Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi returned home from his trip to Canada. I believe it’s his last trip away until after Thanksgiving.

2. Saturday was a cold, drizzly day of outdoor volleyball, and after we wrapped up, we decided the day required soup instead of our usual Mexican fare. Ramen perfectly hit the spot.

3. I baked for my middle school playing squad and for my jv team, since they both had games on Monday night. They appreciated the cookies.

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

Honestly. I just found this open in a tab, where I had written it but not hit publish. This is from last week:

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Awakening to a cat curled up tight in the crook of my knees because it is cold in the apartment

2. A bathroom that is 98% finished (the fan just needs to be replaced)

3. Remembering to tune in to Howie Rose’s final Mets radio broadcast (he stopped traveling with the team a few years ago, so the timing coincided with their last home game of the season)

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

Three beautiful things from my last week:

1. I held a makeup day for my middle school practice squad and more than two dozen of them showed up on a Friday afternoon. We started the day talking about what we like best and what we’re finding most challenging so far, and we ended with shoutouts (and we had a ton for a bunch of different girls)!

2. My middle school playing squad got their first win on the serves of two girls who’ve been nervous about that skill. The practice squad showed up to watch — and gave us the loudest gym I’ve heard at the school, erupting for good plays.

3. My friend Susan and I have lunch a couple times a year. I sent a text on Saturday and we had lunch on Monday, which was a lovely afternoon to sit outside and catch up.

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

Since preseason started four weeks ago, I’ve been running pretty much nonstop, and I just plum forgot to post this week. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have thee beautiful things, so here they are, just a bit belatedly:

1. My friend Jordan (who is also coaching this fall and probably similarly feeling behind the eight-ball all the time) cat-sit for us last weekend and we arrived home to find him leaving our place. I thought I’d given him the wrong dates, so it was such a relief to find he’d just gone on autopilot instead. Our cats thought it was a wonderful problem to have — beloved by all the people, as they should be.

2. On a day where we thought we were going to have to forfeit and where I was coaching alone, the JV team got their first win of the season.

3. On our drive south, we were able to watch a truly magnificent sunset, the sort where you keep thinking, this has to be its most spectacular and then it improves again at the next curve in the road or peek between buildings.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A cooler weekend and start to the week (we’ll ignore the end)

2. My friend John has returned for a couple months (to pack up his life)

3. Not having to get up to run morning practices

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Two weeks ago, we discovered a slow leak in our bathroom ceiling. Last week it was diagnosed as a cracked iron pipe, and this week, our handyman replaced it, a process that involved no water and no toilet for hours over a couple days. We’re waiting a couple more to let everything dry out and to make sure no extra leaks were missed, and then next week, they’ll seal our wall back up, which will be a relief, since bathroom supplies are spread across the rest of the apartment.

2. Harmony, my teammate who sprained her ankle earlier this summer, brought her first-grader to watch us play our final game on the Mall. It was great to see her again and to better get to know her daughter.

3. On the last day of our beach volleyball program, one girl arrives and runs to give me a hug. Today, I took the bus up to campus with one of my middle-schoolers and we spent the time talking a bit. As we were walking up the steps to school, she told me she thought I was a good coach, which was such a kind compliment to give on a week when I’ve been struggling a bit. (I was running a practice with ~33 girls mostly by myself and things had gone off the rails a bit.)

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