1. Morning walks. Eric sprained his ankle pretty badly hiking last weekend, so I’ve been doing all the morning walks. Typically, during the academic year, we share, with me walking every other day during the week and Eric taking the other days plus the weekend. This way, on the morning I teach yoga and the weekend mornings in particular, I can stay in bed past 5 am and have a slower paced morning. If you made me choose between a walk and a later slower start, I’d say don’t make me choose because I like the mix of both. And yet, I have to admit (and this is the good news and the bad for me), after a few days of adjustment, my knees (with a combo of old injuries and arthritis) actually feel better the more I walk. Now that Eric is on summer break, once his ankle feels better, we can hopefully take more walks together. Two sightings of note this week: a kestrel at Kestrel Fields and wild irises by McMurry Ponds.

2. Practice. Writing with my Friday morning sangha, yoga with Red Sage, sitting in meditation in my practice room, making art, writing in the morning in front of my HappyLight with a mug of something warm. I’m thinking I might need to consider reading as a practice too, because while I do a lot of reading just for fun, I also do a lot that would be considered study, (currently The Indigenous People’s History of The United States and When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, which I’m rereading for the 4th time).

3. Eric on summer break. It’s the first summer he hasn’t had a project to work on over the summer, the first real break he’s had in two years — two years that included hard things like my dad dying, my mom having a stroke, his mom dying, my mom being diagnosed with vascular dementia, and having to place my mom in a hospice care facility, plus a huge project that meant he essentially had two jobs.

I told Eric this morning that one of my favorite things about him is that when he’s bored/not working, he cleans and does projects around the house and in the yard and garden — he can’t really sit still for long while I’m too good at sitting still. While Ringo and I were on our walk this morning, Eric cleaned our living room carpet (Ringo is blowing his winter undercoat so it needed it), cleaned the main bathroom, put away some laundry, did dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, DUSTED (WHO does this?! Not me, obviously), and replaced the toothbrush head on my electric toothbrush. Of course, along with his cleaning I also enjoy his company, as he is my favorite human, and I look forward to spending more time with him. 

4. Leaves on the trees, blooms on the flowers. I love fall and winter the most, but there’s just something about spring, when the birds return and everything comes back alive. It always reminds me of one of my favorite poems, “Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. It’s hail season here, so even if we don’t get much, we have rain and storms and the weather can be unpredictable. I’m postponing doing much of anything in the garden yet, other than excitedly counting all the potential blooms on my peonies and waiting for the robin’s eggs in the nest in our lilac bush to hatch. I think this year will be more about cleaning up and maintaining than doing much new in the garden, at least until the fall when I’d like to add more bulbs and maybe a few smaller trees. I want our garden to be a habitat, a haven, and that takes time when you are doing so with your own two hands, four if you count Eric, which when it comes to the garden, you must count.

Bonus joy: our whole house fan, being able to open all the windows, bees, birds at my feeder, honey locust trees — they seem especially bright this year, other people’s kids and dogs and gardens, seeing the first meadowlark in our garden, fry sauce, onion buns, true crime, comedy, listening to podcasts, poetry and poets, libraries and librarians, hospice care, KIND dipped nut clusters, my big calendar from Japan, stickers, having a washer and dryer in my house, yogurt with granola and berries, being able to rest, a warm shower, a big glass of clean cold water, good neighbors, sunshine, how in the afternoon our backyard is covered in shade, how soft new green grass is, glasses, vaccines, gummies, soft bread, pickles, walking along the river, clean sheets, down blankets and pillows, soft merino wool, baby animals, my therapist and nutritionist and acupuncturist, naps, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.

1. Morning walks. Everything is so lush and green right now, which also means it’s tick season and the mosquitoes aren’t far behind. This week, there was an extra special walk for an extra special reason, so good that it deserves to be it’s own item on this week’s list.

2. FOXES!!! Eric and Ringo saw them first, or rather Ringo alerted to them and Eric was able to figure out there was something worth spending time looking for and after some searching was able to see two baby kits playing near the opening of their den. He told me where to look, so Ringo and I went back later in the week, and there they were!

We used to have a healthy fox population and one of my favorite things about spring was checking all the local dens to see the babies. Then disease decimated the entire population, slowly at first and then completely. In the years since, we’ve seen a fox occasionally, and one den with the potential for babies that was never realized, and seeing a fox became like spotting a unicorn.

Some babies from years past:

When Ringo and I saw them, the kits weren’t very active, rather resting in the deep grass enjoying the morning sun. I didn’t get very good pictures of the babies, but I was super happy to see them, to know they were there and seemed to be doing so well. We turned around and headed back up the trail towards the road. There’s a temporary pasture set up with a herd of sheep and their llama guardian to help “mow” the natural area, so we paused to watch them for a bit. While we were watching, the sheep started getting restless and the llama stood up and seemed concerned. I thought at first they didn’t like us being there, but then the llama turned and lunged at something and I realized the mama fox had gotten herself stuck behind the fencing. She had a fat red chicken held limp in her mouth, was trying to get back to her den to feed the kits breakfast. We stood and watched until she worked it out and was making her way back home.

I’m such a nerd for this sort of thing. Further down the trail before we turned around that morning, a woman with two dogs caught up with us so we pulled over to the side of the trail to let them pass. I excitedly told her about the fox den, but her response was not just underwhelmed but I got the sense she was thinking, “okay, weirdo.” And yes, I AM a weirdo. I get excited about the robin’s nest in our lilac bushes or the zebra jumper spider currently living in our kitchen or the snake in the compost pile. One time I even got super excited about baby grasshoppers, until they grew up and tried to eat our entire garden.

Eric is just as weird. He’s had different “pet” spiders in our compost pile and on a corner of the house. The other day, when he was trying to get a fly that had come in when we had the door open, he saw the zebra jumper in the kitchen stalking it, so watched as it caught the fly and took it behind the clock to drain dry, took a little movie of the event. Later Eric found the husk of the fly and saved it to show me. I can’t tell you how much I love that he gets excited about that sort of thing too. And also, nature can be brutal.

3. Therapy. I feel myself coming unstuck, waking back up, and I’m so grateful.

4. Practice. Yoga at Red Sage, my Friday morning writing sangha, sitting in my practice room in the morning, making art.

5. Chris, my brother, and Mom. I think I said this last week but our mom has entered the stage of dementia where she is sundowning. One of the things she currently does when she gets restless and agitated and confused in the evening that’s not so great is fiddle with her catheter tubing, sometimes even pulling it loose. The nursing staff noticed she liked to fold things, that it distracted her, so Chris has started to bring in washcloths and socks for her to sort and fold. It totally works. Too bad a hot iron is so dangerous because Mom always LOVED to iron, (I did NOT inherit that from her).

Chris visits her in the evening so he sees more of this behavior than anyone. It’s hard for him to watch. We both hoped somehow Mom might skip the worst parts of her condition, go peacefully, have an easy death that came quietly. I’m just so grateful that she is where she is, being cared for and kept comfortable by such compassionate and skilled humans, and that Chris keeps such a close eye on her but doesn’t have to do all the caretaking anymore. What he’s done for our family in the past two years kind of blows my mind, even though I always knew how great he was and how lucky I am to have him.

6. My tiny family, small house, little life. I told him one night this week as he was getting in bed that it takes him longer to get his blankets and pillow just how he wants them than it does for him to fall asleep — seriously, sometimes he gets in bed and by the time I am done brushing my teeth, he’s already asleep. I’ve always been jealous of that, his ability to fall asleep so fast and so easily. There was another time we were in the kitchen cracking each other up and I can’t remember now what we were saying but for me the joy of moments like that is one of the best things about our marriage.

Bonus joy: Liminal’s spicy sesame bowl, a day with both sunshine and rain, how soft new green grass can be, irises blooming, the smell of lilacs when there’s a breeze, other people’s dogs and kids and gardens, a massage with Dana, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna, keeping the curtains closed, a warm shower, books, libraries and librarians, poets and poetry, comedy, true crime, satellite radio, streaming on demand content, clean sheets, naps, watercolor, comic books, graphic novels, science fiction, our neighbor’s honey locust tree, the ponds and the river, the light in the morning, dusk, the moon, down blankets and pillows, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.