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.

1. Morning walks. I’m enjoying the last few Eric gets to take with us before he heads back to work in earnest and we go back to alternating days, just one of us and the boy. This morning we walked at the CSU Trial Gardens, to get one more walk in on campus before all the students come back. The trial gardens are in full bloom and there were a few spots, beds of plants and trails and fountains and vine covered iron arches, that got added after I left CSU and during COVID that I hadn’t seen yet. The dahlias and sunflowers in particular were gorgeous. 

2. Working on “The Book.” Yes, I am still working on writing this book. Recently I realized I was actually writing two different books and have had to spend some time shuffling things around to their respective containers, and yet that also made the structure and focus of the one I want to finish first so much clearer, a whole lot less confusing and unwieldy. *Spoiler Alert*: the one I want to finish first could be summed up as simply: “Being human is hard; don’t give up.” I am also having fun reading all the books I have collected over the years on writing memoir.

3. Tomatoes from a friend’s garden. We didn’t end up putting in a garden this year, even though typically we have a massive one. We were gone for the true start of the season, thought we’d wait until we got back to plant, but it was so hot while we were gone, with the promise of that being the norm for the rest of the summer, and we have so many grasshoppers and no real way to get rid of them without something toxic, so we decided to skip a year. So when a work friend brought Eric a bag of cherry tomatoes from their garden, we inhaled them! So good…

4. School is about to start and I don’t have to go. I am still so grateful to have been able to leave my job at CSU, to not ever have to grade another paper or be given too much work to be completed in too little time and with too few resources, to not have to be diplomatic or deal with the big egos that tend to collect in the tenure track at universities. I’m happy to stay home with my dog, not wear a bra or pack a lunch or pay $600+ to park a mile from my office or answer to anyone about what I’m working on.

5. My tiny family, tiny home, tiny life. I am content, so lucky and so grateful.

Bonus joy: Watermelon, peaches, grapes, corn, zucchini, tomatoes, basil, good books, listening to podcasts, watching TV with Eric at night, training with Shelby (who got engaged AND had a birthday this week), sharing more food with Chloe’ and Ralf, seeing Carrie’s addition almost finished, Ringo getting to meet Rex his new next door neighbor (the initial sniffing was fine, but then Ringo had to tell him “don’t mess with me” — Rex is a Goldendoodle easily twice Ringo’s size — so the meet and greet was cut short), the hydromassage chair, the pool, the sauna, going out to lunch with Eric, the full sized pig that apparently lives as a pet with a family down the street and around the corner that got out the other day and wandered down the block (when we drove by and the person was taking it back home, Eric rolled down the window and yelled, “I like your dog!”), yoga nidra, scheduling appointments online instead of having to call, vaccines and masks, my Friday morning Wild Writing sangha that starts back up soon, reading in bed at night while Ringo and Eric sleep.