It’s been a busy, rest-deprived week and there are still miles to go before we sleep. All the more important to look back at three beautiful things from the past week, right?

1. Rudi rubs a sore spot on my back and I doze off for an hour. I awake feeling much refreshed and ready to read.

2. Gramma has been unwell and spent a few days in the hospital earlier this month. It’s good to get home to see that although she’s a bit slower and a tad more frail, she’s relatively okay (for someone approaching 92).

3. The Burrow is chilly in the wee smalls. I pile on wool blankets, add fingerless mitts, plug in the heating pad, make a cup of tea, and, finally, turn on the radiator.

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

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you had a lovely holiday, surrounded by those you love and who love you best. We spent the day with my family up in Connecticut, where we ate a delicious dinner.

I’m grateful for many things this year, among them this blog and my weekly opportunity to notice the things that make my life a little better. Here are three of those beautiful things from the past week:

1. Susan calls to see if we want to have dinner. We meet them at the playground and walk down to the Greek place from there. Holden decides he wants to hold Rudi’s hand, and baby Caroline curls up quietly in my arms. It’s nice to have friends who are willing to let us borrow their children for a little while.

2. We walk down to the garden to see what we can find. I pull up the tomatillo plant, while Rudi digs up the potato patch. (My second planting failed, but we found a few we’d missed from the first.) The excitement of the afternoon is reserved for the sweet potato patch where we dig up several small specimens. (We also find a few that we think are still growing, which we cover back up.) Digging up food from the earth is surprisingly satisfying.

3. I’m sitting in the Circle reading my book when a young man comes and sits down next to me. He explains he’s a poet and asks if he could recite for me. He does — three poems — and then asks for a donation to help him enter a local slam. I give him a dollar, knowing that even if I’ve been hustled, it was still worthwhile, because, honestly, when was the last time someone read poetry to you?

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

I can’t believe next week is Thanksgiving and that there are only six more weeks in the year. That just seems wrong somehow. Wasn’t it just 80 degrees outside?

Anyway, today is Thursday, and thus it is time to look back at three beautiful things from my life over the last seven days:

1. Two days this week, random strangers came up to me and complimented my clothing. Today it was my cat shoes. Earlier in the week, I assume it was my outerwear — green capelet and fingerless mitts, striped hat and rainbow kneesocks, and polka dotted galoshes — that caused a guy on the metro to tell me I looked cheerful.

2. Our front windows are located below ground, so any precipitation hits them with dusty/muddy backsplash, leaving them filthy. Rudi and I wash them (inside and out) and I can’t believe how much better the Burrow feels with them clean.

3. In the process of our making the bed, Rudi finds the bag of missing handknits where he stashed it away from the moths last spring.

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

Just to make sure you’re awake, Craig Ferguson just informed me that Christmas is only 45 days away. We now return you to your regularly scheduled three beautiful things:

1. Julia and I meet up as it’s getting toward the newly early eventide. We walk along the Mall, sipping tea, and watching a glorious sunset.

2. Four states opposed hate from the voting booth.

3. The central branch of the Arlington County Public Library is open Sunday evenings until 9 p.m. I have never been to a non-college library that kept such hours before, and it fills an unrealized need in my life.

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

I’m a little confused about the days of this week, but it seems that today was Thursday, which means it’s time to look back on three beautiful things from it:

1. Because we personally suffered no ill effects and my most immediately important people also got off easily, two days off from work due to a hurricane seem pretty damn awesome. (Clearly the damage caused by the storm elsewhere was not remotely beautiful. But you get my point, right?)

2. Since the storm departed, the temperatures have dropped to seasonably cool. Wool blankets and socks and hats started seeming reasonable over the weekend (particularly since we keep the window open until pretty late in the season), and today I got to wear a cool-weather dress I bought over the summer.

3. We went to see Frankenweenie tonight. I had a small skein of yarn that needed unknotting, which was perfect for when the movie got to be too much for me (as Tim Burton movies are wont to do).

How about you? What was beautiful in your world this week?

It’s been a nice week filled with beautiful things. Here are just three of them:

1. We returned home from Louisiana to find D.C. firmly in the throes of fall. Last night, the leaves dropped like rain from the tree outside the Burrow.

2. We hit a New Orleans club on Friday night for a rousing concert by the Dana Abbott Band. I was so smitten, I bought a cd off her when she walked around passing the hat.

3. My former intern Jason got married on Saturday. His bride, Jennifer, seems lovely, and Jason’s eyes lit up whenever he looked at her.

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