Thinking about the small things that are pleasing me lately might drive away some of the anguish about my impending life change (this week!) and even if writing them down doesn’t help kick me out of my creative block, well, it’s better than nothing, right?

My naughty black cat, who’s been driving me absolutely batshit with his naughtiness this week, turned out to be after something specific, as I discovered when I almost stepped on a very small, very cold, rather dead tree frog in front of my closet door. This sounds more like a bad thing, but I’m looking at the brighter side of it. Now that the prey is disposed of I can get some sleep without chucking the cat out from under the bed at 3 AM while having dark thoughts of adapting the dogs’ shock collar to his scrawny neck. And hey, at least he had a reason.

The house is rather clean, and I’ve been decluttering. I like the results, and must do more.

But while I’m decluttering, I’m also moving houseplants in from my office. When I started that job, my ficus tree was about three feet tall. Now it’s more than seven, and the roots had crawled out the drain hole and coiled around in the saucer, lifting the whole shebang up a good three inches. Yesterday, I got after that clay pot with a hammer (good thing it was terra cotta and not plastic) and liberated the roots and repotted him in a much bigger pot. Of course, ficus being the ornery things that they are, he’ll probably immediately shed all of his leaves all over my couch in a fit of pique from the indignity, but for now, he filters the light from the front window and gives me a nice pleasant place to read.

And what am I reading? I’m going back through the Harry Potter series, of course, and enjoying it very much. It’s fun to pick out the foreshadowing. This is probably my fourth or fifth reading of the first book, and it’s become an old friend. I’m very much into old friends in the summer, of the literary variety at least.

Of the personal variety, I’ve made several new friends lately. I went out with one last night to the county fair just north of us, where we hung with some other friends that I already knew and watched the eye candy walk by. It was a pleasant evening, and Thursday night is the rodeo, which also has potential. I may throw myself back in front of my ex or I may just watch the scenery again, but that rodeo holds a soft spot in my heart.

And one of the best parts of today is that I have no less than five varieties of mushrooms in the house tonight. I may make some spectacular pasta dish tomorrow (wasn’t hungry tonight) or I may just sautee them up and eat them. Well, the fresh ones anyway; the fifth is a staple of dried shiitakes. A wealth of fungus! And if a person has pleasing fungus, what else matters?

Even the job thing is a good thing, no matter if I get waves of sheer terror washing over me now and then. If I take it one piece at a time, I’ll be fine. I’ve been riding so easily for so long that it’s very good for me to get out and change. Nobody likes a slacker, especially not me.