Shower curtain appreciation: I'm hooked

I'm trying to not take ordinary things for granted.  It's easy to get excited about new acquisitions, and it's easy (oh, man, so easy) to get bummed out by world events or even by having the usual end-of-semester whirl of very-very-very much to do.  It's harder to remember to carry past gratitude forward, into the present moment and into the particular space I happen to be occupying.

Here's one exceedingly ordinary thing I have been contemplating with gratitude lately: my shower curtain.  When I'm in my shower, I usually am recovering from a run --- which means I've been with friends and that I still have a healthy body.  When I'm in my shower, I'm not simultaneously getting wigged out by incoming emails, and I have clean water.  Also, hot water.  Life is good.

The particular shower curtain in my particular shower is another reason to be grateful.  I grew up with plastic shower curtains, and for some reason I therefore thought that plastic was the only kind that would "work": it's been a revelation to have a cloth shower curtain that does a perfectly fine job of keeping water in the tub area.  (The plastic in evil plastic shower curtains is the same kind -- PVC -- that spilled outside of East Palestine, and avoiding the kind of toxins that can harm me and people in factories or alongside train tracks thousands of miles away from me is yet another reason to appreciate my cloth curtains).

This particular set of shower curtains came from a thrift shop nearby: so score one for frugality to my pocketbook, and score one more for reusing existing manufactured items.  I groove to the colors -- the dark green and gold.  Coolest of all: this shower curtain has an unusual feature, in that it opens in the middle.  

An excellent place for hide-and-seek,
say my grandkiddoes. 

Have you ever seen a tub-length shower curtain that opens in the middle?  I hadn't, at least not until I got this one.  You might think that the opening would let water escape onto the bathroom floor, but that's hasn't at all been an issue. 

At the same time/place I got the shower curtain, I got these hooks, made of metal and glass, and shaped a bit like question marks.  They're really easy to attach and un-attach, much easier than the circular snap-together hooks I've used for most of my life.   

I'd tried similar hooks in the past, and the hook part kept coming off the bar when I slid the curtains open and closed but -- and here's more of the magic -- because my shower curtain opens in the middle, I don't have to slide it along the rod, and so the hooks are perfectly happy hanging around in place, being their little square selves right where they ought to be.

Also, the squares on the hooks echo
the gold squares in the pattern of the curtains.

And so this has been a bit of a happy spot for me: clean water, healthy body, cloth curtains, ease-of-use, happy colors, and occasional hide-and-seek potential.