i am grateful for:

1) the way the skyline gets all glowy and peachy right about now. then blue and pink. then eventually, it flips and the lights come from the buildings–urban stars.

2) working hard

3) homemade popcorn with olive oil and garlic powder and salt

4) this super-awesome recipe for salt and vinegar potatoes. it’s intense, but if you like s-and-v, you’ll love this. especially if you make a batch of the optional fennel salt. num!

5) my birthday a-comin’. no matter that i’m older and the like, i just like my birthday and will till the last, i think.

6) going to see some trees this week

7) daisies in march

8) brad making homemade chicken soup when i’m feeling craptastic

9) toastmasters!

10) a glimmer of warmer days. can temperature glimmer?

11) practicing my speech on our posse of stuffed animals. they don’t fidget or fuss or heckle. they also don’t laugh, though, so they’re tough.

i am grateful for this awesome video supporting planned parenthood.

i am grateful for:

1) t-shirt weather, however passing

2) a fairly productive week

3) dogs. brooklyn has so many good ones–i’m beginning to know my type, too: medium build, friendly face, intelligent eyes, touchable fur, medium tail. feisty but warm. basically, a pitta dog.

4) opening the doors and windows, letting life in

5) working dates with m. yay for shared productivity!

6) more yoga

7) not eating sugar, day 18ish. though today is a cranky-wanna-cookie day, i’ve been perkier, stronger, and more steady.

8) being tucked in and home–not having to be anywhere–on st. patrick’s day night

9) the hopeful springy smell in the air

10) out magazine’s amazing madonna photos. so hot. and oddly moving–you can see the spark of human in her–and hungry, hungry desire for something. ripeness. i know it was the 80s, but i love that she’s not a size 0 and is still amazingly smoking. something we almost never see anymore–even in ordinary women there’s often a veneer of “i suck” that lessens the hotness in non-skinny american women. i love the christina hendricks quote in health magazine: “She used to be 15 pounds heavier – and that, she tells Health – is when she felt the most beautiful. She was modeling in Italy. ‘I was having cappuccinos every day!” she told the magazine. “I would take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like, ‘Oh, I look like a woman.’ And I felt beautiful, and I never tried to lose it, ’cause I loved it.’”

11) my brain working at all today–feel kinda flat. coooookies? please?

12) this sleepy coffee shop with sunlight hitting the sill bricks, a few people tapping at laptops, krishna das on my headphones.

13) flowers

14) how new-spring days like today remind me of this sharon olds poem, first love. gorgeous and tragic.

i am grateful for:

1) my friend anandra, a healer/teacher visiting japan right now. she posted this on FB: “I think the best thing to do in this situation is to remain at ease, in a state of yoga, immersed in harmony in the midst of the appearance otherwise. For those of us not in immediate physical suffering, we can contribute an atmosphere of peace, not get swept away in the whirling energy of fear.”

2) waking up in the middle of the night over the weekend and catching the moon pretending to be a giant mango slice. luminous and orange and low. it sunk quickly behind the buildings, but it was huge and juicy and gorgeous. i imagine a giant monkey god snapped it up.

3) mary’s gone crackers herb flavor crackers

4) being on day 13 of no refined sugar. i think i feel a difference. you know, other than wanting to eat through the glass window of ben & jerry’s. tongue seems pinker, bowels seem better, energy seems more consistent. we’ll see.

5) booking a fire island campsite. i am so in the moment and the moment is june.

6) top chef, season 7

7) preparing a speech!

8) a semi-private yoga class! what luxury to be actually assisted in poses. i really miss old school yoga. and am grateful it can still exist, if for a fee.

9) d. being told to hug trees to help give her a stronger flow of prana to fight the cancer. the idea being that all these crazy emf’s and wireless signals are messing with our cells’ inherent intelligence and that in the city the closest thing you get to pure, strong prana is a tree. cool.

10) putting all our dry goods into jars. also, the term “dry goods.” and not having lots of crinkly bags everywhere popping open and spilling basmati on the floor.

11) the unfamiliar yet very welcome feeling of calm, balanced normalcy in love.

12) pentel magic markers

13) tourist strangers chatting in the subway across the aisle as if that’s something that’s done here.

14) ganesh