1. Morning walks with the dogs. It’s light so early now, and everything is that particular bright early spring green. There are even baby geese in the ponds and news of baby foxes.

Not a great picture, but since the dogs were with me I couldn’t get too close

2. An award. I was joking at our English department awards ceremony last week that I wanted my friend Aparna to give me an award. A few days later, this lamp that used to belong to my friend Leslee was presented to me in a sweet little unofficial ceremony, and is now officially the weirdest thing in my office, (title previously held by me).

3. Ringo and Sam. With Burg being sick (the final diagnosis is an aggressive type of leukemia, with a prognosis of two weeks to three months), and Dexter’s birthday being this week (he would have been 14!), I am appreciating even more than usual the company and good health of these two goofballs.

4. Women who are creative, smart, kind, and funny. The ones who came to my Storybowl, the ones who couldn’t, the ones who make music and poetry, the ones who write with me, the teachers and the moms and the artists, the ones trying so hard to heal and make things better.

My living room waiting for Storybowl to start. Some day we really will get our floors refinished.

5. Eric. Always my date, making me dinner, walking the dogs, sharing private jokes with me that no one else would understand or probably think were funny, laughing with me, itching that spot I can’t reach, letting me rant about the same thing for the millionth time, helping me clean the house and then leaving so other people could come over and enjoy it, texting me in the middle of the day to see how it’s going, leaving love notes for me on the kitchen counter.

Bonus joy: flowers in the bathroom, lilacs, fresh chives, clean laundry, clean sheets on the bed, Aimee Mann’s new album, good TV, so many good books, poetry, Wild Writing, yoga, physical therapy, the internet, a cold glass of clean water, how green everything is right now, blooms and birds, clean sheets (just noticed I put this on the list twice — I must really really like clean sheets), getting the laundry done on Friday, sleeping in, taking naps, crunchy apples and crunchy peanut butter.

1. Morning walks with the dogs. It’s getting light so early, I don’t even need my headlamp — although that also means other people are out earlier and we don’t have the whole place to ourselves the whole time. Yesterday, there was a heron out hunting. We ran into him along the river and then again at one of the ponds. He was hunkered down, so at first the dogs didn’t see him. See if you can find him in this picture and you’ll understand why they missed him at first.

Can you find the heron?

2. Colorado sky. It really is amazing. Don’t believe me? I present these next two pictures from our walk yesterday morning as proof.

3. Ringo and Sam. Ringo is getting just enough more grown up that I can leave him out during my Wild Writing class and he mostly behaves himself, and he can hang out in the backyard by himself without me having to check on him every five minutes. This is about the time with any other dog that I’d start leaving him at home alone without crating him — not this wild man. Sam is currently hiding under my writing desk because I’m doing laundry and he’s convinced the washing machine is trying to murder us. I’m so glad that he’s doing okay after his tick bite, all healed up and not even any side effects from the antibiotics. I’m feeling extra grateful for their company, their good health today, because someone I adore and her sweet dog just found out he has lymphoma.

Little dude, big ears

Looking for deer

4. Working from home. As an introvert and a highly sensitive person, after four days in a row in my CSU office, I’m fried. The only way I can get any work done on a Friday is to do it from home, in my pjs, with my dogs sleeping somewhere nearby, with a nap break at some point. I’m so lucky that my job allows for it.

5. Good food. Egg sliders with homemade biscuits and fresh eggs from a friend’s chickens, breakfast for dinner with more of the same eggs, spinach on everything, San Pelligrino orange soda, dark chocolate, carrots, and avocado.

Bonus joy: that what was wrong with the Highlander was a fairly minor fix (the Big Rig is 15 years old with close to 200,000 miles now, so any time it goes in the shop, we know it could be something that means we are buying another new car instead of fixing it), enough flexibility in our schedules that five days with one car was workable, the smell of lilacs, my irises blooming, good tv, good books, such good humans in my Wild Writing class, getting a big project at work close to done, pay day, clean sheets.