There’s a dead dog lying in the middle of the road, and we both see it.

As if jolted by a cattle prod, my highly sensitive companion rears in her seat and wails. Ooooooohhhh Nooooooooo!!!! She trembles and her eyes well up.

Meanwhile, I just keep on driving. I’d been deep in our conversation, and the meaning of that inert, furry heap in the center of the roadway hasn’t  yet registered in me.

So by now we’ve driven right past the dog and quite a distance beyond, and I still haven’t said a word or even slowed down, and my friend is choking on tears.

We’re easily a quarter of a mile away when I mutter We need to go back.

I turn the car around and return to where the dog still lies, and I pull over and step out and look both ways before walking out and dragging the dog’s body to the curb.

Here comes spring, and I’m eager to get outside. There’s nothing I enjoy more than Central Park on a sunny weekend afternoon.

I go for the fresh air and sunshine and pretty surroundings and exercise. I bring a book and I sit on a bench by myself and read…

…which is the sort of behavior that leads extrovert pals to frown in concern and ask me questions like this: Why don’t you socialize more? Why don’t you take a break from the books and get out and make some more friends? 

And it casts a shadow of self-doubt. Is there something wrong with me?

In the fall of my senior year of high school, I applied to one college. I was accepted. I attended.

This was waaaay back in 1977, and many of my peers report similar experiences. Most of us somehow wound up attending institutes of higher learning. “Choice” doesn’t necessarily feel like the right word to describe the processes that got us there.

In the abstract, I can imagine having searched more thoroughly and located  a school that would have been a better fit for me. But, I can’t actually name that school. And this is despite my being in a line of work that acquaints me with the features of hundreds of colleges and universities.

For better or worse, I truly never thought in terms of selecting the “right” college.

Ana Homayoun describes the angst that I and my similarly clueless peers were spared:

Do we need other people in order to understand ourselves better?

Take just a few seconds to consider this question.

OK, now: unless you were too rushed or distracted to actually invest those few seconds, you found that your mind automatically began forming a reply.

Questions can be great for kicking the brain into a productive mode, because:

• Questions stimulate thinking, and…
• Questions provide focus.

I haven’t been blogging a lot lately, and the main reason is because I stare at that blank computer screen and I’ve got SO MUCH to say, I can’t decide what to write about first.

I’m like a mule stuck between at least twenty intriguing potential-subject haystacks, paralyzed by the sheer number of interesting things I’ve been reading and discussing, all of which I long to express in print.

None of which is happening.

It’s wonderful to have variety and selection. Who doesn’t enjoy freedom and flexibility and a cornucopia of options? Who doesn’t thrill to a banquet spread before them?

In fact,  too much choice can be absolutely stultifying.

I see this in my students all the time. I live and work in one of the most affluent areas of the country, and the kids I tutor have every sort of choice. We all believe these kids “should” be grateful for all their privileges, yet often they are paralyzed by them.

What to wear? What sports to play? What friends to hang out with? What to do with one’s free time? What music to listen to?…and, of course, those truly terrifying questions:

We just got back from a trip to Barcelona, one of the foodie meccas of Europe, and I was very glad that I had just finished reading The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.

Otherwise, we might have been overwhelmed by the riotous quantity of eating options. We could have spent all day agonizing over the restaurant choices and trying to decide which one was “the best.”

Instead, we did what Schwartz recommends: we limited our options. Each day, we perused the menus of two or three eateries, and we selected one of them.

We wound up having wonderful, memorable meals. Truly, in Barcelona it’s difficult to dine badly. And we felt satisfied and happy about our choices…happier than if we had invested hours researching and deliberating.

One big problem with having too much choice is that the human brain hates the feeling of loss, more that it enjoys the experience of gain.

[On Saturdays my topic of focus is A Small, Good Thing, inspired by one of my favorite Raymond Carver stories.]

Some people like to make large, dramatic life changes, while others aspire to gradual, incremental improvements. (Personally, I’m of that second camp.)

Joel Fuhrman’s excellent book, Eat to Live, contains valuable nutrition advice for everyone.

Instead of leaping right into my 2012 agenda, I’m focusing today on what I’ve learned in 2011. Here’s my list so far:

• I really do know how to be happy. Listening to my own internal voice and allowing myself to Be Leigh, works well for me. This includes becoming OK with the parts of me that so often feel less-than-ideal, like my messiness / lack of attention to dress and housekeeping, and my enormous need for oceans of reading and sleeping and quiet-contemplation time (which eat up so many hours and make me less “productive”…well, so be it!)

[On Saturdays my topic of focus is A Small, Good Thing, inspired by one of my favorite Raymond Carver stories.]

A big part of my identity is rooted in thinking of myself as a kind, caring, gentle and optimistic person…one who says supportive, positive things…a Tigger, not an Eeyore.

I’m uncomfortable saying anything that might come across as negative or unnice.  I hate the thought of hurting someone’s feelings or having them get angry at me.

I’m quite sure that’s not what really happened, but here’s the story:

For me and my neighbors, trash pick-up day is Friday.

I live in a little town, where there’s no municipal sanitation crew. Everybody hires one of several local mom-and-pop companies to pick up their trash.

The guys who collect our garbage are a father and son team with a small garbage truck (a modified pick-up truck). The men grab each can and swing it up and dump the contents into the truck by hand. They do that ALL DAY. I get tired just watching them.