Once or twice a month, my friends Kim and Shari and I send each other quick, unedited essays. We intended to do this every week, but we’re not that consistent. Calling them essays is rather ambitious; they’re more like snippets or observations. We share a Dropbox folder labeled “Tell Me Something Good,” and fill it with these brief missives – a page or less, first drafts, first thoughts, reflections on something that made us smile or feel grateful or breathe a sigh of relief.

Sometimes the topics are big (survived a year, navigated a challenging family gathering), and sometimes they are small (baking blackberry shortcake, playing Pente with my son.)

Here’s what I sent out today…

I have these awesome pants from Thailand that I love. Two pairs, actually, because Josh and I both wanted them, but they don’t fit him properly. So I got the brown/gold ones and the maroon ones. They balloon around my legs and taper at the ankles, and today I am wearing them with leggings underneath because it is frigid outside. They go with sweaters and hoodies and t-shirts. They don’t really go with anything. They have some sort of East Asian language and symbols on them. I should probably know what they say. Maybe I’m swearing in a language I can’t read. I think it’s something to do with yoga. And also flowers and feet and little cornucopia things. They have a pocket on the outside of the right leg that I sometimes slip my phone into. When we ordered them, we didn’t pay any attention to where we were ordering from. So when the arrival estimate was 6 weeks, it surprised us. We waited and waited – close to two months. And finally they arrived. You know that smell of cotton fabric and sizing and plastic? That’s what they smelled like. They are my favorite go-to pants now. I would wear them every day.

What happened to you this week? Tell me something good. I want to hear all about it.