No Sex-but a really good tomato

Oh, my.

Goodness.

Yesterday, I bought some summer sausage for the first time in years.

I brought it home and sliced a piece. I had on the counter a single Porter (cherry) tomato picked ripe off my DIL's plant a week ago. It was red then. It had been, I guess, ripening further the last week. I put the slice of summer sausage on a Wheatsworth cracker (no substitute: it is my absolute favorite), popped the perfecly ripe tomato in my mouth, and bit down on the summer sausage and cracker.
And my taste buds screamed, "Alleluia!!!"

Nothing I can remember ever tasted that good.

So I chewed slowly and savored.

I know there have been other really good things to eat. I can remember a number of them. Just not right now, with this intensity.

Sometimes, really good music does it for me. Or ballet. Music: I love classical, but the last music I felt real exhileration for was the original recording of "Classical Gas" and Manheim Steamrollers'"Joy to the World" (both, play at extreme volume.) Or almost always, voices of those I love.

Smell? A whole store full of star lillies. or a New Mexico desert after the rain. or any mountain full of balsam, pine and fir. Today, I smelled wet earth and green after a surprise shower on a really hot day. The earth smelled so good.

Best sight? too many to say. I remember daffodils, and understand Wordsworth, though daffodils last only a couple of weeks. I remember fervently a patch of clover with drops of dew on it in the sun. I remember the spring when wildflowers bloomed and bloomed and bloomed for weeks, and I said, "So this is what it is like to be rich."

Other intense joys: Seeing a family member or close friend get a fiercely happy outcome.

I remember the touch and my response to a lover I really cared for.

And then there's contentment. Which could fill a book.

I'm having a good interlude in life. Maybe as much because of my attitude about what is going on around me.

I am fated to have some really gnarly future stuff, simply because life is not static. No life is problem free. Neither is life free of joy unless I am a complete ass. Life is good. Yeah.

I stand in the sunlight and beam it back. Belly laugh. Huge, ear-splittng grin. Because oh, that tomato and the sausage and the cracker....

Life is good.