Notebook. As a writer, I’ve got a lot of these. I always have one in my purse, just in case I have an idea or need to make a note or have some extra time to write. I have three or four on my writing desk that I’m actively using — one is for my morning pages (my daily practice), one for my business (ideas for ecourses, workshops, and such), one for Feast (which is officially over, but some of us are going to do a virtual book club with Brene’ Brown’s new book so I’ll use the remaining space for that), and another for quotes and collages. In my closet, I have bookshelves full of notebooks, most of them already full of writing but a few that are blank. There’s at least three or four books already written on those shelves, in those pages.

I’m pretty fussy about the style of notebook I use. It has to be comfortable, the pages open flat without much of a ridge in the center of the book. I like lined pages, but no matter how the margins are set up, I’ll write edge to edge, filling the entire page. When I start anything new, I always date it. That helps when I am looking for something that happened on a particular date, something I want to check and see what I wrote about it as it was happening. It’s hard for me to go into a store that sells notebooks and not buy at least one, knowing I can never have too many because I’m always filling them up.

Number. I’m not sure how many it would take, how many I’d have to eat for it to feel like enough — strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers. I stuff myself with as much sweetness as I can while they are here. Harvest season is so bittersweet, with such bounty, but only for a limited time. It’s another reminder that nothing lasts, that everything is always changing, but also that if the earth is still here, if we are still here, things will cycle back around again. The sun will rise tomorrow, the summer will come again next year.