Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. D.C. gets about half a foot of snow. Rudi does the first pass at the sidewalks, after his flight is delayed until the afternoon, which means I only get stuck with about half the shoveling, rather than all of it.

2. Rudi’s delayed flight does mean he gets to accompany me to the snowball fight at Malcolm X Park:

3. Winter weather means winter foods — grilled cheese and tomato soup and paninis and cookies. Yum!

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the ten books coming out in the first six months of the year that we’re looking forward to most. Here are mine:

1. Back After This by Linda Holmes
2. Deanna Raybourn’s Kills Well with Others
3. Vanya and the Wild Hunt by Sangu Mandanna
4. Sonali Dev’s There’s Something about Mira
5. Fun for the Whole Family by Jennifer E. Smith
6. Grace Lin’s The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon
7. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
8. The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict
9. Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao
10. José Andrés’ Change the Recipe

How about you? Are there books coming out between now and July that you’re particularly excited to get your hands on?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The kittens were so excited to have me return home after nearly a week away.

2. My folks and I make plenty of Christmas cookies, enough to keep them settled for a few weeks.

3. With Sarah unavailable this New Year’s Eve, Rudi and I wing our movie marathon. We expect to see both represented at the Oscars. Emilia Pérez is an oddball Spanish-language musical drama about a young Mexican lawyer who helps a drug baron transition to a woman and stars, among others, Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez. But even better was Flow, a wordless Latvian animated film about a cat who must work with other animals to escape a catastrophe. It’s about cooperation and found family and climate disaster — and if you can find it, you should definitely watch it.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Jasen sent a Christmas card saying how much he values everything I do for the team and a gift for the kittens.

2. Sunday afternoon, I run across town in a desperate bid to finish my Christmas list. I am delighted to discover that Sarah, who’d been ill, is up and doing one final shift at her old job to help them out with the rush. She helps me with my shopping, and since she won’t be back in time to join us for our New Year’s Eve tradition this year, it feels particularly good to see her one last time in 2024.

3. Christmas was lovely, with a slow start to the day after Mum & I were up late wrapping. I think everyone liked their presents, the dinner was delicious, and we finished the night with The Bishop’s Wife, most of which Mum & I dozed through.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Last year on this day, we said goodbye to Corey, our cat of 13 years. Named Corazon, because as a kitten he came home with us after Amani and Marcus’ wedding in Greenbelt in 2010.

Corey was a gorgeous grey fireplug of a cat, with short legs and tail and big, round eyes. He used to remind me of James Cagney, in his more thuggish roles. He weighed almost twenty pounds and never met a situation he wasn’t confident he could bash through.

He was a surprise addition to our household and it took a while before the pecking order settled in with the older cats. But eventually they became friends, particularly him and Jer. But after he became a solo cat, Rudi and I made the reluctant decision that he might not appreciate a kitten, and decided to stay a trio for a while.

Because of that, and because of his very gregarious nature (he took after Rudi), he was a very doglike cat. My friend Neal, who catsit for us several times, expressed surprise that Corey would stop eating (his favorite activity) to stare at Neal in dismay if it seemed like he was going to leave too quickly. He liked being in the middle of a party, with a particular flair for stealing the lime tortilla chips. He’d demand to be spooned on the couch or to hang out draped over me. He wanted most to have Rudi and me both in sight, but if we were in separate places, he’d follow Rudi until he got settled and then come back to me until I finally took mercy on him and took us to bed.

I was very much his person, and it hurt tremendously that I got so little time with him after I got back from a caregiving hiatus last fall. But that time away meant that he got to have more intense bonding time with Rudi and that was good for them both. And he waited for me to come home before getting really sick, so at least I was able to be there at the end.

Because he’d been a street kitten for a bit, he had no interest in returning outside, so he was safe to let out into the entryway. We knew he wouldn’t try to escape. He’d run out and then when I clicked at him, he’d head right back inside.

He loved people food. In addition to the lime tortilla chips, he liked corn, greens from the garden or farmers market, oatmeal, popsicles, puff pastry, and candy corn.

He loved catnip toys, particularly a banana that he unstuffed, rendering it just a banana peel. He thought the little bugs that lived in the bathroom were fascinating and he’d try grabbing some of them, but never the pill bugs, much to my surprise. He enjoyed disabling and dispensing cockroaches, and my late-night squeals when I’d discover a gigantic one somewhere in the apartment (we live in an urban basement; they happen) never failed to bring him sprinting. He was also an early alert system for them because he’d hop on the counter only to hunt them, so we knew if he was up there we should be extra vigilant.

I miss him still, because he loved me so thoroughly and unconditionally. But we mourned him for ten months before we expanded our family again, and I think he’d be glad that we’d opened our hearts once more.

Love you, Corey. You were a very good kitten.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The Building Museum (a lovely venue should you ever visit D.C. and off the normal tourist track), with help from the downtown business improvement district, set up an indoor “ice” rink inside their vaulted space, and I pounced on tickets as soon as they went public. It was definitely a different experience than skating on actual ice (natural or manmade), but it was fun and festive. We had a very uncrowded weekday afternoon experience, and I’m glad we did it.

2. Saturday morning, the cats and I were abruptly awakened by the sound of falling debris crashing just outside the bedroom window. Turns out the construction crew next door was working on deconstructing part of a brick wall that separates our back properties, and they didn’t realize there was a window just beyond it. They managed not to send bricks into my bedroom and stopped as soon as they understood the lay of the land beyond. (I don’t blame them for not knowing, but I still would have been super pissed off if their pickaxe had sent a brick flying my way.)

3. The caliber of play in the NCAA women’s volleyball playoffs has been incredible, with Louisville upsetting the number one team in the country to advance to a home court final on Sunday, even after losing their ace partway through the game. And Penn State, whose coach is actively undergoing chemo for breast cancer, pulled off a reverse sweep (and staved off four match points) to eliminate the team I thought was going to win it all. I can’t wait to watch the final on Sunday, which will be the first time in history both teams are coached by women. (It’s on ABC at 3 p.m. should you want to join me.)

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?