My glass is half-full, and it’s crystal.

I admit this:  I have a mild obsession with drink containers.

If a mug’s handle doesn’t accommodate my hand, I won’t use it.  If the material from which a thing is made does not feel good against my mouth, I abandon it.

When I moved, I retained certain very particular coffee cups, along with one short drinking glass (real glass, blue) and the pottery vessel which I got at the Brookside Art Fair with Dr. Karr and her mysterious  husband.  After I arrived, I gently unpacked five coffee cups (two from Taos; the petite clay one that Trudy MacDonald Aldridge made for me; the Chicago mug; and the heavy crystal mug which I stole from Sheldon Vogt from which I drink my coffee).  Feeling a bit short-supplied, I bought two tumblers at the Marshall’s in Lodi which bore a star and the word “Wish”, but I broke one of them almost immediately.  The pottery number lives on the cabinet beside where I sleep.

I serve coffee, tea, or water in a mug or one of the two rocks glasses (blue or Wish).  In the china cabinet I have 12 matching 4-oz wine glasses which came from the DAV Thrift Store in Kansas City (now known as Red Racks).  There also reside the frosted bird glasses which my sister got for me.  They match a set which our mother had.   If things get fancy around here, I will dive into the china cabinet and deploy one of those.

It’s a tiny house.  I couldn’t take everything.

Today I found myself tooling around Robin’s Nest in Rio Vista, a nifty second-hand store owned and run by an absolutely adorable woman who has five children and the most gosh-darn happy outlook on life ever to grace a cash register.  I bought my one-dollar boat-bolt door stop there, as well as the lace curtain which hangs on my biggest window.  I like going there and hearing about her children and five-month old grandchild.  She never tires of telling me how blessed she is. I’m convinced.

Today I found a basket of new greeting cards for a buck each, some of which have prints of the coastal lighthouses.  I bought a few.  And then, strolling down the house-goods aisle, I spied something dazzling.  My heart fluttered.

A crystal rocks glass.  For fifty cents.  I thought about the broken “Wish” and the fact that I do, from time to time, have a need to serve multiple guests something cold to drink.  I brought that glass home with me.  I discovered that it fits perfectly in my hand, even better than the Brookside Art Fair find.  I poured cold water from the re-usable bottle that I keep in the refrigerator. I sat and took that first delicious sip.

Yes.  This suits me.  I set my glass on the Chicago coaster and contemplated the unbridled satisfaction that I get from gazing on such a lovely item.  Maybe the ownership of a small number of perfectly formed drinking glasses will not catapult me to social acceptance and monetary success.  Nevertheless, I take my pleasure where I find it.  I like the feel of an icy drink of water served in crystal.  There’s something serene about it.  With such a sweet object in my hand, the day could be lousy and I won’t mind quite as much; at least, not until tomorrow.

It’s the twenty-seventh day of the fifty-fourth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

“For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

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