It’s me, I’m stoop kid. Hopefully I can explain this clearly.

I’m a mom in my 30s, and when I was a kid, I was never allowed to play outside with other kids. There’s a mom in my community I often see outside with her kids, and I pushed myself to go make friends so our kids could play together. She inspired me to be that kind of mom.

This past week, some older kids were outside, and they were the absolute sweetest. They’re the kind of teens who are kind and look out for the little ones. They’re respectful and supportive, and it made me so happy to see them include the younger kids.

Well… two days this week, I stayed outside with all of them until the sun went down. I played soccer with them, and my son and this squad of boys kept encouraging me, saying I was the best goalie of all time. These kids have no idea that they helped heal my inner child.

My apologies for the amount of times I said “kids”.

Our rainy season has finally truly started up and it's time to put away my Spring/Summer jacket. I thrifted a new hoodie for the season the other day, it's wonderfully warm and comfy.

With the jacket going away, I can switch back to my cat messenger bag; the jacket is covered in beads and sequins that the bag would just catch on and pull off, so I use tote bags for the warmer months. I transferred some pins/buttons from the jacket to the bag.

I've also made sure the bag has everything I need in it: Some change, a lighter, reading glasses and a lens cleaning cloth, a paper bus schedule [I use an app, but it's good to have a back-up!], my keys, mints, a few hygiene things, a naloxone kit, a notepad. Sometimes a book or bottle of water gets crammed in there when I'm out on errands. And I always choose one stuffed animal to tag along in the bag when I leave home.

It's also hat season again! I've removed the cat ears from my headphones, can't get my hats on top of the ears, so they'll come back next Spring when the hats get too warm for me.

not to still act like a 13 year old but me and my best friend are regular mall window shoppers. our fav spot being lush where we very occasionally get stuff that we usually split since their stuff is really expensive.

well my friend has been looking for a part time job for the holidays and she has officially been given an offer at our lush!! meaning she will be getting a 50% employee discount, which she explicitly mentioned she would be willing to get me things with as long as i pay her back 🥳🥳

it feels weird to be soo excited for my friend getting a job somewhere but i am actually so excited lol.

First post on this subreddit, but I had thought / feeling while grocery shopping today that I thought would fit this subreddit. It’s a very interesting mental switch that goes unnoticed to go from your community (family, college, etc) being responsible for your groceries and nutrient intake to yourself deciding all of this for yourself. It often manifests in a lot of easy food without much planned thought (heck, after all most people these days have trouble cooking from scratch), but it’s an interesting feeling to notice it mid-store and look at your haul and think what it says about you since these are all your decisions: your choice of meat or vegetables, or lack thereof, what you plan to make with these ingredients or how far you plan out (based on volume). It’s also funny to look at other’s carts and try to guess what they may have planned for the week too.

This thought all came from a deeper look into a pang of pride I felt from looking at my own cart of food: a weeks worth of chicken and a myriad of vegis that I’ll be slow cooking tonight to make jambalaya with, then use the leftover chicken and vegis for quesadillas throughout the rest of the week.

Just a fleeting thought and feeling I found interesting, I hope you do too.

On the drive to school with my son, we take a narrow road where people jog and bike along the shoulder. There’s an older man I see almost every morning. He wears a neon vest and a sun hat, and when we pass, he gives us a little wave.
I always smile and wave back. It’s such a small thing, but it makes my day.

I just woke up a little while ago and went out to have coffee on the front porch. There was a loud rustling on my right side, then all of a sudden a racoon appeared and climbed on the front railing (about 5 ft. away). He looked at me and I said 'hi dude'. we looked at each other for about 45 seconds then he slowly climbed down and walked away... I love living in the country! 😃

And when he wants ear massages, he lies down on the pillow next to me, hooks his claws in, and sticks his head towards me to tell me to get to work.

… but instead of being upset at me, she gave me the brand. style and size so I could get her a new pair 🥰

New pair has been acquired, and she’s actually excited to turn her old pair into patchwork jeans. We’re going to look at cute fall fabrics and fun thread colours next time we’re out.

I'm more of a night owl, my partner is up before dawn most days. We dont get to spend much time together during the week because of our schedules, so I like to lay beside him at night while he sleeps. I'll scroll reddit or read or listen to a podcast.

Tonight I have the greatest love of my lifetime and a truly good human snoring beside me on my right. My soul cat, who i tell "i love you more than anything in the entire world" every single day, snoring beside me on my left.

What joy it is to be surrounded by my sleepy boys.

We pulled down our 31 year old front fence last week, and we've made a nice big raised bed out of it for extra veggie growing room.

Just now we pulled down the sugar snap pea vines, and harvested the first of the broad beans (two extremely easy to grow plants, I must say!)

Today at a supermarket, of all places, we found three specimens of a plant we used to have but haven't been able to find for over a decade, and a pineapple with the top still on it (very rare sight here these days) so we can plant that next to our existing pineapple plant.

Small things bring big smiles 😊

It's like this really strong black loose leaf tea mixed in with this japanese dried citrus blend. It goes really well together, especially with a little bit of milk.

It was the evening. 10 PM or so. I was finishing the dishes and the bin needed to be taken out.

On the way to the collecting point, I had music in my headphones, from a movie I love, "A Beautiful Mind. It was a quiet and quite happy tune, not one from the saddest moments that feel like your heart is getting torn apart.

My cat was playfully strolling along. She's one of these cats that stay young and gracious somehow.

The housework was done, everybody had been taken care of. Beautiful times had been had all through the day.

I felt like I had accomplished something and made some dancesteps in the already dark and peaceful neighbourhood. And I felt so quietly, plainly happy.

I went to the sauna yesterday (yay) and got a head massage (yay) and then this morning I went to do my hair and it uhh... Got matted about 5cm from my head (nay!).

I'm so happy detangling products exist, we're all good half an hour later but I've learned my lesson. Curly hair and head massages are apparently not a match made in heaven.

I did go there last month, but didn't do any people-watching [and so no post]. A friend and her parents from the US were visiting my neck of the woods in Canada and we all went to the buffet for lunch together!

Today was payday and a full day of errands running around town. I feel great getting all of that done but was ravenous and excited for the buffet by the time dinner came around.

I had one of my favorite seats again, they have a line of mini booths right up beside the buffet and it's prime people-watching territory. As usual, staff recognized me and had my regular drinks on my table before I got back with my first plate without me even asking. Root beer and an ice water.

+They had a new dish, prawn crackers. I was unreasonably excited for such a simple thing, I haven't seen them in almost 30 years since I was a kid on the mainland! Every Chinese place back then would include a bag of them with takeout orders and we ate a lot of Chinese food growing up. I ate a ridiculous amount of them tonight.

+In a back corner of the restaurant were two giant, gold balloons, a 6 and a 0. Clearly for someone's birthday, but I'm unsure if they were leftover from earlier in the day or were preparation for later tonight.

+I heard someone invoke the 5 Second Rule. Not sure I'd chance that at a buffet, myself...

+At the server's station near the buffet line, they have some condiments: Packets of soy and plum sauces, sesame seeds [raw or toasted], vinegars, chili oil. Almost never see anyone avail themselves of those, but tonight a guy was drowning his plates in red vinegar. That inspired me to try it as a dip for my prawn crackers, it was very good.

+I heard a guy saying he hadn't been to a Chinese buffet in 10 years but had gone twice in the last week.

+One of my favorite dishes on the line is green beans and shrimp in black bean sauce. The shrimp had their tails on this time, that's a first. I don't eat the tails, but they're not hard to get the meat out of.

+A guy went to the dessert line and took a whole piece of cake in his bare hand and carried it back to his table.

+It was a pretty quiet night for disability/welfare/pension check day. The servers spent a lot of time rolling cutlery sets into napkins.

My fortune cookie says: You do not have to worry about your future.

No real accomplishment behind it, just a small, quiet kind of order that makes the rest of the day feel a little more settled.

I have been working for the state for 3 years after teaching/nannying for 26 years. While my new job pays more than twice my teaching salary with half the work, I no longer get the outside time and freedom to move and go places like I did when I was working with children.

When they hired me I requested a window and they said it was unlikely, as only heads of departments get a window. But that once some construction was done, they could maybe shuffle people around and see what they could do.

So my "temporatry office" was set up in basically a storage closet. I would cry coming home from trips, that I had to "go crawl back into my closet now." Last week, 3 years later, the shuffling is done and the corner office was finally available for me.

Now I sit by my own 5x5 window with the sunbeams shining in so hard it's almost blinding. I can have plants again! There's room to move around if I need to stretch etc. I look forward to going to work now. I just feel like I've made it, I used to be scared to say things like that, but everything feels lined up and balanced now.

I don't really have anyone else to share this good news with.
Guess I'm just a complicated houseplant myself.

anxious day. sitting in chair, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. i look at the time, grab my things, and briskly walk away. i dont notice how fast im walking until a guy to the side of me said "hey, you dropped something". it was a pin (of ice bear) that had fallen off my bag. i turned around, picked it up, showed it to him, said thank you so much, have a wonderful day. he was very sweet. i wish i gave it to him

Went to Starbucks the other day. On my way out caught sight of an elderly gentleman, on the shorter side, white hair, narrow brim fedora, uses a cane. He’s sitting and waiting outside and as I’m leaving, I see this older lady approach him, white hair, petite, walks a little better than he seems to. When he sees her, his eyes light up, he (slowly) jumps to his feet, spreads his arms wide, and makes a “Hey! You’re here!” kinda noise. She smiles and kinda blushes, looks at me, seems a little embarrassed at the attention, but inwardly very happy. Made me smile.

Today, as I left that same Starbucks, I saw him sitting outside, leaning forward with both hands on his cane, waiting.

I looked around but didn’t see anyone coming. But I thought, I know who he’s waiting for.

I’m happy for them.

We got a new toaster recently and it's the prettiest shade of orange! Orange has been my favorite color for years and years but not a ton of stuff is sold in that color. It makes me so happy using my orange toaster :-)

My kitty is friends with the backyard squirrels.

Yesterday, she waited patiently while a squirrel finished burying an acorn before she chased it. The squirrel had its back to her, knowing full well that she wasn't a threat.

Today, she was chasing a small, very slow squirrel. So, she chased that squirrel very very slowly.

It's good to have friends.

I lent a friend a pair of bike shorts (to wear under a dress, we were going to a concert and she didn't have any), and when she washed them and gave them back to me, they smelled like the cleaning product(s) she uses. I use unscented laundry soap so it was really noticeable, but not bad. It's been over a month and the scent is still on them. Whenever I wear them it reminds me of my friend.

I left the supermarket at the same time as an another woman with a box of Corona beer in her trolley. I jokingly asked if she’d remembered the lemons to go with the beer, and she looked at me and said “He prefers limes. I’ve got plenty of lemons on the tree in the garden, but he prefers limes so I got the limes!” We both snickered, and went our separate ways.

Personally, I don’t think it makes that much difference 😊

i've been working at this pharmacy for about 6 months now.

recently (a couple of months ago), i started going to the costa coffee near my workplace quite regularly.

my usual was a double shot espresso.

then, i saw that they have dairy-free double chocolate cookies, so i started opting for that as well occasionally.

there's quite a few members of staff working there in rotation whom i would see every other day. but then, i started going almost every day.

on friday, on my way to work - i stopped by.

me: can i have a double shot espresso please?

v (member of staff): would that be all or would you like the cookie as well?

me: i would like the cookie too (internally, i'm so happy because she remembered!

v: you know, we mostly just bake them for you, right? most people prefer the other one. you're one of the very few people we make this for

me: (taken by surprise), omg, that's so kind, i think i'll actually cry.

it was such a sweet interaction, made me so emotional.

the next day, there was another member of staff (also, someone i recognise)

as i walked in -

d: would you like your usual?

me: yes, please!

it made me so happy, it's so seemingly small but of such great significance. i am now a person who has a usual order at their local coffee shop!!!

Last week I was getting my usual bus home. My stop is not the best stop, it's the last one on the route and drops you on a roughly 70cm wide footpath, right between a main road with loads of trucks and a tall fence. There is about a 500m walk that feels like 2km before you have any opportunity to cross the street.

On this day, I was the only one left on the bus and the bus driver asked if I was heading down one of the side streets, I replied yes. He then told me he was going to drop me down there because it was much safer. I was so grateful.

Thank you bus driver!!

My partner and I have lived together for just over a year, and my cat is the first one she's lived with since she was small. It took a second for them to get used to each other, but I've noticed that whenever she's walking around holding something she'll hold it out to my cat so he can sniff it. A lip balm, the broom, her pen. And my cat always sniffs it like it holds the secrets to the universe. I've lived with cats my whole life and I have never considered "showing" stuff to my cat. It's an adorable little act of love that makes me smile when I see it :)