Writing requires attentiveness. It is human nature not only to attend to the negative, but to give it more weight than the positive.

To be fair, the funny flows from the negative. Positive is not necessarily funny unless it is married to someone or something so unrelentingly positive (Polyanna!) that it loops back around to negative again.

We are mistrustful of positive. It rings false. It rings forced.

However, good is can be found every day, everywhere. In my life, it thrives, although it sometimes does take concerted effort to dig through floral shit to find it.

Here is some good from this week.

1. Speaking of pig shit, there were three flies the size of pinatas hung out in my office this week. I’m pretty sure someone sent those creatures an Evite and sent an Uber for them. My husband killed them immediately and with extreme prejudice.

2. I finished Year of Wonders. It was the first book on “tape” that I’ve “read.” I’m not sure I like using so many quotes to describe the process of receiving a story, but the book itself is magnificent and heartbreaking, and listening to a book is the only kind of multitasking I like.

3. My kids still run up to hug me every morning. They smell of summer. Their skin is smooth and their eyes bright. They’ve been so easy-going and wonderful these last few weeks. They’ve had a lot of ownership of their own time and I’ve said many more yeses than nos.

3a. Despite this, I have still dubbed them Chaos, Mayhem, and Havoc.

4. Roses are blooming in my yard.

5. The bird feeder outside our family room window is providing a lot more family entertainment than I would have thought.

6. New Yorker Magazine. I miss living close to NYC, and this publication and its snappy writing make me feel at home.

7. Hand-knit cleaning cloths. I knit ’em. I clean with ’em. Shut up.

8. 42. I’ve hit the age of really enjoying myself and my own quirks. I like saying a comfortable “no, thank you” to what I don’t want . I also like thanking people. I like being effusive. I like being a smartass.  I really like this process of being me without the effluvium of factoring in how it’s all being interpreted by others.

9. Goat cheese. Delicious and interesting.

10. My kids are moderately entertaining at the park. Oldest likes to turn it all into an America Ninja Warrior training ground. Youngest likes to yell, “All Aboard!” before climbing anything. Middle runs around, then does this when he gets bored:

 

11. It’s gems like these that my kids will remember me by, as opposed to pithy wisdom and folksy sayings (or pithy sayings and folksy wisdom):