I'm feeling a bit depressed and wanted to hear ideas and observations about anything good, fun, or merely decent.
   The writer Joyce Carol Oates once said she loved doing research for fiction because it was the only part of writing that was blameless, there was not any seed of her faults in it.

   I can't think of much right now. Um, it's fun with kids to make a big drama out of nothing. Like when my kids had a drink called a Pink Panther at Lynne's Paradise Cafe, I made a great piece of espionage of knowing a guy inside, a mole, who got me the recipe. And at the grocery we tried to space the ingredients apart so nobody got wind of what we were doing. Taught them to be "surrepticious" (if not how to spell it). Drew the curtains, and made a batch. Ah.

A patch of woods to walk in is good, to detox from an absurd job, or stress. Puts you in a different place.

   Sex when it goes especially well, hard to top that. Any advice?

   A new way to cook a potato is usually a good thing.

   Friends I only see every year or so--make me feel a little less dull, because I've maybe thought of something new to say since I last saw them. That's a lift.

One day of the week going pretty successfully, that's not a bad deal, all in all.                            Fred