120. Some backstory about a recipe box

More than three years ago I bought a secondhand recipe box (stuffed with recipes) at Savers for $1.63. It belonged to someone named Cora Chacey, and I could tell a few things about her from what was in the box.

I looked her up in the obits, talked to an acquaintance of mine who went to her church, and tried to learn more. Nothing but dead ends. I wrote about that for the Art House America blog.

I reprised that story for the Food section of my paper, and it was published last Wednesday. One of my hopes was that it might turn up someone who remembered Cora.

Today a reader called (after digging the Food section out of the trash, where her husband had tossed it after working the crossword). She'd been Cora's neighbor for 22 years. Lived two houses away. Didn't know her well, but told me a lot more than I knew before she called (including that Cora wore her hair in a pixie cut; I had imagined a perm).

That phone call made my day.

Other good things I know today:
• There were cookies and cookies and cookies and cookie cake at work.
• Two friends temporarily in the same place met for lunch, and it made me happy to have introduced them and to see friendship grow.
• One sick friend is on the mend, and another is hanging in there.
• I turned in a piece I'd worked hard on, and my editor made it better by taking out some of my favorite parts, and I was OK with that.
• I talked to my brother. We don't do that enough.
• I had a big long loud laughing spell because the cat stepped on my phone and activated Siri, and she heard me laughing and said (rather humorlessly), "Hee, hee."
(And more, but a girl's gotta have some secrets.)

How was your day?