A few months ago, I wrote a list of awesome things to counteract the spirits of despair, bad backs, sore necks, and old-person feet. Things are better and worse; but rather than recite another, slightly revised, litany of aches and pains, I’ll skip to my ever-growing List of Nice and Good Things [DRAFT] because:

1. I am currently reading a George Eliot novel (Daniel Deronda) and would like to get back to it. Not a perfect novel, but reading anything of hers is like being in the same room as the beautiful, grave Dan: your foibles, failings, and imperfections are flayed and laid bare in the most bracing and helpful ways.

2. George Eliot, generally. And I’m not just saying that because my best beloved recently gifted me the first complete set of her work. (I told a friend of mine about this dusty, violent sneeze-inspiring bundle of 19th-century book love, and he declared he wanted to come over and touch them. Which wasn’t creepy or weird at all.)

3. Widespread literacy. Truly. I am often intensely emotionally grateful that I was born at a time when most people are taught to read AND books are mostly affordable AND lending libraries are de rigueur. Books saved my life; I mean that entirely and without even a hint of jazz hands.

4. My bicycle is awesome and I know how to ride it and I do ride it, nearly every day.

5. I’ve begun a modest container garden on my deck. The kale has begun sprouting and the Squirrels of Total Destruction have thus far wrought only partial devastation.

6. It’s almost July, and I haven’t yet had to turn the A/C on! Down with the hellish hot heat!

7. My birthday’s coming and you know what that means…books and cakes and cakes and books. Also, books. More good and nice things to come. MOAR!