100 things I love or at least have an opinion about. Okay, only 16.

1. Mushrooms that pop up from blank spots in the dirt into giant pillowy masses in a matter of hours.  Especially the ones I can eat.
2. As you can see by #1, I’m trying to find reasons to look forward to fall, but I’m not looking forward to it , not one little bit.  It gets dark and rainy and the swimming stops and the people go back inside.  I'm not for that.  It's not that I don't like candles, I truly do.  But really, daylight is way better.
3. Water for swimming and drinking and sitting in.  Especially the swimming part.  Moving through the water as our ancestors did. 
4. Those letters I used to write from summer camp.  Oh wait, I didn’t go to summer camp.  But if I did, it would have been like this:

Dear C,
Camp is really fun.  Today we went swimming and did archery and arts and crafts.  They are making us write letters home now. Who’s your teacher next year?  I hope we’re in the same class.  I really do.
Your friend,
Betsy

1. The use of, “I really do,” above.
2. When did signing things, "your friend" go extinct?  
3. Food that requires effort at the table, like crab or fondue.
4. I hate fondue, actually.  I like the idea of it, but it's soggy and gross.
5. The clean-hearted uncomplicated salty tears that come from caring deeply about something, and even if it's messed up and complicated and totally cul-de-sac-ish, if that's a word, caring is still a good thing.  Because I do believe that it changes people, entirely for the better, to be cared about.
6. Maps.  In fact, I've been longing for those blank worksheets they give you in social studies class where you color each country with a different pastel color.  Should I take that up again, or would it be too weird?
7. Getting stuff done.  Which I do far too little of.  I can spend a whole day and get jack-shit done.  (Or is it “not get jack-shit done?  Is Jack-shit hyphenated?  Capitolized?  Is Jack shit what we should be doing, or what we do instead?  These are the type of thoughts that I waste way too much time on.)
8. When someone walks in to the coffeeshop and says, “76.”  And I know without asking that he means the temperature of the lake water, one meter deep, which I like on so many levels. 
9. Turns out I don’t really have 100 things.
10. 
    
11. I so wish I would clean my windows.  I am wishing that so hard that I am almost thinking about putting it on my to do list with all the other stuff I haven't done and probably won't.
12. The book of short-stories, The Tenth of December.  And, I'm turning into a general fan of George Saunders, who says his biggest regret is failures of kindness.  That's a good kind of regret to have.  Add it to the to-do list:  "Avoid failures of kindness whenever possible."
13. Did you know you can purchase contact lenses that are purely cosmetic?  RIght?  If you want to look angry, for example, you can buy some red bits of plastic and wear them over your eyeball.  Who knew?
14. Speaking of cosmetic surgery, Little S. is having his embarrassingly large tonsils removed this week, and I hope that goes well.  I'm told that the view down his throat will be vastly improved, and what's not to love about that?
15. Headlines like this one:  "Is Economics More Like History than Physics?" Right?  That's not even a real question, in case you were wondering.  That's like, "Is yoga more like reading than cooking?"  Right?
16. People who have a firm and appropriate grasp of the use of the inside voice.  
17.  This claw that I found when cleaning out my barn: