1. 5.5 weeks left at CSU!!! They still haven’t even advertised the position, so there won’t be anyone for me to train directly because they won’t have even hired them yet, and my supervisor is officially starting to freak out that this is really happening, but I am feeling lighter by the day. I’m still showing up, still doing good work, but all the while I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s been making me reconsider platitudes and affirmations I’ve heard in the past, things like “bloom where you are planted” or “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” To the first, I respond, “Bloom where you are planted. Unless there isn’t enough moisture or sunlight and the soil is bad. Then pick up and plant yourself somewhere better.”

To the second, I say: you know that saying, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”? That’s usually a good strategy, unless the lemons are poison. Then you need to burn those lemons and get yourself some strawberries because you like those better and why have you been denying yourself what you really want for all these years anyway?

2. Eating what I want without guilt. Seriously, screw diet culture. It almost killed me, had me living in a state of self-hatred and dissatisfaction for years. I’m so done, and with that comes a mix of grief and rage, which are really just two sides of the same coin.

3. Health insurance, and being able to afford to pay what they won’t cover. I got an MRI on my knee yesterday to finally get a more accurate assessment of what’s going on “in there.” In a few weeks, I’ll get the results and know if surgical intervention would help or if I’m going back to physical therapy. I had anxiety about the MRI, as I do anytime I get a medical procedure, go somewhere new to do something I’ve never done with people I don’t know. It went okay though. I was only in there for about 20 minutes. I got a warm blanket, ear plugs, headphones playing the music of my choice, and I only had to be in the tube up to my waist. Also, the person doing the procedure was a fat woman, and as soon as I saw her, I knew it was going to be okay. And, apparently, I look like a hobbit in hospital scrubs.

4. Morning walks. The most important reason to get my knee sorted.

5. My tiny family. Eric is busy with a lot of extra stuff this week and next, so we haven’t seen each other nearly enough. When we got in bed Monday night, I told him, “see you in two weeks,” and we both laughed, but only because it’s sort of true. Sam is doing so good. We had a scare a few days ago when he slipped and fell in the kitchen and seemed to be limping when he first got back up, but it didn’t stick and he went on a five mile run/walk the next morning. I’m so glad he’s got his quality of life back. Ringo is five years old and all grown up, but I realized the other day I still think of him as a puppy – maybe because he acts like one.

A boy and his stick, a love story

Bonus joy: writing with Mikalina and Chloe’, circus animal cookies, a crunchy Gala apple, good TV (just finished a French show on Netflix, Osmosis, that was really good), good books (I’m slowly working my way through Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, savoring it, and I just got Austin Kleon’s new book, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, and can’t wait to devour it), getting paid to teach yoga, pay day, naps, lunch with Aramati, finishing my second to last yoga teacher training module, internet, clean sheets, getting all the laundry done and put away on a Friday (which probably isn’t going to happen this week), meditating and writing in the morning, taking myself out to lunch, reading in bed at night in the dark while Eric and the dogs sleep.