Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Coming home to Coal and Ember after a bunch of days away

2. Settling on what I think will be a fun white elephant swap present for the team party

3. Brunch with Sarah

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a holiday-themed freebie. My apartment is currently littered with books of a winter holiday bent, so I’m going to share ten of them I hope to get to before my Christmas tree comes down:

1. Good Spirits by B.K. Borison (currently listening)
2. The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer (on my phone)
3. The Wood at Midwinter by Suzanne Clarke, with illustrations by Victoria Sawdon (own)
4. Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake (checked out)
5. Death Comes at Christmas edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane (own)
6. Winter in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand (own)
7. You Make It Feel like Christmas by Toni Shiloh (checked out)
8. Holly and Nick Hate Christmas by Betsy St. Amant (checked out)
9. I’ll Be Home for Christmas by Jenny Bayliss (checked out)
10. Mint to Be by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc (checked out)

How about you? Any holiday-themed books on your radar this month?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. So many houses along the Garden State Parkway already have their outside lights up as we drive north for Thanksgiving.

2. My friend John holds a Shrek-themed birthday party at a bar. I worry ahead of time that he will be disappointed by how few people turn out in costume, but his friends commit to the theme, and dozens of us make appearances as characters from the series.

3. The playing squad of the middle school volleyball team has an end-of-season party. It’s the first time I’ve seen most of the girls since the loss, and it is good to see them back to their ebullient selves.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a Thanksgiving freebie, so I’m going to share ten of the things I’m most grateful for this year:

1. Shelter and food: I know it sounds trite, but I pass by people living rough all the time, literally with their coats thrown over themselves, sleeping on the sidewalk. And I was up at a soup kitchen on Friday night, and we served people for hours, including a family whose child was celebrating a birthday. It’s just not possible to take a roof and meals for granted.
2. Rudi and my family: Rudi and I have been together now for 30 years. If our relationship were a person, it could run for Senate. (It would do a better job than some actual people currently serving in that role.) I love him more every day, and I’m so lucky that he loves me back. Add to that that I am still lucky enough to have both my parents and my brother. You don’t get to be my age without understanding that’s not a given.
3. My friends: How are there people who I met 35 years ago, who know me inside and out, and still want to hang out with me? Who call, and have lunch, and walk me home even though I tell them they don’t have to, and text, and find me coaching jobs, and answer my insecurities with kindness over and over and over again? And how are there people I’ve known for only a few years who want to continue getting to know me? Some people don’t have a single friend and I have more than I can count on my hands.
4. Coal and Ember: Our cats have lived with us just over a year now, and I cannot think of how we existed without the color and love they add to our lives. I walk into the bathroom, and Coal is asleep on the bathmat on his back, lying like a drifting otter and hoping for a belly rub. Ember naps on the router, running the internet, or curls up tight against me in bed after Rudi has given her breakfast. They chase bubbles and lasers and balls and fruit flies and steal my hair ties because Ember figured out that rubber bands make a satisfying twanging sound/vibration. And they are so happy to have found us, and we them.
5. Volleyball: Honestly, who would have thought a sport could bring someone so much joy — and particularly so many decades after I first started playing it? I love playing it, I love coaching it, I love watching it. It has brought me a team I hold dear and a group of friends who love me off the court and forgive my missteps on it. It gave me a work-study job that led to a real job. It provides me with structure when few other things do. If someone said you’d have to take up jogging in order to keep playing volleyball, I’d seriously consider it.
6. Libraries: There is no way I could afford to buy all the books I want to read. But libraries do that and then let me borrow them, sometimes for months at a time, for free. They let me print things and answer questions and download music and stream movies and tv shows and have free restrooms and meeting rooms and just come in from the elements space. And because the libraries around me are cool, I have access to all of that from three separate systems, and could utilize others.
7. Writing: I know I don’t write as much as I mean to. But when I craft something I’m proud of (to be fair, these days it’s usually a particularly nice email to the volleyball team), man, does it feel good! I hope to be more disciplined moving forward.
8. Books: I’m on my way to reading 60 books this year, and while I haven’t grooved with all of them, I have enjoyed the vast majority and loved a solid handful or so.
9. Knitting: I knit way less than I used to, but I have lots of yarn, so I expect to cycle back to it, hopefully this winter. (Maybe the sweater I’d planned to make when I sprained my wrist over the summer will finally become reality.) In the meantime, there is a pair of socks that needs maybe only 100 more stitches I hope to finish this week so I can wear them on Thanksgiving.
10. Gardening: There is something really satisfying about eating food you’ve grown, be it a pod of peas or a squash or basil or purple potatoes. Or seeing the pop of color of flowers that have finally bloomed. Without my community garden plot, I would not be able to grow much of anything.

How about you? What are you grateful for this year?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My roomie came down for the weekend, and we had a lovely time catching up on all our news and all the news we had about others we love. It was laid-back — an outside lunch, a walk in the woods, browsing in bookstores, and playing with my cats — but just what I wanted with an old friend.

2. I organized an in-person meeting of the garden managers, our first one since we took over the running of our community garden earlier this year. We covered all the open questions and left feeling like we each had a few tasks to handle, but that overall we were in pretty good shape.

3. I started adding some songs into this year’s Christmas cd playlist. I’m not really sure where November went (wasn’t it just Halloween last week?), but it feels good to be moving on it.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Chris, Jasen, and Gloria are able to make it out to play at the last Saturday volleyball at Walter Pierce Park. (Saturday volleyball doesn’t stop; it just becomes more selective until the spring.) A handful of us go out for food afterwards, and it’s really nice to catch up with the group.

2. My friend Sergio is back, nine months after his daughter was born. I would have put money on his not being able to return until at least a year had passed, so this is a treat. I ask him to thank his wife for us, because I know she’s the one who’s making this possible.

3. Three big tomatoes come home with me from the garden. The temperature was due to drop, so I picked them a bit early, figuring they’d be the thing I’d be most upset to lose.

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