A Thanksgiving tradition for you.

The next time it comes around on the guitar, I invite you to sing along with the chorus, loudly. We’re starting a movement, after all, and they need to hear us.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share fictional characters we’d like to check in on. Here are some of mine:

1. Isola Pribby from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows
2. Felicity from A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd
3. The teen protagonists of The Illuminae Files series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristof
4. Will from Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
5. Starr from The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
6. Ruth from Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
7. Claudia from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
8. Charles Wallace from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
9. Mary from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett
10. Miranda from When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

How about you? Are there characters whose lives you’d like to peek into even after the happily ever after takes place?

I’m feeling a little blue tonight, so I’m giving us a rare non-Thursday edition of three beautiful things:

1. I passed a woman wearing a hat with a gigantic plume of a feather sticking out of it.

2. An upstairs neighbor removed their laundry from the dryer with twenty minutes to go. I grabbed the thickest items off the drying rack and finished them off with a little heat.

3. There was a shred of pink along the horizon behind the Washington Monument as I was biking home past the Capitol on an otherwise overcast day.

What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

The apartment still looks like a tornado came through, but now you can add a couple bags of groceries, several bags of Christmas presents, and a full bag of produce from the garden. (Tomatoes, peppers, all the remaining basil (two types), Swiss chard, and a handful of tomatillos are in the bag (and then I added at least half a dozen ripe figs from the tree in the park)).

Admittedly, Mount Laundry is now looking more like Laundry Foothill, with three loads done since Rudi left. I’ve got at least three more to do before we head north for the holiday, but I should probably switch over to removing items from the Burrow, rather than just cleaning and rearranging them. (This would have been made easier had the recycling been picked up this week.) We have a new cat sitter coming by Monday evening, so I now definitely have a narrowing timetable for putting the worst of the situation to rights.

Tomorrow holds more than cleaning, though. Sarah and I are getting together in the afternoon for lunch†, and I’ll probably bike across town to get in a little more exercise and daylight and to count it as a Coffeeneuring ride.

But once the sun goes down, I’ll get to work righting the ship.

Honestly, this weekend needs to include hours of cleaning — the Burrow looks like a tornado ran through it — but I’m hoping that’s not everything it includes!

Here’s what else I’m hoping to get up to:

• Finding a pet sitter (I know, I know. I’ve sent an email and am waiting to hear back.)
• Spending time with my friend Sarah
• Checking in on the garden (It’s supposed to drop just below freezing overnight and I’d planned to get down there before the sun set today. When the options narrowed to find out how well tomatoes fare in a minor freeze or harvesting in an out-of-the-way corner of a park after dark, I opted to keep my fingers crossed. The internet tells me tomatoes that aren’t damp should be okay down to 28 degrees.)
• Going to the local bookstore’s member sale
• Cycling to two Coffeeneuring destinations
• Doing laundry
• Shopping at the farmers market
• Reading
• Knitting
• Doing some Christmas prep for parties, swaps, decorating, and the Virtual Advent Tour

What are you hoping to do this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Rudi’s early flight was late enough I could go to the yuppie doughnut shop after dropping him off.

2. While at our neighborhood grocery store/bar, we ran into a friend of Rudi’s and ended up closing the place down.

3. I stopped by the local Middle Eastern place hoping for a pre-supper cup of tea to drink while sitting on their patio, since it was an unseasonably warm evening. They apologized that their kebabs were pretty much gone, and when I explained I’d want a vegetarian option anyway, they offered to make me falafel. Dinner without having to cook it myself? Sure! While I waited, they gifted me a piece of baklava and the cup of tea I’d wanted, and once the falafel was cooked, I had two meals’ worth of sandwich, plus four sauces.

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