Rudi is spending July doing a bucket-list cycling vacation in Europe, which means I am spending the month on self-care. Here’s a baker’s dozen activities I have on tap for this week:

Play volleyball
Go to the movies with Sarah
Cheer on my teammate Katie in the Congressional Women’s Softball Game
Swim
Send in a job application
Get quarters from the bank
Read outside
Deal with the strawberry patch in the garden (and see if I can find tomatillo plants anywhere)
Catch up with friends on the phone
Make a batch of macarons
Clean the kitchen and bathroom
Learn to replace a bike tube
Attend an outdoor concert or movie

How’s your week shaping up?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sarah and I head to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens this morning to see the lotus blossoms and water lilies in bloom. They were quite spectacular.

2. Dragonflies love the heat and it’s so fun to watch them flitting around open fields as if they’re playing tag.

3. Sarah and I watch fireworks from the river walk on Independence Eve, rather than stay in the ballpark with the other 36,000+ attendees, then beat the rush to get summery ice cream cones, which we eat in Adirondack chairs in the park.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. The garden is, knock on wood, doing really well. I harvested enough peas and chard yesterday for a meal, picked my first cherry tomatoes, and spied both an adorable wee fairy eggplant and two tiny yellow squash. And the pumpkin has grown up into the bronze fennel, giving the pollinators their choice of yellow flowers.

2. We spied the last few minutes of a rainbow that followed a torrential rain that happened while we were shopping.

3. My friend Sergio and I had dinner after our game Monday night. It’s always good to go out with the whole team, but sometimes it’s nice to get one-on-one time, particularly with one of the old gang. We talked about everything from AI to families to fireflies and left feeling good despite our losses earlier in the evening.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share our most anticipated titles being published in the second half of the year. Here are some of mine:

1. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
2. A Power Unbound by Freya Marske
3. Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
4. The Mysteries by Bill Watterson
5. The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead & Wendy Mass
6. The Year of Second Chances by Lara Avery
7. The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
8. The Blonde Identity by Ally Carter
9. Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnanski
10. Sleepless in Dubai by Sajni Patel

How about you? What books coming out later this year are you looking forward to most?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. I’m watching Scarecrow and Mrs. King on Tubi and enjoying seeing the D.C. scenery. At least in this first season, they do seem to have done a lot of exterior shooting in the city.

2. My friend BW calls and we have a proper catch-up for the first time in ages.

3. The first corn on the cob of the summer (often disappointingly bland) was surprisingly delicious. As was the first peach, which got mixed into my yogurt parfait with fresh strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries.

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

I always enjoy the seasonal topics posted by That Artsy Reader Girl as part of Top Ten Tuesdays. Here are ten titles I’m hoping to get to this summer (even if tradition dictates I’ll maybe finish only 20% of this list before fall:

1. The Year of Second Chances by Lara Avery
2. Elizabeth Acevedo’s Family Lore
3. The Wager by David Grann
4. Jana Goes Wild by Farah Heron
5. Brian Selznick’s Big Tree
6. Tell Me How It Ends by Quinton Li
7. Susannah Hoffs’ This Bird Has Flown
8. Enter the Body by Joy McCullough
9. The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer
10. Jami Attenberg’s I Came All This Way to Meet You

How about you? What books are you looking forward to reading this summer?