Things that make me go "smile!"

When I was quite unhappy, earlier in the year, a couple of months after the miscarriage, a friend who's been through a lot of depression and who is also struggling to get pregnant, asked me "what do you do that makes you happy?" So I thought of some things...

• Gardening... my tomatoes are just getting ripe (in October! "You spend more time talking to them than you do to me..." says Mr Spouse)
• Making things... cooking, sewing (I just turned a never-going-to-squeeze-into-it-again ball dress from when I was 19 into a blouse that got 2 comments when I wore it to work... despite the rubbish pattern which made the arms reeelly narrow and meant I had to alter the (*(&*^& thing about five times)
• Going out for dinner with Mr Spouse most Friday nights
• Work. Well, some aspects of work. Getting the right kind of results. Seeing children do cute things... which brings me to...
• Children. Well, I'd hardly be desperate to have them if I hated them, now would I? I am one of those girls who people said "oh, you should really have children" when I was about 10. I've been babysitting since I was 14, I reckon, volunteering with children on and off since I was 16 and they let me do that instead of sports, and working in research on child development since I stopped being a student. I don't do quite as much of the hands-on testing now (I have slaves lackeys well-paid research assistants and students who are lucky and grateful to be learning their craft at the feet of an experienced pro like myself. But it's still fun to play with them when they are done being tortured tested.