The Best Day Ever

Last week, I had one of the best days that I can remember. It had nothing to do with Thanksgiving or the holidays which might leave you wondering what happened to make that day so great. Even if you aren’t wondering, you are about to find out.

I went to the grocery store, and I raked the leaves.

I’m one of those weird people that enjoy going to the grocery store. I sometimes get jealous of my Instacart shopper when I’m too busy to get to the store and have to use their service. I wish I was the one squeezing the mangos, examing the bell peppers, and standing at the butcher counter like a kid peering through the glass at the ice cream shop. Even though I enjoy it, there is no activity more ordinary than going to the grocery store. I do it every week, but my enjoyment got kicked up into the stratosphere when Ella said that she wanted to go with me.

She had been to the store before, but she was too young to participate or even remember her experience. She didn’t want to ride in the cart, and she asked (Well, she’s a toddler, she demanded) that she push the cart. When she started picking things off the shelves herself, I began to think that my services might not be needed on this trip. She must have gotten my grocery-loving gene because she was asking questions about what was on each aisle, what we were going to get next, and of course, how many boxes of cookies we were going to buy. I could see the joy in her face as she would pick something off the shelf and put it in the cart. Despite her enthusiasm, her skills of edible discernment need a little work. She picked an avocado that was so mushy, it practically oozed through my fingers when I placed it in the bag. She will learn.

Also, I told her that she could pick out one box of cookies. She chose the box of vegan oatmeal raisin cookies. They were stacked between some non-vegan, or legitimate, chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles, but she still chose the vegan cookies. Rookie mistake. Not in this house little girl. If that’s your choice when you live on your own, that’s fine, but in this house, we eat cookies with all the milk and butter and any other animal products you can throw in the dough. So, I asked her to reconsider her choice, and like a typical toddler, she dug in on her first choice. So, we went home with vegan cookies.

I saw tons of potential in her grocery ability. She’s raw now, but with my guidance, she might be one of the greats when it’s all said and done.

As much as I enjoy grocery shopping, I’ve never had more fun in a grocery store than I had that day.

My love of grocery shopping is matched by my hatred of raking leaves. My hatred stems from the fact that the house I grew up in had a .22 acre lot and just north of 9,000 trees. Scott and I spent more time raking leaves than sleeping during the winters when we were kids. One year after Scott had gone off to college, my dad paid my friend Mark Gribble and me 25 cents for every bag of leaves that we raked. By the end of the winter, it turns out he could have taken the amount of money he paid us and purchased Ecuador instead.

I hate raking leaves even more now because, in our current house, I rake and bag about forty bags of leaves every year. And we don’t have any trees. It is the ultimate insult for a leave-raking hater. All those leaves come from my neighbor’s trees. This is why I don’t feel guilty when I’m chipping dog turds in the back yard and I accidentally launch one over the fence into their back yard. Anyone who has seen me play golf knows that act is not intentional. I have a terrible short game.

Last week, I was in my backyard raking my neighbor’s leaves and Ella came out and said she wanted to help me. She has a little toy set of garden tools that are more decorative than useful, but she grabbed her little rake, put on her gardening gloves, and went to work. And we stood side-by-side and raked. And raked. And she could not have been more excited about raking leaves. By the end of the day, she probably only raked a total of three leaves, but she helped me more than she will ever know. It was the first time in my life that I enjoyed raking the leaves. I’m finding more and more pleasure in the most mundane places as long as my girls are in those same places.

You know you are a part of something special when someone likes you so much that they want to rake leaves just to spend time with you. If you want to have the best day ever, just find someone who wants to rake leaves with you and spend the day with them.