Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. So there’s this person who had, for the past few months, been baking bread several days a week and then giving it away on Twitter. I’ve entered their contests a couple times, but never won. Early last week, they mentioned they’d made a sourdough starter for someone who, it turns out, had gone out of town, and would any of us like it. Within a matter of minutes, several of us had raised our hands. The bread maker handed it off to the first volunteer, but reached out to the rest of us and said they’d be happy to make us starters, too. So last Friday, they dropped off several tablespoons of starter in a container, and Rudi and I started caring for it. Sourdough starter needs feeding and watering and changing a couple times a day for the first little bit, but we’re now pretty much at the part where we can dial it back to a couple times a week. See all those dots on the surface? Air bubbles. That’s how you know your sourdough is happy with you.

2. Suddenly, Clare and her original Three Beautiful Things blog popped into my feed reader this week after several years of dormancy.

3. We’ve all mostly settled, comfortably or not, into this new normal routine. I am working from home 8 hours a day and spending a lot of time on conference calls. It is boring, because all the things we’d do for diversity and distraction are mostly unavailable at this time. But, as Grey Kitten noted to me today, given the news, boring is good. We’re all texting and calling and Zooming with our loved ones, hoping for reports of boredom. Because, honestly, the alternative is really scary. I wish boredom for you and your loved ones, too.

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