This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a Thanksgiving freebie, so I’m going to share ten of the things I’m most grateful for this year:
Shelter and food: I know it sounds trite, but I pass by people living rough all the time, literally with their coats thrown over themselves, sleeping on the sidewalk. And I was up at a soup kitchen on Friday night, and we served people for hours, including a family whose child was celebrating a birthday. It’s just not possible to take a roof and meals for granted.
Rudi and my family: Rudi and I have been together now for 30 years. If our relationship were a person, it could run for Senate. (It would do a better job than some actual people currently serving in that role.) I love him more every day, and I’m so lucky that he loves me back. Add to that that I am still lucky enough to have both my parents and my brother. You don’t get to be my age without understanding that’s not a given.
My friends: How are there people who I met 35 years ago, who know me inside and out, and still want to hang out with me? Who call, and have lunch, and walk me home even though I tell them they don’t have to, and text, and find me coaching jobs, and answer my insecurities with kindness over and over and over again? And how are there people I’ve known for only a few years who want to continue getting to know me? Some people don’t have a single friend and I have more than I can count on my hands.
Coal and Ember: Our cats have lived with us just over a year now, and I cannot think of how we existed without the color and love they add to our lives. I walk into the bathroom, and Coal is asleep on the bathmat on his back, lying like a drifting otter and hoping for a belly rub. Ember naps on the router, running the internet, or curls up tight against me in bed after Rudi has given her breakfast. They chase bubbles and lasers and balls and fruit flies and steal my hair ties because Ember figured out that rubber bands make a satisfying twanging sound/vibration. And they are so happy to have found us, and we them.
Volleyball: Honestly, who would have thought a sport could bring someone so much joy — and particularly so many decades after I first started playing it? I love playing it, I love coaching it, I love watching it. It has brought me a team I hold dear and a group of friends who love me off the court and forgive my missteps on it. It gave me a work-study job that led to a real job. It provides me with structure when few other things do. If someone said you’d have to take up jogging in order to keep playing volleyball, I’d seriously consider it.
Libraries: There is no way I could afford to buy all the books I want to read. But libraries do that and then let me borrow them, sometimes for months at a time, for free. They let me print things and answer questions and download music and stream movies and tv shows and have free restrooms and meeting rooms and just come in from the elements space. And because the libraries around me are cool, I have access to all of that from three separate systems, and could utilize others.
Writing: I know I don’t write as much as I mean to. But when I craft something I’m proud of (to be fair, these days it’s usually a particularly nice email to the volleyball team), man, does it feel good! I hope to be more disciplined moving forward.
Books: I’m on my way to reading 60 books this year, and while I haven’t grooved with all of them, I have enjoyed the vast majority and loved a solid handful or so.
Knitting: I knit way less than I used to, but I have lots of yarn, so I expect to cycle back to it, hopefully this winter. (Maybe the sweater I’d planned to make when I sprained my wrist over the summer will finally become reality.) In the meantime, there is a pair of socks that needs maybe only 100 more stitches I hope to finish this week so I can wear them on Thanksgiving.
Gardening: There is something really satisfying about eating food you’ve grown, be it a pod of peas or a squash or basil or purple potatoes. Or seeing the pop of color of flowers that have finally bloomed. Without my community garden plot, I would not be able to grow much of anything.
How about you? What are you grateful for this year?
Rudi’s got a busy coaching week, so I’ll be on my own starting today. Let’s see how much of this baker’s dozen to-do list I can tackle:
Play volleyball (My game is at the ridiculously early hour of 10:30, which is painful but doable. I am hopeful I will be ready early enough that I can catch the bus, rather than having to bike to the game.)
Get rid of the compost
Reach out to some friends
Write a post about the books I read in January
Hit both libraries
Work on my journal
Bake (Maybe bread, maybe cookies.)
Read the book I started this week
Send some cards
Watch some of last year’s All Creatures, so Rudi and I can start the latest season this month
Take 10 books from the bin of books I culled from my shelves to either the Arlington Library or a Little Free Library
Find yarn for Sergio’s baby’s sweater in my stash
Change the sheets
How about you? What are you hoping your weekend includes?
Once upon a time, I used to share the things I planned to accomplish, hoped to do, or might be interested in tackling over the weekend. That was, of course, back when I had a job and weekends were vastly different from weekdays and mostly before COVID (and before my warm-weather weekends often just became an opportunity to play volleyball). But I thought I’d bring this back at least for the winter as a way to encourage myself to get out of the apartment during daylight hours and to cross off some necessary chores with a minimal amount of accountability. (Really, there’s no accountability; once I put it down here, I may never get to it and may never feel guilty about that. But still, one must start somewhere. Name the problem…) Plus, who can argue with more blog content? I mean you could, but I’m not sure that anyone besides my mom and my BFF reads this regularly anymore, so why would you?
Right. Back to the potential to-do list for this weekend, assuming that whatever this cough is doesn’t turn into a full-blown cold:
Go to the two libraries where I have holds waiting for me.
Finish reading at least one book.
Hand over this week’s compost at the farmers market.
Tidy the living room.
Bake some cookies.
Set up my 2025 journal for the start of this year. (Yes, I was late in getting it.)
Write a fave books of 2024 post.
Watch the UConn-Georgetown game on tv. (It wasn’t on my radar this year and tickets are now $50+ to watch in person.)
Send the rest of my new year’s cards. (Ahem. They started out as Christmas cards, but I got stuck.)
Do another load of laundry.
Get take out or take myself out to eat. (I’ve been so responsible this week while Rudi’s been away!)
Start either the pair of socks I wound yarn for on Jan. 1 or the baby sweater for my friend’s daughter, who arrives in less than a month (that yarn is in the stash and I have an old swatch for the pattern; I just have to figure out where both are currently).
Refill the tea tins.
Replace the batteries on the fairy lights.
Snuggle the kittens.
Paint my nails.
Sort out the veg drawer (hopefully before going to the farmers market with the compost), since it looks like something maybe died in there.
Find the wall calendar and my new atm card, both of which arrived in the mail in December.
Okay, yes, that’s definitely an ambitious list. And I probably won’t get to all of it. But even a fraction would probably make me fell pretty good about things.
Rudi is spending July doing a bucket-list cycling vacation in Europe, which means I am spending the month on self-care. Here’s a baker’s dozen activities I have on tap for this week:
Play volleyball
Go to the movies with Sarah
Cheer on my teammate Katie in the Congressional Women’s Softball Game
Swim
Send in a job application
Get quarters from the bank
Read outside
Deal with the strawberry patch in the garden (and see if I can find tomatillo plants anywhere)
Catch up with friends on the phone
Make a batch of macarons
Clean the kitchen and bathroom
Learn to replace a bike tube
Attend an outdoor concert or movie
How’s your week shaping up?
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It’s a three-day weekend for the federal government, which means D.C. has emptied out quite a bit. But some of us are still here. What do I hope to squeeze into the next three days, you ask? Let me tell you:
Start my #1000WordsOfSummer project (That’s kind of a misnomer, because it only lasts for two weeks. But the idea is to write 1000 words each day over the next fortnight and to jumpstart or reinvigorate or put a solid dent into a project. I finished it last summer and am going to give it another shot, this time with the actual intent of continuing on through July.)
Decide if I’m going to do #ChristmasInJuly this year and sign up if I am (I probably will.)
Bake something with cherries (a cobbler or a pie, most likely)
Play volleyball
Swim
Water the garden and plant beans (and maybe tomatillos)
Go to supper at a friend of Rudi’s
Shop at the farmers market (peaches!!!)
Clear out the refrigerator (honestly!)
Finish a book or two
Sit outside at a cafe (maybe with my writing project or maybe with a book or maybe with a knitting project)
Vacuum
Send some mail
Check in with some friends
Do laundry
Eat tons of fresh berries because it’s the best couple weeks of the year for that!
How about you? What are you hoping to do this weekend?
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