I desperately needed some visual flair. Due at a baby shower Saturday morning, I worried that the requisite darling baby clothes and princess books just weren’t enough. Something was missing.

Thankfully, last night I happened to enter a whimsical gift shop downtown. This was the sort of shop that sold earrings made of candy wrappers, giant marionettes of kangaroos and tigers, and miniature mosaic turtles. As I wandered past picture frames made of recycled magazines, fragile blown glass hummingbirds, and Christmas nutcrackers, I spied a stuffed animal crab about the size of both my hands put together.

It was a feisty looking crab.

Then I noticed that for claws, it had little teething rings. I looked at the crab. He looked at me. Why would anybody buy a crab teething ring? Then I started laughing out loud. It was a crab teething ring. A crab. . . to give to your baby when she’s crabby. I waved my friend over to me and showed her the little crab.

“Do you get it? It’s a crab. . . for when the baby’s crabby.”

We laughed for a long time. I laughed the sort of laugh that makes you lose your balance (good thing I wasn’t near the glass hummingbirds).

I love a good pun; it’s verbal flair. I have friends that can bring a good pun to an unpleasant situation and bring unexpected laughter (like when my husband joked with his friend on Friday that his colonoscopy must have been a pain in the butt).

Today I had the pleasure of attending the baby shower (massive flair: diapers arranged in a 5 foot cake tower, cupcakes accented with frosting versions of various rattles, diaper pins, baby booties). When the guest of honor opened my little crab, I warned her about the upcoming pun. Several of us laughed together, jabbing elbows into a side or slapping a nearby knee. Without the pun, little Crabby would have been a fine gift. With the pun, he was flair.

Living with flair means I laugh out loud and enjoy a good pun. It’s just the thing for putting someone in a good mood. Because, honestly, I’ll take what I can get when I’m. . . crabby.

On Fridays, my daughter gets to choose a treat after preschool. Since I was going to the grocery store to find some wrapping paper for a gift, she said she’d like a doughnut from the bakery there.

“And it has to have cream inside,” she said, very seriously, her finger pointed into air.

“Why cream?” I asked, turning down the radio. Kate’s a philosopher, and I didn’t want to miss her insight, especially since I still hadn’t experienced my flair moment for the day.

“Because it makes it so good.”

“Well, what if you pick a doughnut that doesn’t have cream inside?” I wondered, equally seriously.

“I’d find the cream,” she shrugged with her palms upturned.

“What if there’s no cream?” I asked.

“Then I’d find a new doughnut.”

She folded her hands and looked peacefully out the window, assured that the cream was out there, somewhere, and she would find it.

On the flair meter, this statement ranked high for me. It represents an uncompromising commitment to persevere to find what the heart wants. So often we settle. So often we compromise. I thought of Thoreau’s quote: “I want to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

Living with flair means I find what’s so good about everything. And if it’s not there, I find a new doughnut.

Some things nearly qualified as flair today: using almond extract and skim milk (a new concoction)in a freshly ground cup of coffee, choosing to pet my cat (the one that purrs so hard she seems to choke) for a minute longer than I had time for, or finding my daughter’s seashell collection on the floor of my minivan.

Don’t worry; my minivan isn’t that dirty. The whole collection was maybe five shells. And yes, I held one to my ear and even smelled it, all while waiting for the Rite Aid pharmacist to hand me my receipt through the drive-up window.

But those things aren’t so out-of-the-ordinary.

What did count as flair today wasn’t an experience with an object (or a cat). It happened when thinking about my first five blog followers. Five followers, statistically speaking, represents an absurdly small number. Infinitesimal. Too small to note, unseen as far as Internet blips go. But to me, those five were enough.

I recalled an essay a student wrote last week (thanks, Patrick) about how we tend to value the massive as opposed to the microscopic. Even in our own lives, we value accumulation and not reduction (unless, of course, you’re in my Weight Watchers meeting).

Living with flair means I take note of the immense worth of the small, the few, and the unseen. I take note, then make an offering of words, to just one or a million. It shouldn’t matter. After all, the boundaries of the day are set for most of us. Perhaps all we can embellish is a cup of coffee or a moment with a little creature. And maybe nobody will know about it even if we did bother to blog about it.

I know most of us won’t travel to any exotic beaches today. We might just experience the art of the ocean from our minivan’s floor and tell just five friends. And that’s just fine. That’s flair.