What's Making Me Happy: January 24

I lay in bed last night trying to think of what was making me happy this week, and I've just got nothin'. It's not that I've had a bad week. It's that the things going well are the same things that tend to go well every week ... little things that are the same from day to day, week to week. My kids are doing well in school, my husband is employed, my family is healthy. These are unremarkable things unless you don't have them, and I remind myself constantly not to take them for granted. But they are not exactly fodder for an essay.

Increasingly, what comes to mind when I try to make a list like this are "disasters avoided." We went on a road trip and did not get in an accident. There was a school shooting but not at my kids' school. I am not married to Steve Pearce or Mike Huckabee. Whew! Bullets dodged! It seems like a negative way to frame "happiness," though, doesn't it?

The idea for this WMMH project came from Pop Culture Happy Hour, and their solution is to list things from (not surprisingly) pop culture. Sometimes they offer up things from their own lives, but usually it's a funny video or a new TV show. The nice thing about cultural references is we can all share in them: my happy can become your happy. I haven't even been great at keeping up with pop culture lately, but luckily I have friends who do. So here are some funny/clever/lovely things rounded up by my funny/clever/lovely friends:

The Most Beautiful Sound in the World has been identified, folks. And it is "dusk by a frog pond." Check it out (scroll down slightly and click on the orange arrow.) Do you agree? What sound would you submit? Crickets on a summer night? Babies laughing? The sound of coffee pouring into your mug first thing in the morning?

Someone made fake London Underground signs, which are brilliant and hilarious. I have a feeling Susan Flett Swiderski is going to like these:

And hey, what about this fantastic bird? Which is real, by the way: It's called the "potoo," because of course it is.

I know. I felt the same way when Chris Christie talked about getting in the shower.

OK, OK, I'll take you home with me!

She said WHAT?

Here's a silly + funny thing for football fans, and even for (like me) not-football-fans:

And finally, check out these amazing storm photos. If I saw any of these approaching, I'd poop a sizable brick. They are lovely to look at from the safety of a computer screen, though.