, even though I didn’t rewind it correctly & I exposed half of the roll.

The box of Navidad dulces, cookies, & miniature pastries flavored with almond slivers or orange peel that my school’s jefe de estudios bought & left out in the teacher’s lounge.

This sublime & ridiculous vermouth commercial, aired nonstop for the last month or so, in which George Clooney – in my Andalucían television? – inexplicably appears with a pencil-thin sevillano mustache to say a single word in Spanish.

My weekly bag of clementines.

The music that the local talk radio station plays during my early-morning car ride to school to start the news break, sung by what sounds like muppets backed by a syncopated juke joint piano & handclaps, the words to which are basically, Hoy es martes! Son . . . las ocho! and there are some handclaps & more Spanish and then the littlest muppet asks, “En Canarias?” and a basso-voiced news announcer replies, “En Canarias: las siete,” & the muppet replies, “Ah, vale.”

The sevillano hip-hop playing at a pretty sweet bar off the Plaza de Los Batalles last night, the flow of which was reminiscent of old-school N.W.A.

Getting away with singing this song with my 7th graders while I played the guitar, to teach long & short vowel sounds.

Having an excuse to play Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” for the same reason. And: Not being able to explain the meaning of the word “saspirella.”

Fresh bread.

Cheap espresso.

Sunlight.