Today rolled around far too early with a morning meeting and a profound lack of sleep. Where is the sun? I feel like I could wake up if the sun would ever come back…

While we’re waiting, though, let’s contemplate three of the beautiful things from the past week:

1. At the end of the day, a man walks down 13th Street past Franklin Square juggling pins. Every few tosses, a pin falls to the ground.

2. Sunday morning, it is raining. The small tree outside our house has droplets of water clinging to every leaf bud.

3. Our garden plot is in a larger area of parkland that is far enough off the street that owners feel safe bringing their dogs there to play off-lead. A person throws a ball and suddenly two greyhounds are off! First one has the ball. They dash in a different direction! And back! And forth!

And to compensate for the lack of sunhine, I offer us all a fourth beautiful thing:

4. Kim and Rebecca both send me emails yesterday. Kim includes an eye-crinklingly adorable sound clip of her and her son, Thomas, singing “C Is for Cookie.” And Rebecca sent me photos of her son wearing his first Mariners gear and being cuddled by his new parents. I can’t tell you what lovely additions these were to my inbox.