Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Katie had her baby, a beautiful little boy, to make the sixth player on our next generation team.

2. Two brothers had such a good time at Friday’s beach volleyball camp that they showed up for my grass camp on Monday! (Kudos to their mom for making that happen.)

3. Rudi finished the ride he went to Europe to do within the timeframe he hoped for and set some personal bests on several segments of the course. (Also, the countdown clock to his return is now less than a week!)

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Time out with my friends after our volleyball loss.

2. Clean sheets and a cat tucked in on either side of me.

3. A bride, a groom, and a bridesmaid take the same Metro train as me. The bride stands for several stops, handing her bouquet to her husband. He stares at her with a huge grin on her face. It’s one of the things I love about living in the city.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks to share our readerly shame: ten books that we acquired right after they were published but that we’ve yet to crack open. Here are ten of mine, most of which I’d include on a list of favorite writers:

1. Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde (I literally went to England so I could buy this before it came out in the States)
2. Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell
3. Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas (This lived in my volleyball bag for two years and looks like it. While technically I have started it several times, I haven’t gotten to the halfway point yet, am now … four? … books behind (or will be, come September), and will want to begin this book again from page 1.)
4. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak
5. Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds
6. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
7. Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken
8. My Twenty-Five Years in Provence: Reflections on Then and Now by Peter Mayle
9. Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
10. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

It should be noted that this revisits a topic we covered back in 2022, and I had a distinct memory of writing that post while sitting on the floor of the Portland airport waiting to come home from a trip to see Rudi’s dad and Rebs. (I should confess that while I only own half of those titles, all ten remain unread, although I did go to read Agnes Grey only to discover that Anne Brontë’s books weren’t included in the compendium I thought they were in.)

How about you? Do you have books you eagerly snapped up as soon as they came out only to have them lingering still on your bookshelf?

I thought of this blog post in bed Thursday night and thought, there’s no way I’ll forget to take care of that first thing in the morning… Here it is Sunday morning, and I just circled back to see if I had, in fact, taken care of it, and, surprise! I had not.

So, here are three beautiful things from last week:

1. Anna and I meet for brunch and a catch-up.

2. John and his friend so enjoyed the Fort Reno concert that we met up to attend again this week! He brought his girlfriend, as well, so we were able to get to know each other better.

3. My teammate Harmony aggressively rolled her ankle during our game on Wednesday. She took herself for x-rays the next day and they came back negative for a fracture, so thankfully, it’s just a bad sprain. (She tells me she’s able to stand with crutches, so I’m hoping this means she’s able to be back at work this coming week.)

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

Rudi has left for his annual cycling trip in Europe, so I’m on my own for the next month. I figured this was a good time to bring planning posts back to keep me focused on getting some things taken care of. Here’s what I hope to tackle this weekend:

• Have brunch with Anna
• Buy eggs, salad fixings, tomatoes, and yogurt at the farmers market
• Play volleyball on Sunday if the air quality improves and the grass dries
• Plant beans at the garden
• Swim at the pool
• Clean the bathroom
• Finish the mystery I’m reading and peruse one of the coaching books I have out from the library
• Change our bedding
• Purchase Broadway tickets for Eri and me
• Knit the colorwork chart on my sweater yoke
• Watch soccer
• Sort out my Giftmas in July shopping so I can get it in the mail by Friday
• Fill the tea tins

The full baker’s dozen might be a stretch, but I’m betting I can tackle at least half of the list.

What do you hope your weekend includes?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Hearing that Mugsy, my parents’ shy cat who’s been living in a single room since moving in with them in March, finally wants to explore the rest of the house. (It should be noted that the kitten, Pickle, does NOT consider this a beautiful thing and tracks her progress into what he considers his territory.)

2. The first day of summer coaching goes well. We have 20 kids and multiple volunteer coaches, the temps stay south of 90°, and the smoke from the wildfires is still to our north.

3. The new laptop Rudi gave me for Christmas finally gets to come off the sideline when Microsoft announces that my old one (which has been having battery challenges) will no longer run Word. Transferring the files from one to the other takes time but happens seamlessly, even going so far as to keep my web browser tabs open.

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