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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. My roomie came down for the weekend, and we had a lovely time catching up on all our news and all the news we had about others we love. It was laid-back — an outside lunch, a walk in the woods, browsing in bookstores, and playing with my cats — but just what I wanted with an old friend.

2. I organized an in-person meeting of the garden managers, our first one since we took over the running of our community garden earlier this year. We covered all the open questions and left feeling like we each had a few tasks to handle, but that overall we were in pretty good shape.

3. I started adding some songs into this year’s Christmas cd playlist. I’m not really sure where November went (wasn’t it just Halloween last week?), but it feels good to be moving on it.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Chris, Jasen, and Gloria are able to make it out to play at the last Saturday volleyball at Walter Pierce Park. (Saturday volleyball doesn’t stop; it just becomes more selective until the spring.) A handful of us go out for food afterwards, and it’s really nice to catch up with the group.

2. My friend Sergio is back, nine months after his daughter was born. I would have put money on his not being able to return until at least a year had passed, so this is a treat. I ask him to thank his wife for us, because I know she’s the one who’s making this possible.

3. Three big tomatoes come home with me from the garden. The temperature was due to drop, so I picked them a bit early, figuring they’d be the thing I’d be most upset to lose.

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

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We sit outside on Halloween evening, surrounded by our pumpkins and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. That includes a small toddler, for whom we are her very first ever Halloween stop, as well as a pair of British siblings, one of whom is dressed quite boldly as a Red Coat.

2. With my middle school coaching over for the season, I’m able to make it to my volunteer coaching gig for its last week of the year. It’s fun to see the wee smalls again. I start up a new assignment with the group later this month, so it’ll be fun to see how that goes.

3. My team goes up against my friend’s, which he has carefully assembled to fill specific roles. I have gone into this game prepared to lose, but determined just to have fun, as my teammate is moving away, and this will be her final game with us. Periodically, we have magical games, where our trust and communication level up our individual abilities, and this is one of those weeks. We do end up losing, in the end, but we take a set and push the others close to the limit, and we wrap up the night feeling pretty awesome about things.

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

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday option from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share ten random books from our shelves. I am feeling sleepy and lazy (and eventually put the computer down and went to sleep), so instead opted to share ten of the books I have out from the three libraries I have cards at. (Many libraries have reciprocity with nearby communities, and I highly recommend this as a tactic if you spend a lot of time on holds lists.)

1. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (I started this from one library and had to return it unfinished. It’s now overdue to a second library system, and I’m hoping to check it out from the first library again before the end of the year.)
2. The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner (currently reading)
3. Mrs. Claus and the Trouble with Turkeys by Liz Ireland (There are surprisingly few Thanksgiving reads. I’m hoping this one isn’t terrible — or, at least, that it’s good terrible. TBR)
4. The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown (audiobook; currently listening, but parts are highly stressful)
5. How to Have a Killer Time in D.C. by Sam Lunley (audiobook; started but haven’t gotten back to it)
6. The Nightmare before Kissmas by Sara Raasch (finished last week — solid read for Halloween or Christmas, and the sequel has to do with Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day)
7. No Less Strange or Wonderful by A. Kendra Greene (halfway through, but haven’t picked it up in weeks)
8. Falling like Leaves by Misty Wilson (started)
9. Cinder House by Freya Marske (TBR)
10. When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley (TBR)

How about you? What do you have out from the library right now? Are you reading those books or ones from your personal collection instead?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sarah found us a new farm for apples and cider doughnuts this year. It had gorgeous views, tasty apple turnovers, and an astonishing number of woolly bears who clearly had places to be.
2. The rain came after I was home for the night and departed before I wanted to be anywhere the next day.
3. After an emotional last day of coaching for the season, the local pizzeria still had a slice of cheese pizza left for me. (Usually by that time of day, it’s just pepperoni left.)

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