Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. Just a few buildings up from ours, we pass a foraging albino squirrel.
2. Local green grapes are now in season!
3. The weather has been cooler this week (high temperatures in the 80s, lows below 70, and sometimes even reasonable levels of humidity). It has made such a difference in my mood.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. A friend calls to catch up.
2. Rudi and I don’t feel comfortable eating out at restaurants yet, but when we pick up pizza at our favorite restaurant, we eat our first slice or two in the car so we still get to enjoy that fresh out of the oven experience that’s so crucial to perfect pizza.
3. The annual summer sidewalk sale that usually takes place in the next neighborhood over went online and citywide this year, which meant that both our local fish & chip shop and the high-end grocery in our neighborhood were taking part. The former had a discount on gift cards, and the latter had a deal that if you bought a gift card, they threw in their weekly food bag for free. The “provisions” bag contained enough food for at least four meals of salads and the instructions on how to put them together in creative ways.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. We had our monthly video chat with friends. Everyone had relatively upbeat updates to share, from remote preschool to exercise habits to interviews.
2. Isiais did not bring the fury here that he did in some other places. Indeed, in his wake, cooler temperatures have stuck around, which have been welcome after the 28 days of 90+-degree days in July.
3. The midweek farmers market included a man who heads back to his father’s village in Greece each February to harvest olives and bottle micro-batches of olive oil. It was a pricey splurge, but I’m looking forward to sampling it on Sunday’s capreses.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. I told you back in the spring about a project that Rudi and a friend of his started where they match bikes that people weren’t using anymore with essential workers who needed them. This week they were honored with a microgrant from The Awesome Foundation.
2. Several abstracts my department submitted to an upcoming conference were accepted, so my younger colleagues and I will all be giving short, pre-recorded talks this fall. (The fact that they will be pre-recorded, rather than live and in person, is what makes this beautiful, rather than nauseating.
3. A friend’s birthday was today. Usually we sing to his voicemail, but tonight he picked up the line, so we got to catch up.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. When I went down to the garden Sunday evening, the field was full of dragonflies glittering and glinting in the late day sun.
2. We have had several spectacular thunderstorms in the region this week. Some have been far enough away that we were simply able to keep an eye on the light show from afar, while others flashed and boomed and poured rain down on our neighborhood.
3. We took our lawn chairs, store-brand Cracker Jack, and shelled peanuts up to the park to listen to as much of the game as the Nationals and Yankees were able to cram in before the rain on Opening Day. I forget in the off-season how much knitting one can get done while listening to games on the radio! (I have mixed feelings about the decision to hold professional sport events, but apparently not enough to boycott them, at least at this stage.)
What about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. Did I mention to you that after our air conditioning died our refrigerator also bit the dust? (The timing is not surprising; our fridge was old and refrigerators do not like being warm.) We were lucky because the freezer kept working, but we’ve been keeping our true perishables in our picnic cooler and also had a bag of ice in the fridge trying to keep from losing absolutely everything in it. Today, a new refrigerator arrived. We ordered (our landlord will pay for it) from a local company because they could get us the size we needed with only a week’s delay, rather than the month that absolutely everyone else quoted us. The delivery team showed up, wearing masks and gloves, within 15 minutes of the start of their delivery window, and had our old fridge out and the new one down the stairs and into our apartment in less than 20 minutes. I had a cold soda tonight to celebrate.
2. Rudi went out for supper last Friday with the political campaign he worked for this spring and I, after chatting with my folks and eking out any last light at the park on a clear evening, picked up a sandwich for supper from the local Greek restaurant. The owner and I chatted while I waited for my order and he said after a bad experience when the city first asked restaurants to do contact tracing, he’d been very pleased with everyone’s willingness to share their info. It was nice to chat with a longtime neighbor for a few minutes.
3. I got to buy period supplies and ibuprofen with my flex-spending card for the first time ever. One of the best things to come out of the COVID-19 situation is that feminine hygiene products and OTC pain meds are now allowable expenses for flexible spending accounts. I’m running out of time for that to be relevant to me, but I am so happy for younger people that Congress finally rectified this stupid, biased policy. Now if we can just get pads and tampons made tax-free nationwide and also provided free in prisons…
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?