Let's talk about good things, okay? There are so many of them. Every day, if you look in the right places. For example, if you pause outside the grocery store and stop being so absorbed in your list of laundry detergent, bananas, paper towels, cocoa powder for a moment, you'll notice the heavy scent of lilacs hanging thickly in the air. There are buckets of them, and for $10 you can buy a bunch. The woody stems always stymie me at home; I go at them with scissors and a knife and still end up twisting them apart with my hands. But it's worth it when the entire living room is perfumed with flowers.

There’s nothing as delicious as anticipation. Even the word is luscious, long and drawn out, and strung with crisp consonants. I like how it feels to say it. I like how it feels to sense it.

The best sort of anticipation is for something good but undefined. A nebulous, hazy event awaits, shimmering ahead of you. You're ready, but you don't know quite for what.

You may be wondering where I have been. You may be sitting at your dining room table at this very moment thinking: "listen up girl, I have been JONESING for some cake, and it is your job to provide me with it, and you've let me down!"

I'm so sorry; I really have let you down. Does it help if I tell you that I have been gallivanting about the East Coast, eating warm baguettes from the King Arthur bakery in Vermont and playing with my new niece who is getting wonderfully more chubby with each passing minute (by playing, obviously I mean squeezing her thighs and singing her terribly off-key Josh Ritter and John Denver songs)?