I was so grateful this morning to see the first praying mantis this summer, a young European mantis, according to iNaturalist. I accidentally swept it off a pepper plant with the watering wand as I dislodged some grasshoppers. Hope I didn’t interrupt its meal or its hunt, but I’ve no worries for its future as there are a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand hoppers for every mantis.

I’m grateful, with a hearty laugh at myself, that Jimbo the Drag Clown from Canada won RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars Season 8. Her final competitor at the end was one for whom I experience an irrational and totally subjective aversion.

The Earth’s climate is rapidly approaching or has already arrived at Tipping Point; political chicanery and corruption are at an all-time high in this country, and white nationalism is on the rise around the world; everyone suffers from something, and most of us are suffering right now with anything from heatstroke to war to plantar fasciitis. And I’m grateful for a TV show that gives my attention a vacation once a week, an escape into an alternate reality, where I can appreciate human creativity and laugh at myself.