1. Fall color. This time of year, everything is changing so fast. We walk somewhere and just a day or two later we go back and it looks so different.
2. Morning walks. I love the cooler weather, the shift to more quiet. So many people go back inside in the fall and winter, especially in the morning, and it sometimes feels like we have the whole world to ourselves. We got rained on one morning this week, but it was really warm and we saw a rainbow.
3. Science. We got results back for allergy tests we did on Ringo, in part because of his wonky belly. Turns out he’s allergic to corn, flax, milk, oats, peas, pumpkin, rice, and spinach. He’s been getting pumpkin and rice every meal! He’s also allergic to all kinds of grasses and cottonwoods! And the kind of yeast that can cause ear infections, which explains the trouble he’s had with his ears. So I dropped some serious cash at the feed store because pretty much every food and treat we have for him has something he can’t have. I’m so grateful we had access to the test, the money to pay for it, and a care team who loves him so much. So handsome, so high maintenance.
4. So many tomatoes! I went out yesterday and picked as many as I could, as we are in that part of the year when the real cold could come any time. This weekend I’ll be making roasted tomato soup and tomato jam.
5. My tiny family, tiny home, tiny life. I am looking forward to sinking in to all three this weekend.
Bonus joy: Drawing and hanging out with Calyx, lunch with Carrie, texting with Chloe’ (especially now that she can send me pictures of her cute baby) and Mom and Chris, meeting with my new nutritionist (she’s both HAES and ED centered — if you know, you know), good TV, listening to podcasts, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna, cooking with Eric, laughing with Eric, being cold, a big glass of cold clean water, cancelled plans, clean laundry, pay day, paying all our bills, clean sheets, taco salad, vaccines, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.
This is my 500th Something Good list. FIVE HUNDREDTH. Five hundred weeks, about 9.5 years, I’ve spent scouring the internet for things to share with you here, things I didn’t want you to miss. When I post the link to my Facebook page each week, I caption it: “this week’s list of things worth reading, watching, listening to, contemplating, and sharing.”
Over the years, the content of my lists has shifted. At first, I needed cheering up, so I posted things that made me grateful, reminded me that there are good things and good people. In fact, when I look back at my very first list, I realize that where I started was actually a lot more like my Gratitude Friday posts. When the world started to get more complicated (#BLM, ICE, the climate crisis, the Trump years — i.e. “people behaving badly”), I got very sad and very angry, trying so hard to understand what was happening and what to do about it, and I think my lists reflected that.
Lately, even though the world has gotten even more terrifying and chaotic, the content has balanced out. Things like recipes I want to try, reading lists, amazing art and nature, cute animals and kids, and stuff about grief, mindfulness, and practice continue to be some of my favorite things to include. I post all the good stuff plus some hard stuff that’s worth knowing, but no longer share stuff that’s bad just because it’s bad.
I’m glad you are still here, kind and gentle reader. It makes me so happy to share these things with you. So here we go again, for the 500th time…
2. ‘America’s Oldest Park Ranger’ Is Only Her Latest Chapter on The New York Times. “Betty Reid Soskin has fought to ensure that American history includes the stories that get overlooked. As she turns 100, few stories have been more remarkable than hers.”
3. “The Writer You Are is Enough.” Ruth Ozeki on Process and Acceptance. “Ruth Ozeki’s A Book of Form and Emptiness is out today, so we spoke to her about professors she fell in love with, accessing the liminal fictional space in the early hours of the morning, and the best advice she’s ever received.”
5. Interview: The transformation of Greta Thunberg. “I didn’t have the courage to get friends. Now I have many, I really see the value of friendship. Apart from the climate, almost nothing else matters.”
6. Open Letter to Elena Brower. “The hardest part about this wasn’t never talking to you again, it was losing the community I thought I had while following you. When I shared my experience with others, I was uninvited to the club, friendships ended, people went silent. A few people even came to your defense, claiming you weren’t perfect and told me to accept it or move on. Others said, ‘She’s never been like that to me,’ and went on assisting your classes and supporting your work. I want to remind those of you who are reading this that just because you weren’t harmed doesn’t mean she isn’t capable of harm and shouldn’t be held accountable.”
7. How Not to Be an Invasive Species. “The descendants of settlers and immigrants can’t become Indigenous to the land where we live. But we can follow the models of coexistence.”
13. What About the Heroine’s Journey? on The New York Times. “The Harvard scholar Maria Tatar has made a career of studying fairy tales and folklore. Now she is taking aim at Joseph Campbell and showing us the women he left out of the story.”
20. Last Writes by Chris Bursk. “I am helping clean out my friend Sandy’s apartment after her suicide when I open an envelope addressed to me. There are five poems inside.”
22. Wisdom from Mindy Tsonas Choi, “Trying to heal, while trying to grieve, while trying to live, while trying to dream, while trying to create, while trying to love, while trying to be love, while trying not to try so hard.” *sigh* #same
23. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön, “Instead of asking ourselves, ‘How can I find security and happiness?’ we could ask ourselves, ‘Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace—disappointment in all its many forms—and let it open me?'”
24. I am so fucking tired. “Parents like me passed their breaking point a long time ago. How will we ever return to normal?”
28. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. “This is what happens when you don’t have anywhere to put your rage, your dissatisfaction, your deep sadness that this [waves hands wildly] might be every day, every week, every year for the rest of your life. “
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 