fanfare for the common sweat beetle

In the great Amerikan tradition of making work out of play, this Independence Day weekend is an appropriate time to analyze the shit out of another great Amerikan tradition, the proper use of leisure time. And what better, mind-numbingly reductionistic way to weight one's everyday life choices than to make a balance sheet of what's right and what's wrong in my world?

RIGHT

1. The geraniums look glorious in their hanging baskets and window boxes.
2. The weather today is fabulous.
3. My knees don't hurt.

WRONG

1. This Gevalia mail-order coffee is the worst dreck I've ever tasted.
2. Messes in laundry room and kitchen refuse to clean themselves up.

RIGHT

4. My pocket knife got the old beach umbrella on the patio table unstuck, so it will both open and close.
5. Cardinals, chickadees, robins, bluejays, swallows, and crows coexist in this humble but verdant quarter acre. What's wrong with them, don't they have any ideology?

WRONG

3. The weeds I have tolerated, overlooked, or ignored are taking over the flowerbeds.
4. My Michigan vacation pipedream isn't going to happen this year or this lifetime.

RIGHT

6. Isabel the old cat takes a nap on the patio next to an old-fashioned steel lawn chair with spring-like tubular arms and legs.
7. Behold the daylilies of the back bed by the garage, trumpeting their existence in joyous yellow and orange.
8. Tendrils of bean plants have located the poles and know what to do.
9. I can choose which columnist to talk to at the cocktail party that is the Sunday New York Times.

WRONG

5. This peace will be broken tomorrow by well-intentioned crowds, parades, bad music, traffic, explosions, jingoistic rituals and self-congratulatory rhetoric.
6. I screwed up some early measurements of a project I'm working on, so nothing is truly square.
7. In the corners of my consciousness are shadows of problems that I will never solve.

RIGHT

10. I have the good sense to buy new lumber instead of making do with some scraps I had lying around, then I find some cheap little brackets at Home Depot that will secure a 2x6 firmly to a 2x8 at a right angle and save my bacon.
11. A simple flour tortilla, warmed on cast iron, with hummous and cherry tomatoes, with a cool Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald handcrafted porter tastes mighty good at the end of the day.

It's official: Right beats Wrong 11-7. I guess it was a good day.