Welcome to December. The world is all sparkly and pretty at Christmas so I’d expect that to be a theme over the next month.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Mum and I spent Friday making batch after batch after batch of Christmas cookies. It took all afternoon and we were both exhausted by suppertime. Once upon a time, Mum and I couldn’t have spent an afternoon together without it ending in frustration for one or both of us. It’s nice that those days are past us — and that we have the cookies to prove it.

2. Last Christmas Rudi put up a string of lights along two walls in our living room. The intention was to go all the way around, but we didn’t have extra lights at the time and it looked pretty as is. Eventually the strands died. Last week, Rudi did half the room in lights, and he finished the job on Monday. Now we can sit in the room with the overhead lights off and bask in a cheerful pink glow.

3. This morning, I was walking to the Metro station, contemplating what to include in today’s post. I was absorbed in my thoughts and might have made it all the way underground without really seeing the day, but a gorgeous tree stopped me and made me stand, staring, mouth agape, for several extra seconds. Most trees have dropped their leaves already, but this maple has tiny scarlet leaves that stood out against this morning’s bright blue sky to create a vibrant lacy look. It just made my morning — and I’ll be sure to check on it on my daily trek to the Metro.

Welcome to our Three Beautiful Things of Thanksgiving edition. Please have a seat and pass the mashed potatoes. Would you like some wine?

1. Several years ago I asked my grandmother to write down some of the recipes that she makes so I could have a copy available at my fingertips. In the last week, I’ve made a batch of raspberry-almond shortbread thumbprint cookies to take to a party and consulted it for Mum, who needed Gramma’s pumpkin pie recipe so we could have pie for tonight’s dessert. It’s one of my treasured possessions because not only does it give me family recipes, but it’s also like having a bit of Gramma nearby when I’m far from her.

2. We got a bit of a later start than I’d hoped for yesterday and the roads heading out of D.C. were bustling. But the snow held off until after we left, accidents had been cleared, and most people seemed to have left earlier than we did. So we sailed through Maryland, paused for a while in Delaware, and then had a quick drive through New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut to get us in shortly after midnight. Less than nine hours on a holiday weekend with a stop at a grocery store and a stop for dinner on top of our normal bathroom and refueling stops seems really lucky.

3. Rudi awoke me this morning just before dawn to tell me it was snowing. By the time Dad and I went to get the doughnuts at breakfast, the driveway was coated and slippery. But the world looked very Currier and Ives as the deer sprang through the yard and the snow covered the remaining fall leaves that had eluded the rake. The perfect start to the holiday season.

Three beautiful things from a beautiful November:

1. Today dawned clear and crisp after yesterday’s rain and temperature free fall. It was the perfect day for a nice heavy wool sweater over a t-shirt.

2. My college roommate and I hae stayed friends over the years, even if we are not always good at staying in touch. On Tuesday I managed to get her on the phone and we chatted away for nearly an hour, learning about what each other was up to as well as exchanging tidbits of information about friends and families.

3. I went to the doctor today for a three-month follow-up to a diagnostic appointment I had over the summer. The doctor reports no changes from my earlier test results, which everyone agrees is very good news.

I know. I know. You’re dying to know — what were three of the beautiful things that I noticed this week? Wait no longer. Here they are:

1. Late Friday night as I was walking back to the Burrow, I caught a good whiff of fall. I wasn’t expecting it. But there it was, waiting for me, just like an old friend on the street corner. And it was there again the other day amidst the crunchy leaves littering the sidewalk on the way home from work.

2. Tonight I decided to make some applesauce with some of the apples deteriorating in the fridge. I didn’t bother to measure the cinnamon when I added it to the pot, and it was clear from the way the mixture smelled as it was simmering that I’d put in way too much. But then once it was done cooking, it tasted fine. So cinnamon can be added to applesauce far more liberally than recipes call for and it just makes it that much tastier.

3. I took yesterday as a work-at-home day in order to finish editing a book that got passed on to me. The topic was astronomy — and, in particular, the terrestrial planets (Mars, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and the Moon). Unfortunately, because I barely passed the subject in college, I was having a difficult time understanding some of the nuance the astrophysicists were trying to get at in their comments. So it felt really good when, in the last chapter, I finally understood that a planet’s magnetic field is related to its core and that its major surface disruptions (like volcanic activity and earthquakes) are related to its mantle. The two have nothing to do with one another, according to NASA. [Don’t say we aren’t instructional around here…]

When I express surprise that Thursdays roll around with such speed it’s not because I have difficulty coming up with Three Beautiful Things. It’s just that this and the farmers’ market may be the only concrete reminder I have of what day of the week it is.

From this week:

1) On Saturday, I was in a store when I chanced to glance outside and see a pink tint to the sky. I hurried out to discover the most gorgeous sunset. It stretched from a dark blue in the east through the spectrum of purples, pinks, reds, and oranges to a pale sunny blue in the west. Layers of clouds created intricate designs. And one group of clouds had arranged itself in such a way as to look like a Greek god blowing the rest of the clouds across the sky. It was tremendous.

2) One of the houses near me pulled out all the stops for Halloween. They had purple sparkly streamers and giant spiders and pumpkins. It was very festive in a neighborhood that can be a little staid.

3) Rudi and I went up to Connecticut to get rid of some more of the stuff we had stored in my folks’ basement this past weekend. We are both packrats, so there’s a lot of stuff up there still and it can be traumatic to give it away. But this time it felt good. Three huge bags of clothes went to a thrift shop, two bags of papers and such went into the garbage pile, and five boxes of household goods are waiting to go to the thrift shop at Thanksgiving. It allowed us to find things that meant something to us (Rudi’s ski team photos and my letters from college) and to pass on things that have served us well but would better suit someone else now. We still have a number of boxes to go through, but it feels good to have made such a solid start.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1) 85 degrees and sunny weather in Tucson for the three days I was there. It was nice to wear shorts one last time this year.

2) October shouldn’t be that warm, so it was nice to come home to golden leaves on the lawns and a nip in the air.

3) Min and I knew each other through mutual friends in college, where she was a couple years ahead of me. We had managed, for the most part, to stay in touch through the years, but time and distance make that challenging and we’d managed to lose track of each other in the last year or so. So it was nice when we made plans to meet up while I was visiting town. I think we both were a little worried that we’d changed since we’d last seen each other (we’re guessing it’s been about seven years) and that we wouldn’t recognize one another. But instead we did and I had a lovely time reminiscing and catching up and getting to know her better. Maybe the next time I come to Tucson will be a little bit more relaxed and I’ll have more opportunities for visiting.