There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and it’s really easy to get wrapped up in all the sadness and hopelessness.

Since I’ve always been a pretty pessimistic person, I feel like this can go double for me, and before you know it, I manage to bring myself down pretty low.

I have discovered that while I am terrible at imagining a positive outcome, I can stave off the blues a little bit better when I focus on the simple, good stuff around me.

Fake nails have come a long way since the Lee Press-On Nails of my youth. E has embraced this fad fully, and before we left on vacation she showed me her individually hand decorated “fake” nails.

She had meticulously crafted a small beach scene or theme on each of them. From a hammerhead shark to a miniature crab to an intricate inlaid pearl pattern with a 3-D element, they were simply beautiful.

I had no idea she was so talented, or that she had the patience to craft them.

The other day, I had a specific errand to run. As I was leaving my driveway, a mother fox ran in front of me with a kit in her mouth.

About three minutes later, I realized that I’d forgotten the specific item I needed to run the errand. Pleased that I’d remembered it five minutes after leaving the house, rather than when I arrived at my destination an hour later, I quickly turned around, and encountered mama fox running across the road again, with another kit in her mouth.

I have no idea why she was relocating, but I was so happy to see thriving baby foxes. I know they can wreak havoc on a chicken pen, but we’ve done our best to fox-proof the coop, and I leave a few extra eggs or other little treats across the yard from the pen to hopefully bribe the foxes, or other predators, from needing to break into the hen house.

G’s garden has been thriving, for the most part. We’ve lost a few plants here and there, but overall, it’s been a good experiment for him and our bounty is starting to come in.

We took turns updating each other on the status of the first ripe tomato.

The second ripe tomato, though, mysteriously disappeared. I asked G about it and he said he picked it already and ate it! I never thought I’d see the day when the self-described “meat-a-tarian” voluntarily ate a vegetable, but here we are. While that joy was short-lived — he declined a helping of grilled squash a few days later — I’m holding out hope for the thriving eggplants and brussels sprouts.

Duncan was not happy with the fact that we left him to go on vacation.

With good reason, he has some abandonment issues, and despite me trying to explain things to him, and at the end of the day, coming back home to him, he sulked around for a week, letting me know that I had grievously offended him.

Henson took advantage of Dunc’s standoffishness to be a complete suck-up, which only served to annoy Dunc even more.

It was rewarding to realize one day that the furry head that had crawled up on my lap was the big thick one, and not the slim, pointy one. He had forgiven me, and all was right in his world, again.

A is surviving his first summer internship. It was quite a change of pace for him. Until now, his jobs have always been fairly active ones, involving a lot of hustle, or working outside. Now he’s putting on nice clothes every day and going into an office. He’s also living away from home during the week.

I can’t resist a little bit of spying, but so far, it’s been gratifying to see him exploring the area where he’s spending the summer, watching him take the long way home, or hitting up a new spot for lunch. It’s also a relief to seem him be on time for work every day.

Despite all the other chaos and despair that the world seems to be throwing at many of us right now, these little pockets of our lives are unfolding just the way they should.

Hopefully, they continue to outpace and outweigh the heaviness. If they don’t, well, I guess I’ll just have to look for more of them.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News