Gratitude Friday

1. Awake in the World. I’m pretty sure you can still sign up for this, even though it’s now day two of five. I think Lodro and Susan (pictured above in the opening night video) said 23,000 people had signed up.

2. A surprise (to me) Jonatha Brooke concert. I feel enough gratitude for this one that it could be the only thing on this list, and every list for the next month. Thursday afternoon, I got a Facebook message from a new friend. She said, “Totally last minute…but is there any chance you’d want to go to a concert tonight? It’s part of Bohemian Nights. A lady I met at a retreat 2 yrs ago (from NYC) is here tonight. Her name is Jonatha Brooke. She’s a singer-songwriter type.” I had to read it two or three times, and then get online and check to be sure I was reading it right. Jonatha Brooke?! She’s only one of my favorite artists! How did I not know she was coming to town?! Well, I know why. When her new show and album came out, My Mother has 4 Noses, (which I helped fund), I wanted to see it so bad, but she was mostly playing it on the east coast with a few dates in California. I gave up after a while, stopped checking, stopped carefully reading her newsletter when it showed up in my inbox. But it worked out, I got to go, and it was amazing. She signed CDs after the show, so I stuck around, told her how much I adore her, hugged her and thanked her. It was magic, medicine.

Her music always makes me cry. She sings with such fierce gentleness from such a deep, authentic place, and sometimes it punches me right in the gut. I tried to hold it together during the concert, but these two songs broke me open.

3. My tiny family — Eric, Sam, and Ringo Blue. They are a constant comfort. They make me laugh and remind me that life is beautiful, even thought it hurts.

4. Fall food. Various squashes, roasted vegetables, soup, and this Autumn Couscous from the Whole Foods deli that I can’t stop eating.

5. My HappyLight. I’m not sure what I’d do without it this time of year. I sit in front of it every morning as I write, and it takes the edge off the dark.

Bonus joy: coffee with a new friend, two new workshops scheduled, TV (even though I maybe watch too much), Big Magic and Justine’s read-a-long, fall color, a good rain jacket and umbrella, the bathroom remodel kick off (*gulp*, they are coming to demo on Monday morning!), the ability to choose even when I don’t make the best choices, America’s Test Kitchen and all the recipes from them that have made my mouth and belly so happy.

1. Fall. How fat the squirrels are getting eating goodies from our compost pile and our pumpkins (see the above before and after shots for proof), the little girls from down the street who knocked on our door and told me they liked our pumpkins and took a few home with them even though they were the last ones left and total Charlie Brown Christmas tree pumpkins, how Eric left a bunch of them at the end of the driveway with a sign “take a pumpkin” expecting a few to be gone when he got back from hiking with the dogs only to be surprised to see them all gone, the cooler weather, down blankets, wool socks.

2. Skyping with friends. Technology makes it possible for me to hang out with people who live in a whole other time zone the same as if we were sitting at my kitchen table. It’s magic, and it’s medicine.

3. Roasted Butternut Squash with olive oil, a ton of garlic, and a bit of sea salt. So good.

4. Making stuff, like a writing class for Inky Path, another Wild Writing Crazy Wisdom workshop as well as a shorter version without the yoga, blogging, Wild Writing, taking pictures, art journaling, collaging, cooking.

5. Sweet Sam and Ringo Blue. We are in the sweet spot with these two right now — no one is a baby and no one is dying, no one is sick or hurt. Since it’s fall, Eric has been hiking with them a lot again, so when they are home they are so tired they just lounge around. Such good boys.
Bonus joy: new music which means I’m making myself a new playlist, flowers from Eric because “they were pretty and I knew you’d like them,” teaching yoga, reading Big Magic, documentaries about musicians (I watched one about Paul Williams and another about Glen Campbell and want to watch the one about Amy Winehouse this weekend), birds still feeding on our sunflowers which are so wilted and dead you’d think there was nothing left to them, a podcast of my favorite morning radio show without commercials or music, trusting myself.