1. Morning walks. I was thinking today how lucky we are to live exactly where we do in Fort Collins. We are close to so many trails and parks, the river and a bunch of ponds, and all the wild animals.
ALL the Christmas dogsALL the Christmas dogs
2. Baby Hallie, (pronounced like Halle Berry). Jessamy had her baby!!! She came a month and a half early and is only five pounds, so she’s going to have to stay in the NICU for the next couple of weeks, but she and Mom are both doing really well.
Hallie’s tiny family: Sister/Lia, Papa/Chris, Brother/Warren, and Mom/Jessamy. Not pictured are Dad, the dog, and the cats.
3. Practice. I adore doing yoga at Red Sage. They are such an awesome group of humans. This week, my Friday morning writing group (another awesome group of humans) was magical, medicine, as usual. I’ve been using my hourglass sand timer for meditation instead of my Insight Timer app, and I like how simple it is.
4. Holiday season. Our tree is up and our presents wrapped. I spent yesterday playing Santa, wrapping presents for the Oregon family and boxing them up to ship while I watched Christmas movies. I made Mom a book of random pictures of family and she seems to like it. I got Lia a Christmas unicorn stuffy and Ringo was convinced I should let him have it — he stole it out of the shopping bag before I could even put things away and insisted it “was for dogs.”
5. My tiny family, small house, little life. We are going to spend a quiet lazy holiday season together, just how we like it.
Bonus joy: baked ziti, toast, soft white bread, getting all the Christmas stuff done so I can relax and enjoy it, clean sheets, other people’s kids and dogs and Christmas decorations, twinkle lights, a warm shower, Sunday morning Pilates, grocery shopping, online shopping, finding old cards from Chloe’ and using them for bookmarks, reading good books, sharing good books, poetry and poets, libraries and librarians, being off social media (yes, there are some things I miss and I may check back in from time to time, but I just feel better without it), being aware of my limits and trying to not push myself right to the edge of them, yogurt with strawberries and granola, refrigerators, my infrared heating pad, texting with Chris, emailing with Kari, my favorite spoon and fork, a big glass of cold clean water, naps, YouTube shorts, Reddit, reading in bed while Eric and Ringo sleep.
3. The Analog Life Project with Lori Roberts from Little Truths Studio. “Let’s spend less time scrolling our days away and set aside more time to participate, to make, to connect, to remember.”
18. We’re entering a new phase of the resistance. “Mapping the shift from shock to the beginnings of mass action over the last 10 months of the anti-authoritarian struggle in the U.S.”
19. Letters to Boulders. “A poet geologist reads the earth” by By Karen Donovan.
20. The potluck manifesto. “Less shouty than most manifestos, but maybe you feel this too” by Garrett Bucks on The White Pages.
27. Can you help Elizabeth answer her question?: “If you or someone you love has had brain surgery or a brain injury, will you share your experience with me in the comments?”
31. 5 questions to spark & direct your generosity. “End-of-year giving will never right the wrongs of this very broken world. That’s not the point, so don’t talk yourself out of giving just because that is the clear truth. Pursue sharing your resources anyway, because it’s the kind of person you want to be with other people, and because doing nothing also won’t change anyone’s material circumstances.”
32. The Things I Didn’t Carry. “I forgot the family treasures, I remembered the Victoria’s Secret bra.” This is a long standing dilemma for me (who lives somewhere with a regular “fire season”) and I never know how to answer the question: What would you take if a fire was coming for your house? “It wasn’t just me: grown women, too, were overwhelmed by these decisions, by the choices between practical and sentimental, by the spontaneous, choice-less pull of emergency.”
34. All Those Tender Spots, “On choosing whether to excavate your past or not” from Jami Attenberg.
35. The Best Novels of 2025 on Five Books. “As 2025 draws to a close, we’ve put together a list of all the fiction books that have won prizes or been picked out by our editors as worth reading this year. This includes books picked out for their literary achievements, as well as good books in a variety of genres, including historical fiction, science fiction and mystery books.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 