A big storm would have been nice, but it’s really the lack of color that is getting me down. March is nothing but mud and surprise snowstorms and then more mud. April is nothing but cold wind and gray skies. So I expect big things from May. And, this year, May is dragging its heels. Whatever it is I’m waiting for, it doesn’t seem to be showing up.

I’ve been thinking about the marshmallow test off and on for years, ever since I heard about it. I am positive I would have waited for the second marshmallow. In fact, I think there’s a good chance, when the second one arrived, I would have let that one sit as well, thinking I could be the first four-year-old in history to be awarded three marshmallows. Of course, I now realize that, instead of getting a third marshmallow, all the other kids would enjoy their marshmallows, the researchers would turn out the lights and leave, and I’d be left alone in the room until the janitor showed up.

I would see the face of the dance teacher light up as they assumed I was a dancer, and I would dread what was coming. I would stand up and start to move and the teacher would immediately realize they had made a mistake—I was absolutely not a dancer. In fact, I had enormous difficulty following the simplest instructions. The notion of “body memory” was alien to me. I had a bad case of body amnesia.

Felix is our cat. He had made a small noise a few minutes before landing, but I had thought nothing of it. Now it smelled as if something was badly amiss. I know you might be having your breakfast as you listen to this, so suffice to say, of the three types of potential messes an animal could make in a small container, this was the worst of the options.

Honestly, I was not hopeful. There are a lot of stray dogs in Mexico, and Muneca was no longer a puppy. We later learned that her owner was not an older person, as we assumed, but a young woman who died unexpectedly. The whole thing seemed terribly tragic.

I googled the expression “nervous as a cat” and it comes from the idea that a cat moves very quickly and suddenly. It is used when a person is uneasy or overly alert. I don’t think Felix is uneasy in the least. But he is very alert. He can spring into action from complete stillness, zoom down the hall, bounce off the wall at the far end, return to hit the back of the sofa, and land on a chair—all in a moment. He has a lot of fun doing this.

Jade is one of the new people I have met while spending time in Mexico. Jade used to be an eye doctor. But after retiring from medicine in her 60s, she decided to do something a little different. I’m pretty sure—no matter how much time I gave you—you would never guess how Jade now spends her time.

If having more refined tastes means I stop noticing bougainvillea, I’d be happy with the tastes I have, even if I never understood much poetry. Because it seems to me the ability to notice the beautiful in the ordinary is more important than recognizing the unusual.

Optimism can be clumsy. It can be ham-fisted. Disappointment and grief and setbacks and bad news and failures are all very real things, and the optimist’s impulse is to sweep them under the rug in record time.

A couple of weeks before our 10th anniversary, I suggested to Peter that maybe we should have a party. It was at night, so Peter was mostly asleep. I have found this is a good time to spring new ideas on Peter.