Gratitude Friday

1. Healing. I don’t want to jinx it, but my heel seems to be getting better — with rest, physical therapy, strengthening and stretching exercises, and patience (which was probably the hardest of all), it’s on the mend.

2. The return of kitchen counter love notes. It’s the best thing about going back to work after summer vacation.

3. Our garden. The pumpkins are turning orange, the basil has gone to flower, and even though we only got a few Rocky Mountain Bee Plants this year they are big enough to be feeding many many bees.

4. Good food. Black bean and zucchini pancakes smothered in avocado and tomatoes from our garden, peach pie, glazed lemon zucchini bread, homemade pizza, roasted tomato soup, smoked salmon and cream cheese with spinach on an asiago bagel, corn on the cob, and watermelon.

5. Sweet Sam and Ringo Blue. The morning I took this picture, Eric was hoping to get some work done at home, but the dogs wouldn’t settle down, even though he just took them on a run. They were playing and playing and being rowdy and finally he gave up and went to his office on campus to work. I told him, “you know as soon as you leave, they are going to settle down.” I texted him this picture five minutes after he left.

Bonus joy: the sunflowers in our garden, a good yoga class, Hulu with no commercials, the Your Career Homecoming challenge, giving love and having it find its way back to me, Wild Writing class, more zucchini when I thought it was done producing, figuring out new ways to move, pants that fit and are comfortable, pay day, saying no, knowing what I want, uninterrupted sleep, crock pot meals, an hour working on my book, trusting that I don’t have to know how it’s going to turn out in order to keep going.

1. Our garden, and all the other gardens feeding us. This is one of my favorite times of the season — strawberries, watermelon, peaches, and tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes.

2. Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation, Susan Piver’s new book. It’s so good. She’s so good at this, the writing and the teaching and the practicing. I’ve been meditating for nine years now, three of those with Susan’s direct instruction, so even though I know some stuff, I am underlining the crap out of this book.3. Settling back into work at CSU. It is so hard to juggle everything I’m responsible for when I’m also on contract there, but so far I’m managing. Can’t wait to get my office prettied up again, to be all the way moved back in.

4. Good recipes, good food. One of the prompts for August Break this week was “favorite recipe.” My response was: How do I choose just one? Roasted tomato soup because I’d never made soup before, it was so easy and delicious, and the tomatoes and basil were from our garden. Chocolate chip cookies with toasted walnuts because they are so good and make Eric so happy. Glazed lemon zucchini bread (which really is cake) with double zucchini and extra glaze and raspberries if you have them, because, and the perfect thing to take to a potluck. And for eating, because I’ve never made crust (and Eric is so good at it, why should I), fruit pie — marionberry, blackberry and raspberry, apple, strawberry, and peach.

5. These two goofballs. You never have to use the bathroom alone with these two clowns, who think everything the humans do is interesting and want to come along, hang out — except when the humans are on the devices, computers or phones or tvs, because that is just straight up boring. This was Sam and Ringo “helping” me take a bath, although Ringo was just as interested in engaging Sam by playing the “look at the awesome toy I have, don’t you want to try and steal it from me?” game.

Bonus joy: Comedians (seriously, how cool is it that some people make it their profession to make us laugh?), good books and my Kindle making it so easy to get and read them, paper copies of good books I can hold in my hands and underline with a pencil, clean cool drinkable water, laughing with Eric, people who know how to fix our stuff and are fair and honest, the funds to be able to hire those people, knowing that the same stupid hangnail I get on my thumb every year about this time always heals, a physical therapist willing to give me a pep talk when I tell her I am officially frustrated, the flock of tiny yellow breasted birds that are so in love with our sunflower patch, sunflowers that are supposed to be 8-10 feet tall growing to 12 feet, breakfast burritos from La Luz, really good friends.