1. Morning walks. We walked the dogs at CSU this past Sunday morning. This is the view from my old office, from the outside looking in. I expected to be just a little freaked out at this point that I didn’t have a job to go back to in another week, but I was wrong. I’m content, happy with my choice, looking forward to what comes next — and SO happy I’m not going back there, doing that again.

2. Practice. Yoga, meditation, writing, and dog. Practice can sometimes feel like a contradiction. The intention is to become comfortable with discomfort, to accept that the ground is always shifting, and yet what practice offers is something like stable ground, a strong foundation, a soft place to land. Ultimately one has to be able to hold space for conflicting truths, both/and.

3. Writing, and the good books other people write. The love I have for these two things, the obsession, feels part of my DNA, something you couldn’t take from me no matter what or how hard you tried.

4. Our garden. The new flowers we planted attracted so many bees, moths, butterflies, and grasshoppers. We are also finally getting some tomatoes and a bunch of cucumbers — which is why I’m making these sesame cucumber noodles for dinner tonight.

5. My tiny family. Sam and Ringo like to “help” me cook.

Bonus joy: fresh peaches, zucchini quesadillas with grilled onions, writing with Mikalina, good TV, good movies, good podcasts, aqua aerobics, Pilates, sitting in the sauna, the fitness class I’m taking (and the fact that I can keep up with the 20-year-olds), yoga, clean sheets, getting all the laundry done, sourdough toast with marionberry jam, vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and walnuts, watching dumb TV with Eric, the way we laugh at the same dumb things.

1. Morning walks. While Eric is still on vacation, we get to go all together, and that’s my favorite.

2. My “other” family. I was in Oregon last week visiting them – my parents, my brother and his two girls and one of their girls, and some aunts and uncles. It’s always good to see them, and then it’s always good to get back home to my own bed and my tiny family.

Mom and Dad. With them, I am simultaneously 51 and 12 years old, and they are both still younger than me and getting older.

Baby Lia (who’s almost not a baby anymore) and her grandpa, my big brother. She doesn’t like to eat bananas so much as she likes to peel them and throw the peel in the trash.

3. Our garden. We are currently getting tons of zucchini and cucumbers, but our tomatoes still aren’t ripe and our basil didn’t do too well this year. We went to a big plant sale and did some more work putting more flowers in the ground, to feed the bees and butterflies and keep down the weeds. Our goal is to eventually have plants everywhere with some paths winding through.

Image by Eric

Image by Eric

Image by Eric

Golden Raintree, which the bees love

4. My tiny family. They are my favorite.

5. Sweet things, in particular peach pie made by Eric on the grill and Mikalina and home sweet home.

Bonus joy: a safe and relatively easy trip, hanging out at Mikalina’s house and writing with her today, teaching yoga, long naps, good books, good TV, seeing Andrea Gibson with Carrie and getting to hang out with Beka and Tracy too, getting all the laundry done and bills paid and clean sheets on the bed, not having to go back to work in another two weeks, aqua aerobics, hanging out in the sauna with the good people, the little old lady who waved at us as she drove by on our walk this morning, the way Sam follows me around everywhere, the way Ringo only cuddles with me and not Eric, cooking good food, new recipes, a/c.