1. Morning walks. The rabbitbrush is starting to bloom, a definite sign of fall. We saw our owl friend again and watched a heron catching some breakfast.

2. Texting. As a highly sensitive introvert who likes to stay home and doesn’t like to talk on the phone and whose best friends are also introverted and family lives 1200 miles away, it literally is a lifeline to be able to communicate through text.

3. The turn towards fall. It’s just beginning here, the summer fading and turning to fall — my favorite Colorado season.

4. Reading. Although it never stopped, never truly left me, my relationship with books and reading has returned to a level of joy it hasn’t been in some time, and I am loving it.

5. My tiny family, tiny home, tiny life. Lately Ringo has been reminding me so much of Dexter — the way he gets a toy and brings it to me, the way he comes into my office when I’m writing and naps on the floor next to me, the way he lounges on the step of the back patio in the morning, the way he rolls in the grass of our backyard. Having three dogs gone — one just before he turned eight, one right after he turned ten, and one at ten and a half — makes this time of Ringo’s life (he’ll be nine in November) very tender. I hope he lives to be an old dog, but the knowing that no matter how old, it will still be too soon makes me think of what Jeff Foster said, “Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.”

Bonus joy: hanging out with Calyx, watching good TV and movies, listening to podcasts, writing at my desk in the morning with a cup of coffee, protein bars for when I just can’t manage to cook or make something but I need to feed myself, my compression gloves and thc/cbd creme and hand massager, the hydromassage chair, the pool, the sauna, being able to cry, a big glass of cold clean water, massage, a warm shower, clean sheets, clean laundry, having enough, having a “support team” of various wellness professionals, computer glasses, other people’s dogs, flowers, honey bees, antihistamines, trees, the river, the Pacific ocean, bats, sunrise/sunset, stars, naps, reading in bed while Eric and Ringo sleep.