The simple act of running a lime wedge around the outside rim of a glass and rolling the rim in salt can make all the festive difference to a drink, and, also, to your mood.

The introverts among us know that the loveliest job at a dinner party is washing up. You won’t get the praise bestowed upon the cook, that is true. Cooking requires creative flair. Your job is to return things to how they were. The work of the best washer-upper-er may be invisible, but it is no less useful. Surely, there is no nicer alone than being alone in the company of others. Hearing, over the sound of running water, a distant conversation which you, thank god, need not contribute to. And then there is the immediate satisfaction that comes from cleaning dirty plates. First, they are dirty, and suddenly, you have made them clean. If only the same instant success could be applied to your day job. No, there is nothing better than this noble task—and, equally, nothing worse than the inevitable and disappointing appearance of a polite tea-towel-bearing guest who has come to help dry up.

The muck you lived through this past week can be washed away – or so says the detergent, ever reassuring. Is it indulgent to give each sock its own peg? They do seem to have an appetite for independence. Meanwhile, it’s best not to lose your temper with wet sheets when they inevitably reach toward dust or dirt or refuse to hang evenly on the line. Forgive the shirt that will not relinquish its stains. The underpants that take flight next door. Could there be a lovelier loneliness than a day spent in the company of drying clothes?

Eternal love might be overrated, or at any cost, an unlikely outcome for the great majority of us – but it’s no lesser destiny to partake in a series of smaller love stories: for instance, the fleeting love we feel for the sun on an unusually warm January morning, or the burst of admiration we have for an un-chipped shell given to us by the tide, or for a stranger who delivers a line of urgent wisdom before disappearing into the low light of an afternoon. In lieu of loving one thing eternally, perhaps it’s good enough to love many things on and off - with just as much intensity.

Bad habits make us feel better—at first. But they have a backlash of their own, and soon we can find ourselves each day more run down than the last. Relief can be found on a short trip to the vegetable patch, or its modern equivalent: the produce aisle. Seek out the stunted, the ugly, battered and the blemished fruits and vegetables. Like people, produce is all the more palatable when it’s not perfect.