1. Morning walks. Still cold and dark, but getting warmer and lighter. There was one particular morning when the sky was a certain color blue and the moon was out and it made me so happy to be alive, to be out there and able to see it.

2. Time with friends. As a highly sensitive introvert who would almost always rather stay home alone than do anything else, I don’t have a big group of friends that I see regularly — but the ones I do are something special. This week I got to spend time with my favorite ones: went to a modern dance performance loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, hung out at my kitchen table talking for hours, wrote with my Wild-ish sangha, and even though I turned down the offer of a coffee date and/or puppy time, I’m counting that too.

3. Practice. When I get up in the morning (somewhere between 5 and 6 am), I check to see if I have any texts from my brother or mom, then put my phone aside. Okay, most days I put my phone down after that quick check, and some days I get lost in my phone and it takes a bit more time to remember my intention to practice. I might do some yoga, anything from a few quick stretches to a full practice, and after I go into my practice room and read a short passage or chapter or poem (recently I’ve been reading from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have, which I especially like because even though it’s a day book and each entry is dated, you can open it to any page and find something worth contemplating).

When I finish, I open my Insight Timer app and settle in on my meditation cushion. Some mornings I use the simple timer, but other mornings I pick a track that’s a short dharma talk, or music or a mantra or both. Once I’m done, I dedicate the merit (“By the merit of my practice, may suffering be eased — in myself and in the world”) and bow in offering. Then I go out and fix a mug of green tea and a snack, go in to my office and sit in front of my HappyLight with a notebook and write. Sometimes what I write is garbage, messy or petty, and that’s fine, because the purpose of this “first thing in the day” write is to mainly clear my head. If it’s a morning I’m walking Ringo, I do that first thing before the rest of my practice, but that walk with him is a practice too. And I suppose the point I’m trying to make is I practice every day and I’m so grateful for it because I’m convinced it is why I’m still here, why I haven’t given up.

4. Healthcare. This week, I’m thinking specifically of my primary care doctor. I saw her yesterday, had four things I needed to check in with her about: my achy shoulder, whether I needed a pap smear after the other procedures I’d had earlier in the year, an in office check of my A1C, and “is this lump next to my belly button scar tissue from my surgery or a hernia?” As a result of our visit, I’m getting an x-ray of my shoulder, and if it’s arthritis, she’s sending me to an orthopedist, and if not, I have a referral to do some physical therapy; I don’t need a pap smear until next year; my A1C is holding steading in the normal range (I have a family history on both sides of every kind of diabetes and was in the caution zone a few years ago, so I like to keep a close eye on that); and yes, it is unfortunately a hernia, so I’m going to be consulting with a surgeon (the one who did my surgery last year warned that an eventual incisional hernia might develop but he just retired, so it will be someone new who does the repair, if I choose to have surgery). I’m just so grateful that I have a whole team who takes such good care of me, is accessible and wise and kind, and that even though we don’t have universal healthcare, my health insurance does help with costs, which takes some of the pressure off when seeking treatment and making decisions about what to do next.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I’ve been trying to be more honest with Eric about what’s going on with me, what I might be struggling with. I tend to not want to burden him with it or don’t even think to tell him because I can get so stuck in my own head or don’t want to talk about it. Now, I ask for more hugs and tell him when I’m hurting or admit the things I’m really afraid of, and it really helps. Like last night, I told him, “getting a hernia after my surgery makes me feel like I did something wrong” and he told me, “the only thing you did was work out really hard and that’s not a thing to feel bad about.” He helps me reframe how I see things (which often isn’t very accurate, is more focused on figuring out what I did wrong and what I need to do to “fix it”) and offers me comfort.

Ringo is pretty good at helping me too. The other day I was having a messy, tender, raw day, and I’m not even sure what triggered it, but I was shutting down my browser to get up from my computer, and I burst into tears. Grief is weird like that, how it catches you by surprise and sometimes doesn’t seem to have a clear reason for “why now?” After I cried for a bit, I went into the living room and found Ringo resting on the couch. I sat on the floor next to him and pet him, smelled his head, felt his soft ears, looked in to his eyes and told him he was a good boy, and got a few kisses. I felt so much better.

Bonus joy: having the whole pool to myself, sitting in the sauna with Eric, sunshine, oranges (pretty much any citrus, really), knowing what I want and being able to cook it for myself, saying “no”, canceling plans, sharing pastries, reading, organizing my TBR piles, hugs, poetry and poets, watching TV or a movie, listening to podcasts, aisle seats, my infrared heating pad, gummies, bread, the picture Jim took of a brown mink standing in the snow at the edge of the river, how Chloe’ compared our compost pile to the beaver lodge at McMurray ponds (it totally looks like it and I had never noticed!), talking to my mom on the phone and hearing not quite three year old Warren in the background doing that thing he does where he repeats everything you say to him (for example, Mom told him to close the door and his little voice said “close the door” as he was doing it — it’s SO cute!), the video’s Chloe’ sent me of Hendrix playing with the alphabet blocks I got for him, kittens, how much Ringo likes the food we cook for him, purple sweet potatoes, purple carrots with yellow centers, purple the color, kitchen counter love notes, texting with Shellie and sharing links, finding the perfect gif to send as a response knowing it will make the other person smile, other people’s dogs, the story Eric told me about the old man on the trail reaching down to pat Ringo on the head and Ringo letting him which reminded me of the time Sam nudged the hand of the guy who owned the fencing company replacing our privacy fence while we were talking and let him pet him which was super unusual for Sam and so sweet, the puppy available for adoption at the Boulder Humane Society that looked like a giant baby Dexter, art, flowers, bees and birds, flannel sheets, a nap, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.