Reasons to be Cheerful, Monday edition

Reasons to be cheerful (one, two, three):

• Get up at 6am to go to the dog park. Run about with your dogs like a carefree, manic child as no-one else is there.

• Pick up one tired, happy child from Coachella and hear her say "I had the best time of my life."
  

• Listen to Mumford & Sons almost all day long and wonder why they sound as if you've heard them forever.

• Smile not once but three times, even through gritted teeth, when various men at the car wash point out the dirty state of your car. Refrain from telling lady with the Wheaten Terrier in her lap, sitting in the vibrating leather chair, that her dog is far too large to be a Wheaten, or that dogs shouldn't be worn around the neck, like a fox stoll.

• Say yes, even when you feel like saying no.

• Be thankful that the crows are back in their nest despite the best, loudest, efforts of the celeb neighbors tree-trimmers and their butchery of the pine tree on the ridge.

• Clamber down the hillside and pilfer a fistful of nasturtiums. Don't feel guilty; no-one else knows they're there.

• Practise making a palm cross like the one the kind lady gave you outside church yesterday, but out of purple flax leaves.

• Be surprised by your husband's smiling face, who's home early for a Passover seder you've been invited to.

• Focus only on the good bits.