1. First snow of the season. Although, it did make me a little sad, reminding me as it did of how much Dexter loved playing in the snow. His favorite game was “oh no, where’s my toy?!” where he would bury a toy, then pretend he’d lost it, and then dig it out and celebrate finding it. That dog was so full of joy.
2. The golden, shifting season of Fall, which may have been cut short, interrupted by the snow — we went directly from our first freeze (and thus, the end of our garden, *sob*), from picking the last tomatoes and first orange pumpkins, to the first snow only a few days later.
3. The final bloom of the season. She is sitting on my writing desk this morning, open and full after being a closed bud only yesterday. I’m so glad I brought her in, otherwise she would have frozen in that tight moment just before bloom, and she has such a sweet face, the golden bridge between summer and fall/winter.
4. Grapefruit Juice, and Sweet Potato & Black Bean Quesadillas.
5. Being cold, sweaters and socks and down jackets and hats. Although I love a garden, the bees and the blooms and the fruit, and prefer being barefoot, I am otherwise not a girl of summer.
Bonus Joy: The texts Eric sends me. Yesterday, my favorites were “Love love love you” and this picture of Sam hiking.
3. a room with a view on SF Girl by Bay. I’ve talked before about how much I love Amsterdam. Next time I go, I want to spend at least a month, maybe a whole summer, and stay in an apartment just like this one.
Do not be afraid to follow a thousand directions. You are only listening for one voice. You are following heat, light and truth. There is no right answer to find. An inspired life is all about developing a relationship with your own wholeness and love.
At some point, if you’re fortunate, you’ll hit a wall of truth and wonder what you’ve been doing with your life. At that point you’ll feel highly motivated to find out what frees you and helps you to be kinder and more loving, less klesha [i.e. mental states that cloud the mind and manifest in unwholesome actions] driven and confused. At that point you’ll actually want to be present—present as you go through a door, present as you take a step, present as you wash your hands or wash a dish, present to being triggered, present to simmering, present to the ebb and flow of your emotions and thoughts. Day in and day out, you’ll find that you notice sooner when you’re hooked, and it will be easier to refrain. If you continue to do this, a kind of shedding happens—a shedding of old habits, a shedding of being run around by pleasure and pain, a shedding of being held hostage by worldly concerns.
29. Claire has a birthday message for her mommy, on Hello Giggles. Warning: Danger Baby alert, (“Danger Baby” is code for a kid so impossibly cute, it will make you want to make, adopt, or steal a tiny human, immediately). Even though this video is only a minute and a half long, you know that the adult who filmed and edited spend hours and hours working on it.
30. Wisdom from Chögyam Trungpa,
We must be willing to be completely ordinary people, which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful. If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path. But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our “self-improvement.”
31. Wisdom from Mark Nepo, “The reward for kindness is not goodness or being thought well of or even having kindness returned. No, the reward for kindness is joy.”
38. The Freedom of Less on Becoming Minimalist. 39. Rescued Pit Bull saves foster family’s 4-year-old son on Dog Heirs. What I love about this story is that the mom had initially only planned to foster this dog, but after what TatorTot did for her son, “I am never going to let this dog go…I owe him for the rest of his life.”
40. Potty Talk! [Original] Need a good laugh!? You’ll have tears streaming… It really is the funniest video.
41. Wisdom from Randy Pausch, The key question to keep asking is, “Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.”
If I was to measure my life by how much money is in my bank account, you know, I would not be very happy right now…But if I had to measure my life by how myself can I be every day, and how much can I offer that makes me happy – I don’t mean to sound sappy about it – but it makes me overjoyed to offer this.
43. Wisdom from Laurie Foley, “To do lists used to be my tada lists, summits upon which to plant flags. Now they are merely trailheads where I start letting go.”
46. Julie+Nate // Portland Engagement Session, a beautiful set of pictures from Phil Chester. The ones with the light and the trees are brilliant, so beautiful they almost hurt to look at them.
47. Plant Your Feet, a poem from Ken Roberts on Museful Things.
1. First snow of the season. Although, it did make me a little sad, reminding me as it did of how much Dexter loved playing in the snow. His favorite game was “oh no, where’s my toy?!” where he would bury a toy, then pretend he’d lost it, and then dig it out and celebrate finding it. That dog was so full of joy.
4. Grapefruit Juice, and Sweet Potato & Black Bean Quesadillas.
5. Being cold, sweaters and socks and down jackets and hats. Although I love a garden, the bees and the blooms and the fruit, and prefer being barefoot, I am otherwise not a girl of summer.
