i am grateful for:

1) suuuunnnnshiiiine!!!!!!

2) swimming in freezing salt water, gazing at gorgeous saltwater, watching clouds fill and shift with light and color

3) sand massaging my arches

4) being able to talk about grown-up chick stuff

5) that my yoga journal love article is finally out, fully intact, and gorgeously illustrated. so happy after all that moaning and groaning and figuring out how to talk about love when feeling not so hot about love (it’s a capitalist lie meant to disempower us and enable our insecurities so we must buy things to fill the void, and, and. yeah.) love. come if you like, if you plan to stay awhile. please, have a cuppa and tell me a story.

6) soft grass

7) the seagull who smashed a shell from 20 feet in the air then picked it back up and flew away

8) looking for another way

9) seeing nate and blair one foot away from me filming gossip girl

10) having new underwear (laundry time)

11) big daddy’s chocolate shakes. yeah, i know. it’s a biannual event. but man, so glad to meet the craving. i feel so much more solid with some whipped up haagen dazs in me.

12) cats that cuddle each other

13) doing full wheel with relative ease on my own, in the grass. solo yoga, my body feels so much safer and more able to open. but no one but me gets to be impressed.

GUY ON STREET: i don’t mean to be out of line or anything. [BEAT] but i think you’re really cute. and you have an amazing set of legs.

ME: thanks. that’s very sweet of you.

GUY ON STREET: you have a great day.

END SCENE

ugh. yeah. just ugh. but i am grateful for:

1) writing

2) hope

3) that things will change

4) that things are changing, if microscopically

5) that i’ll be on a beach this weekend

6) getting through the day

7) yogurt

8) walking around the block with j. today

9) catalogs

10) the new pret a manger at union square. they are so nice there.

i am grateful for/that:

1) the magical cloudscape from the plane window. truly. magical. puffy peaks and dips and light filling the white and baby blue and sunshine yellow and impossible not to imagine yourself flying through them and thinking that you could, that there must be a way because it is so right, the idea of flying through those clouds. and then thinking about the idea of possibilities and if they really are infinite then maybe you could, even if it’s with lucid dreaming. and then thinking that no wonder we idolize heaven as a place because the sky is so pristine and lovely and perfect and we can’t stay because gravity won’t let us, so these beautiful clouds and the light are things we can’t keep and a place we can’t stay which is why we want them so badly. i turned and the guy in the middle seat was looking too, his face lit up with little-kid awe and we traded a look that said, wow, magic clouds.

2) home. it’s not boulder, but it’s purple and green and has all my books.

3) that i have a whole experiece to integrate

4) that the delay was only four hours and after that travel safe and uneventful

5) thank you cards

6) getting to go on a hike this morning before the plane. and the smell of the sky and the sun and the crazy rory-gilmore’s eyes blue sky. and poppies. and the flatirons. and the rockies.

7) john denver

8) the per-minute massage place at the denver airport. arlene rocks.

9) giving away paper hearts

10) luff

i am grateful for:

1) having this incredible time in boulder

2) the st. julien and chautauqua

3) that i took the “moderate” hike. so not a sea-level new yorker’s moderate. but beautiful.

4) that i just passed a wolf. a wolf! first: a mountain lion? no. kitty? hmm, no. oh, wolf. hello, mr. wolf, late for a very important date. just on the fire road outside my cabin. a wolf!

5) the flatirons at dusk

6) the lovely dinner i had at chautauqua. and new belgium “fat tire” beer.

7) bathtubs

8) trailmix

9) boulder plantasies

10) home? do i have to? i really want to stay here. everyone’s all like, but you have a web job, why can’t you do it from boulder? um, i think i know why. but, sigh. sigh. sigh. peaceful. mountains. streams. trees. yoga. my friend john said to me, if you were a city you’d be boulder. and yesterday this guy i met at lohas said “you don’t seem like a new yorker at all. you seem like you’d have to live somewhere like san francisco or boulder.”

11) the number 33

i’m still out here in boulder, a.k.a. heaven.

i am grateful for:

1) inspired, alive, grooving, connected people

2) ray anderson

3) maid service (i feel guilty about being grateful for this. but nonetheless, i appreciate the support with things like bed-making and towel-changing and cosmetics-arranging deeply.)

4) western clouds and the way they hold light

5) om time yoga studio in boulder

6) the soaking tub

7) nudges toward my dharma

8) my no-apologies experiment. i fell off the wagon five times today. five! but awareness is good.

9) being noticed by men. i am invisible in new york. here, cute.

10) two spoons, the coolest little food shop with the best burritos and gelato and i haven’t even tried their “slow coffee” yet, but i am psyched

11) that i have two and a half more days here

12) airplanes

boing, boing, boing! i made it. mountains, little streets, the prana store, the vibe.

i forget how essential it is to get out of town. i’m all to me, “oh, hello you, what’s new?” and i have a zillion stories to tell until she’s like “shhh, let’s go play, it’s awesome here.”

i am grateful for/that:

1) [redacted: i was really tired]

2) cannelloni and gelato. really. and so so so good. the gelato came from a place that says they have “slow coffee” in the window, winging around every trendy food word there is and i am a sucka.

3) that obsession seems make a little less sense out here, and therefore has less brainhold

4) mountains

5) really big mountains

6) the prana store

7) borrowing two hours for a week

8) the yoga boy with the pretty blue eyes who was told to press on my sacrum. partner work is much less annoying when you think they’re hot. ommmm

9) realizing i haven’t had a crying session lately that’s like a car wash. when you feel all flushed out and good tired after, released. i need one, can feel it coming, if i’m still capable.

10) diane vadino’s novel which i finally read today and really loved–”smart girls like me.” some great writing in there. made me laugh and cry on a turbulent plane. a skewering of this place diane and i used to work together. there wasn’t a valerie character, but I think i actually got lumped in with the editors who don’t care about grammar. oh well. it was fun to see the shredding of the bosses and imagining they were my real old bosses, just some of them.

11) gigantic soaking tubs in gorgeous slate bathrooms. luxe heals.

i’m the kind of tired that should only come from having three kids under the age of five. it all feels so not-soft, so spiky and with no soft place to land. that whined, i am grateful for:

1) meeting a. today. so cool to see people charged up by helping other people.

2) seeing a friend on sunday for the first time since 6th grade. go facebook.

3) the “true mirror” at the figment festival on governor’s island. the guy at the booth said we can’t connect with our true light selves in a regular mirror because we’re seeing ourselves backward. we can very easily slip into a “negative feedback loop” with the steely mirror gaze most of us give ourselves. so when we look in a true mirror, a rigged little set-up that allows you to see yourself reverse-mirror image like other people see you–we can get our essence better. we can connect with ourselves through our eyes without obsessing about our hair or whatever because we see how we’re really feeling. it made me smile at myself. i started to see it and the positive feedback loop that created.  he said we can all do this for each other. and it’s truly amazing because two days before i was telling j. i felt like i was looking into all these mirrors metaphorically that were so much kinder than how i see myself. other people being so much kinder and warmer and more forgiving. and it makes me wonder if i have any idea who i really am, if any of us do. and can we blame it all on shiny glass?

4) governor’s island. being so close to the river. so calming.

5) chocolate-covered almonds

6) that i’m getting a change of venue

7) wood. it’s kind of a miracle, wood. another point for the trees.

8) a clean home

9) fuchsia peonies

10) post-its

11) the amazing butterfly-filled strength-symbol amazingness from j. omigod. so beautiful. so love.

i am grateful for:

1) the way the “om” at the end of class is so much more harmonic, cohesive, and melodious than the one at the beginning. it’s a sign that something has happened within and between us.

2) saturday

3) boulder, boulder, boulder

4) the week from hell being over

5) edging toward freedom from this stupid energy-suck that is my brain-twirl

6) the bust blog

7) seeds. being planted, watered, tended.

8) seeing myself in other people’s mirrors, which are so much kinder than my own. a few this week. it’s like, really? wow, i like that so much better. huh.

9) andrew and elena

10) the idea of rest

sent to me by my friend and colleague a., after a day that was all about impermanence. applicable to all life levels. lovely. (thank you, a.)

– from “gift from the sea” by anne morrow lindberg