Image by Eric

1. The Colorado sky. Today, sadly, it’s mostly gray. We are due a big windstorm later in the day, so hopefully that will clear out the crud.

2. Doing fun stuff with people I love. Lunch and a movie with Chelsey and Jon, dinner and a movie with Chloe’ and Claudia, breakfast with Carrie, a yoga class with Abrona, aqua aerobics and a chat with Janice, sitting in the sauna with Eric, watching “Father Brown” with Eric, laughing with Eric, walking and napping with the dogs, yoga with my Red Sage class, a fitness class with Paige and Beth, random texting with my brother.

3. Practice and therapy and moving my body and napping and eating what I want and napping and reading in bed at night while Eric and the dogs sleep. These are some of the things keeping me from giving up this week. I just reread this and realized I said “napping” twice, but since that is pretty accurate, I’m going to leave it like that.

4. Kindness and support from other people, even if we’ve never met IRL. I posted something on Instagram about having an autoimmune disorder and burnout and was immediately offered so much goodness by people, some of them who I’ve never even met in real life. It can sometimes seem like social media and the internet are a container for the worst of humanity, but it also holds the best of what we are.

5. My tiny family. The real reason we got a whole new sectional is so Eric can stretch his legs out all the way when he takes a nap, and he took full advantage of it before he had to go back to work this week. Sam is still doing better after tweaking his back, but we did have to put him back on a small dose of pain meds to give him a bit more time to heal. I’m so grateful for all the support for him we have access to living here in Fort Collins. This week six years ago we brought Ringo the dingo home. He was so cute and tiny and gray, but clearly part wolverine.

Bonus joy: Clementines, good books (I just finished Where the Crawdads Sing and started The Ghost Bride), good TV (a new season of Catfish), good music, good podcasts, getting the laundry done and put away a day early, the few days I had this week without any anxiety, a long nap when you are really tired, toast with marionberry jam, sleeping in, writing in the morning while drinking a cocoa coffee, blue sky, the softest pajamas, laughing with Eric.