Thought for the day: Happiness is two hours in the perfume department at Bloomingdale’s with one of your most fun friends.

Serendipity: The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way, as in “a fortunate stroke of serendipity.”

“There are no coincidences; everything happens for a reason.”

Can serendipity and coincidence co-exist in the same moment or event? Can I even understand the question? I could use a mind ( as opposed to pencil) sharpener.

When reading, I sometimes need a good few minutes to puzzle out the meaning of a sentence. I’m excluding material that’s meant to be challenging. Oh wait, I rarely read those sorts of things anymore anyway. A New Yorker film review is the apogee of my intellectualism these days, and some sentences require a rereading or three. Note: previous sentence was a direct flight from brain to keyboard with no layover in thesaurus-land for me. I’m boasting because of that occurrence’s rarity. I’d be lost without ready access to piles of synonyms.

And I was recently thrilled (also delighted, pleased, and gladdened thanks to Andi’s Thesaurus, the one that resides in my brain) to learn that a highly literate friend shares my inability to decode sentences that contain more than one negative concept. The New York Times is rife with these.

Now you tell me what this means:

Serial podcast subject Adnan Syed’s murder conviction is reinstated as court orders do-over of hearing that vacated the charge.

Huh? If you understood this on the first read, well, your IQ is higher than mine, for whatever that’s worth.

And why did I allow the topic of language to hijack this blog post in which I’d intended to write some pithy thing or other about the possibly related concepts of serendipity and coincidence.

Wait! I just figured it out. Serendipity includes judgment. It’s right there in the definition: Happy. Beneficial. Coincidence is value neutral.

Still, I don’t really understand the question I’m asking. Is this the beginning of the end of who I am?’ Which is a person who has a way with words? I might as well ask “What is the meaning of life?

Oops, I seem to be meandering into maudlin territory. Let’s get back to happy thoughts, like my two/hour sojourn sniffing classy and ridiculously expensive scents. Seriously expensive as in $500 for a very small bottle.

I highly recommend that you go ahead and treat yourself. How about a free night at the museum? A smidgeon of fancy cheese.

Let’s all seek out no-cost or nearly so little luxuries, diversions for when we have the energy, or maybe as something to look forward to when we’re not feeling so great.

Here it comes, a spritz of English Pear and Freesia by Jo Malone (a splurge but nowhere near $500). I usually consider this a summer fragrance but with today’s 32 degrees, I think I’ll give myself a pretend summer day. And with no colleague or offspring to tell me I’m over-scented, I can douse myself in the entire bottle if I want to. So there!

Mmmmmm. I smell soooo nice.

Recommendation:

Scamanda. Another day another crime. This one’s about someone who scammed her entire community. Lots of twists and turns.