1. Morning walks. Enjoy this set of pictures, kind and gentle reader, as they may be some of the last. On our walk yesterday, we were turning towards the final mile, heading towards home when the sky was finally light enough for me to turn off my headlamp, which means I won’t be able to take many pictures from now on, as we enter the dark season. We saw a heron earlier in the week and were able to get a picture, but on the next walk it was so dark that even though I got really close to it, you can’t even see it in the picture I took, and an owl flew over my head and sat it a tree close enough to look but too dark for a picture. I enjoy the quiet and cool of this season and the one that follows, but it certainly cramps my style as a photographer.

(P.S. WordPress updated their editor, so now the options are to either add a single picture, one at a time, rather than as a group like you used to be able to, OR to create a gallery — learning a new editor isn’t exactly what I wanted to do this morning, and I’m not sure how I feel about this gallery option, but everything changes, and this is just another reminder of that).

2. Writing practice. I’ve started my own personal challenge: every day for the next 61 days, I’m reading a chapter from a writing book (I started with Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir) and then writing at least 1667 words. I still write my morning pages, and do Wild Writing practice twice a week, but this is a focused intention and effort to work on the book I’m writing. The other part of this challenge is to get up every morning at 5 am (I’d been sleeping in on the days Eric walked Ringo), which includes getting more and better sleep and spending less time on my phone.

3. Fall garden. The season is officially over, as water restrictions are in place here and starting on the first of October, we are no longer allowed to water. Eric has been slowly cleaning things out and up, and yesterday he harvested pumpkins.

4. Being retired. So much privilege, I absolutely am aware of it and so grateful. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for me to already be burnt out and trying to work through this moment in time, attempting to cope and take care of myself in this context with the job that I had.

5. My tiny family. Ringo can be such a pain sometimes, but even when he’s being a jerk, he makes me laugh — how he has to dig up the couch and bark and flip over and run around before settling down every night when we sit down to watch some TV, his indignation at any animal that refuses to move when he demands it (in particular, heron and cats), how when Eric takes off his neck gaiter after the morning walk Ringo insists on wearing it and asks for it back if you take it off even though he hates wearing a dog collar, how he’s claimed Sam’s couch as one of his napping spots, how he has to bark at our neighbor dog Rizzo every night before he goes to bed as if he’s telling her good night. Eric has almost worn out the full set of markers he asked for last Christmas leaving me love notes on the kitchen counter.

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Bonus joy: the yellow leaves covering our backyard, the bloom on my spider plant, writing and hanging out with Mikalina, tea with Chloe’, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna with Eric, hot cocoa in my coffee, pay day, having the money to pay all our bills on time and in full, the smell of gingerbread, crunchy peanut butter Clif bars, texting with my mom and brother, good podcasts, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.