As it’s the darkest month of the year, I feel the need to note more of the lovely. Here are another three beautiful things from the last week (or so):

1. On Thanksgiving morning, Dad and I always go out to buy doughnuts. I don’t remember when we started getting Dunkin’ Donuts for Thanksgiving breakfast, but it must have been while I was still quite small. When we were kids, Josh would come, too, but once he was older, he opted to stay home. During college and for a couple Thanksgivings after, my friend Rebecca or my cousin Caroline and her friend would spend the holiday weekend with us and joined us for the excursion. Rudi may have even come along once or twice. But in general, it’s just me and Dad. He orders some and then I order some. No one ever complains, so I guess we must do pretty well. As Rudi and I were driving up to Connecticut last week, I asked him what he was looking forward to most over the holiday. He talked about relaxing and eating a festive meal. Then he turned the question back to me. “Going to get the doughnuts with Dad.” And, you know, it was.

2. As I was talking to Rudi’s mom on the phone last night, I started to hear a cat crying. With three cats, it’s not surprising to hear one make noises out of sight, but it turned out that my cats were all accounted for. The mewing got more insistent as I walked to the window, when who should appear on the wall above our window, but a tiny grey fluffy kitten? It was probably no more than 10 weeks old, and it gave one look at Jeremiah and me peering up at it from the window before disappearing into the night. I looked for it a few minutes later but didn’t see it up close again.

3. Yesterday, a holiday craft bazaar/flea market opened in a parking lot near my office. I stopped at one booth to examine some wares and the merchant started chatting with me about what he was selling and how his family and neighbors back home in Morocco make them. As I told him I’d be back again today with some money, he looked at me and smiled. “Don’t worry about how much you have,” he said. “We’ll make it work.” A line, perhaps, but still he seemed like a nice guy on a chilly December day.

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.