Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. A family with two dachshunds walks past us. The older eyes the crinkly kites some kids are flying and decides to bark at them. The second is a puppy, who is happy just to pee now that they’ve reached the grass.

2. My garden is full of long-stemmed, fragrant violets, greens are big enough to start gathering for salad, and the peas are past knee-high.

3. CBS All-Access has given a month’s trial away for free, so Rudi and I are watching Picard only a little bit after everyone else we know.

How about you? What beautiful things have you been noticing in your world to keep things sane-ish?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sourdough bread, made from my starter. Yes, it’s probably cheating a little bit to make it in the breadmaker, but at this point, whatever gets it turned into bread is a winner, in my mind. We ate warm slices as soon as the loaf was cool enough to cut and had it toasted for breakfast with butter and jam.

2. This week, in addition to accepting some paid part-time work with a local campaign he really believes in, Rudi has, with a friend, launched a nonprofit project, BikeMatch, that pairs local cyclists who are willing to donate bikes to people who need them during this crisis. In their first couple days, they’ve already heard from 50 people. I am super proud of him.

3. I painted my toenails. This weekend I’m going to do my fingernails.

How about you? What beautiful things have you been noticing in your world to help you deal with this?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. So there’s this person who had, for the past few months, been baking bread several days a week and then giving it away on Twitter. I’ve entered their contests a couple times, but never won. Early last week, they mentioned they’d made a sourdough starter for someone who, it turns out, had gone out of town, and would any of us like it. Within a matter of minutes, several of us had raised our hands. The bread maker handed it off to the first volunteer, but reached out to the rest of us and said they’d be happy to make us starters, too. So last Friday, they dropped off several tablespoons of starter in a container, and Rudi and I started caring for it. Sourdough starter needs feeding and watering and changing a couple times a day for the first little bit, but we’re now pretty much at the part where we can dial it back to a couple times a week. See all those dots on the surface? Air bubbles. That’s how you know your sourdough is happy with you.

2. Suddenly, Clare and her original Three Beautiful Things blog popped into my feed reader this week after several years of dormancy.

3. We’ve all mostly settled, comfortably or not, into this new normal routine. I am working from home 8 hours a day and spending a lot of time on conference calls. It is boring, because all the things we’d do for diversity and distraction are mostly unavailable at this time. But, as Grey Kitten noted to me today, given the news, boring is good. We’re all texting and calling and Zooming with our loved ones, hoping for reports of boredom. Because, honestly, the alternative is really scary. I wish boredom for you and your loved ones, too.

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

With the world burning down around us, it seems especially important to find the pockets of good in our days. Here are three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi’s mom and her house seem to have weathered the 5.7 magnitude earthquake that hit Salt Lake City earlier this week and its aftershocks relatively unscathed.

2. While more and more places are closed here in D.C., we are not yet on lockdown the way they are now in California. At midday I walked around the block and stopped at the bank to stock up on quarters for the washing machine. And we’ve been ending each evening up at the park, where we sit until we hear “Taps” wafting through the neighborhood from the Naval Observatory. Lots of other neighbors are doing the same thing, but while the dogs refuse to keep their distance, the people are relatively good about engaging in the social distancing that’s been prescribed to us all. (Rudi and I are hanging out in the gated section of the park, where the dogs aren’t supposed to be, just to be super diligent.)

3. The Vernal Equinox occurred just before midnight our time this evening, which means, despite everything, spring has arrived.

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

Three beautiful things from what has been a remarkably anxious week:

1. There are flowers everywhere.

2. As I was walking back from the local watering hole this evening, I passed a family on the main drag just as an ambulance went by. The little boy was so full of joyful excitement, that he imitated the siren and flashing lights with his whole body, running back to tell his father who was a few feet behind that he had just missed this tremendous vehicle.

3. Rudi and I went to two movies — Emma and My Spy — on back to back nights this week and enjoyed both quite a bit.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. An earlier growing season in Florida means I can bring fresh strawberries home as a souvenir.

2. We got a chance to see a preview of The Way Back, Ben Affleck’s latest picture, this week. In it, Affleck plays an alcoholic construction worker and former high school basketball star, whose priest asks him to coach their school team. It’s not perfect, but it was both heartfelt and remarkably well acted. Recommended.

3. The beach. Always the beach.

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