1. Morning walks with the dogs. It’s getting light so early, I don’t even need my headlamp — although that also means other people are out earlier and we don’t have the whole place to ourselves the whole time. Yesterday, there was a heron out hunting. We ran into him along the river and then again at one of the ponds. He was hunkered down, so at first the dogs didn’t see him. See if you can find him in this picture and you’ll understand why they missed him at first.

Can you find the heron?

2. Colorado sky. It really is amazing. Don’t believe me? I present these next two pictures from our walk yesterday morning as proof.

3. Ringo and Sam. Ringo is getting just enough more grown up that I can leave him out during my Wild Writing class and he mostly behaves himself, and he can hang out in the backyard by himself without me having to check on him every five minutes. This is about the time with any other dog that I’d start leaving him at home alone without crating him — not this wild man. Sam is currently hiding under my writing desk because I’m doing laundry and he’s convinced the washing machine is trying to murder us. I’m so glad that he’s doing okay after his tick bite, all healed up and not even any side effects from the antibiotics. I’m feeling extra grateful for their company, their good health today, because someone I adore and her sweet dog just found out he has lymphoma.

Little dude, big ears

Looking for deer

4. Working from home. As an introvert and a highly sensitive person, after four days in a row in my CSU office, I’m fried. The only way I can get any work done on a Friday is to do it from home, in my pjs, with my dogs sleeping somewhere nearby, with a nap break at some point. I’m so lucky that my job allows for it.

5. Good food. Egg sliders with homemade biscuits and fresh eggs from a friend’s chickens, breakfast for dinner with more of the same eggs, spinach on everything, San Pelligrino orange soda, dark chocolate, carrots, and avocado.

Bonus joy: that what was wrong with the Highlander was a fairly minor fix (the Big Rig is 15 years old with close to 200,000 miles now, so any time it goes in the shop, we know it could be something that means we are buying another new car instead of fixing it), enough flexibility in our schedules that five days with one car was workable, the smell of lilacs, my irises blooming, good tv, good books, such good humans in my Wild Writing class, getting a big project at work close to done, pay day, clean sheets.

1. Colorado sunrises. There is something particularly magic about the sky here, and I feel so lucky to be up and out early enough to be able to see the sun come up and the various ways it lights up the sky.

2. Morning walks with the dogs. It hasn’t been long enough for me to start to take them for granted yet. It’s still fresh in my mind the long stretches of time in the last few years when I was injured or hurt or sick and couldn’t go.

I also love having lived somewhere long enough, walked enough miles on the same trails to have favorite spots, favorite trees, places where what happened there that one time is still such a clear memory. When things are really green in the spring, this is one of my favorite spots on the trail.

3. Good food. We finished watching the whole Samurai Gourmet series, so I’ve been craving Asian food lately, in particular a bowl of rice with vegetables and teriyaki chicken. I skipped a meeting the other day and took myself to lunch so I could finally have some. It was good, but it made me realize what I really wanted was the same thing from Love Love Teriyaki in Salem, Oregon.

4. The lilacs are blooming, so there’s flowers in the bathroom.

5. My tiny family. Ringo always makes me laugh, even when he’s being a jerk. I feel so tender about Sam because he’s the same age Obi was when he was diagnosed with Lymphoma, and with the worry this week about his health because of his tick bite, I’m reminded that we are “tangled up in love, running out of time,” (from “In the Middle,” a poem by Barbara Crooker). And when I woke up this morning feeling like I was getting sick, knowing if I walked the dogs in the rain like I’d promised Eric that it would seal the deal, he walked them for me, getting rained on almost the whole time.

Bonus joy: A good book, finishing the laundry, teaching yoga, having people see me and say so, writing with my dream Wild Writing class, saying “no,” putting on clean pajamas even if I haven’t managed to take a shower yet, the prospect of fresh biscuits and a nap later, tulips, clean water.