Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Eighty-Four

1. Show me how good it can get.

2. This trading-morning-workout-for-journaling thing is going pretty well.

3. I know it’s been a good week when the first 40 minutes of therapy fly by.

4. She tells me that she’s glad that I had that week with her. That it seemed as though I really needed it. “I did. I needed it more than I realized I would need it.”

5. I’ll know when I know.

6. She needs a good Pro/Con list.

7. I literally bang my head against the desk. This freaking sign. I just want it to be over.

8. In another world, this is what I would have done instead.

9. How did I forget it was July 1?

10. The way the shadows dance across the table.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Eighty-Three

1. Show me how good it gets.

2. What’s the difference between the me then and the me now? It’s not that simple.

3. A constantly hot cup of decaf.

4. Lunch in the shade. A walk through the vineyard. The discovery of a bramble of blackberries in the back parking lot.

5. Picking flowers from the leftover arrangements underneath the stairs. A little bit of beauty everywhere.

6. “…see what happens when you decide…”

7. Tagliatelle with butter and prosciutto.

8. A short walk that turns into a longer hike.

9. When sunset turns everything into the colors of a vintage Polaroid.

10. I told her that I put it on 450 degrees, and she says, “dog.”

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Eighty-Two

1. Decaf and journaling in the morning light. The perfect pause.

2. “Bittersuite” - Billie Eilish

3. Flowers! A self-warming mug! Friends! The best Monday!

4. Tri-tip; peach, arugula, and goat cheese salad; pinquinto beans; garlic bread.

5. We’ve now been invited to play pickleball on the crush pad.

6. We’re all trying to heal, aren’t we?

7. She’s picking the orchid branches out of the arrangements and putting them into a plastic bag.

8. Cheez-its and the wint-o-green mints are back.

9. The gym feels cool until you actually start running in it.

10. She says it feels weird to hear herself be called a senior.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Eighty-One

1. No location.

2. I could just wake up and enjoy the morning's slowness.

3. Birthday hoops — as a spectator. But the best thing about doing this is making new connections.

4. The gift of extra time.

5. Summer sun.

6. She asks if I feel any different. Yes. And no.

7. Pork ribs and coleslaw and lemonade.

8. He shows us the hairs on his arms, literally standing straight up. Infectious.

9. “You belong in this basketball community.”

10. Riding in the passenger seat, watching the hills blur in front of my eyes. Thinking about her questions. Wondering if I really feel the answers.

11. “There is no beauty without some sense of strangeness.” - Edgar Allan Poe

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Eighty

1. Morning light through the wooden blinds.

2. I scroll through the app to see when the next summer session begins. July 1 seems so soon.

3. Diffuser.

4. Solbar. A French press of decaf. Donuts. A mimosa. Fruit. Scrambled eggs and bacon. Depth and gratitude.

5. Home alone.

6. “If we study merely what is average, we will remain merely average.” - The Happiness Advantage

7. How do you make space for the fullest expression of your self? What conditions are required for you to be your best?

8. Embracing the quiet.

9. A walk to gelato and freshly cut flowers.

10. Ready

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Nine

1. TGIF.

2. Can’t believe it’s already the last day.

3. Ubuntu.

4. Sweaty in the gym. Loud in the gym. Joy in the gym.

5. I love it when it’s full of people who really love what they’re doing.

6. Hugs and handshakes from strangers, out of gratitude.

7. I tried to be inconspicuous, but we got spotted.

8. I tell him that I try to remind myself that it’s easier to push the boulder down the hill.

9. Twinkle lights.

10. I decide that I’m just going to have to accept getting the two Bs this semester.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Eight

1. Another rest day. It feels unnatural.

2. I spot him walking around the campus with his cup of coffee. Like a farmer admiring his work. Or, maybe, it’s like taking a peaceful stroll through the garden.

3. I tell him that I’d rather be here.

4. He asks her if people recognized her at the taqueria. I tell her that she’s famous. Like, in this little corner of the world, you’re famous.

5. Can’t focus.

6. Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.

7. In 15 minutes, I get about 20 years of a life story, and it is indeed the right kind of arc, going from bad to better and trying to give the next generation an even greater opportunity to thrive.

8. The kids try to teach her a few new slang words, which is always my favorite part of any dinner.

9. She keeps telling me that I get to choose, and the kids are like, “This is the happiest I’ve seen her be about her birthday.” They are not wrong.

10. Hard choice = doing statistics homework at 10 p.m.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Seven

1. Rest day.

2. That panic that rushes through the body at 5:23 a.m. when you hear the trash truck coming, and you aren’t sure that they put the cans outside.

3. Work-from-gym day.

4. Two more days until PTO.

5. She tells me that this one kid has come all the way from Fortuna. Fortuna!

6. Station chopped salad for the win.

7. The invisible load keeps getting heavier and heavier, and it feels as if there’s no season of life when it will lighten.

8. Apologizing for being late to a meeting that really didn’t need to be a meeting anyway.

9. You think it’s just basketball, but it’s more than that.

10. “Not about me.”

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Six

1. Going uphill in the weighted vest is no joke.

2. On the second loop, a large feather is in the path.

3. Twenty-six point five gallons of gas. There was literally no gas in the truck. Literally none. How did I even make it into town?

4. Half decaf and half caf. Green juice. Racing thoughts.

5. This is my favorite week of the summer. Always so good.

6. Ben & Jerry’s at the company picnic. Non-dairy ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.

7. I text him that it’s photoshoot day and that I miss him. I really do.

8. No. I can’t remember it all.

9. That’s a wrap. The best kind of work day, even though they are the hardest.

10. Will I even recall anything I read between the hours of 9 and 11 p.m?

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Five

1. Gray, gray morning.

2. I really hope these iron gummies work.

3. Will this weighted vest change my life?

4. It’s not just them, but all the things that come along with

5. She asks where the snacks are. There aren’t any.

6. A picture in the shade of the umbrella to send to Work-Dad.

7. When someone keeps telling you that they are a mean person on the inside, you have to wonder: one, why the confession, and two, is this true, or is it some bad joke you keep wanting to tell?

8. Oh, no. I somehow ran out of the wint-o-greens and got peppermints.

9. A little twinge in the knee.

10. Almost time for shooting camp!

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Four

1. 3:30 a.m. Just a little bit of barking.

2. Cognitive reappraisal.

3. Their flight is landing a little bit early.

4. Where are you running to?

5. Behind us is a father, on Father’s Day, telling his young child that he's sick and tired of him, that he’s awful, that he doesn’t want to even be around him. I tell my husband that I just read about this exact situation in my emotional intelligence book… about how, because the parent can’t self-regulate, they speak in wild ways to the child, who then emulates the behavior, yet the parent doesn’t understand why the child can’t control themself. I hope, at some point, someone gives that child the right tools to break the cycle.

6. And so it begins.

7. Ants crawling around the edge of the sink. Great.

8. Green bean and cherry tomato salad.

9. Stress-eating Nutella and pretzel crisps.

10. Here we go again.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Three

1. Constant barking throughout the night. What do they see? Is there anything even near the sheep?

2. Still barking.

3. Did I just start snoring during savasana?

4. Virtual mom coffee time.

5. Moving from shade to sun to shade to sun.

6. Hammock. Nap.

7. Cognitive reappraisal.

8. One last dinner without them. A shared tomahawk and a bottle of Heitz Cabernet.

9. Swinging in the hammock and singing “Wildflower”.

10. “The search for new ideas involves five steps:

    Define the problem

    Assemble all the information

    Ideate many solutions

    Incubate, rest, and relax.

    Evaluate which idea is the best.” - How to be More Creative, David. D. Edwards

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-Two

1. Reminding myself that I can give myself permission to rest.

2. A flurry of morning voice memos.

3. No. Can’t trust them.

4. A thirty-minute catch-up. We’re overdue for that lunch.

5. Happy hour snacks.

6. He says that I have a good little friend group. And, too bad. Not everyone gets to be in the circle.

7. Swinging in the hammock and staring up at the sky. I can hear the waves of wind before they crash above my head. It’s such a weird feeling to hear it and see it but not feel it.

8. How tall are these trees?

9. A list of things I want.

10. How to Be Creative.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy-One

1. The birds are right on time.

2. This level of soreness within the body is not normal. Can’t possibly be.

3. So many things I intended to complete remain undone.

4. I tell her it’s just that I’m not ready for the stress to return, yet. Everything is going to change again.

5. I put up the umbrellas, and now there’s a big pool of shade. And it’s a little thing that’s really a big thing.

6. Our sacred circle.

7. Maybe a new-moon vision-board gathering is needed.

8. It’s not what I would normally do on a Thursday night, but the conditions are right. The conditions are rarely ever right.

9. Chispa. Centenario margaritas. Al pastor tacos. Nachos. Mexico vs. South Korea.

10. I knew I liked her for a reason.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Seventy

1. The gift of time.

2. Small cups of decaf while journaling.

3. “I am more me when I am creating.”

4. If only we could permanently get this Wednesday back, I’d be a much happier person.

5. One who gets me.

6. House of Good.

7. I tell him that sitting in that hammock is an automatic nap.

8. Reading research and outlining lecture slides. Trying to map it all out over the next several days.

9. The way the sun sets behind these trees, and the wiggling leaves make dancing shadows.

10. So many books I want to read. So little time to read them.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Sixty-Nine

1. The chill in the air is back.

2. I feel like I keep running out of time.

3. The fog hasn’t yet cleared in this part of the valley. Thick clouds of mist rest on the hillsides.

4. Three words you want people to think of when they think of you?

5. There is something about her energy.

6. An entire container of salad dressing in the outside pocket. I pour it out. She helps to clean my special pencil sharpener. We decide to throw away the pen, pencils, and hair tie. I think I’m done with the day.

7. It’s all the same, but different.

8. Running into my heart friend.

9. I tell him that I’ve made a commitment to myself to enjoy my summer, which means being outside as long as possible while the sun is still up. Why would I not remember to take advantage of summer’s gifts?

10. “scarce material”

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Sixty-Eight

1. Sweat.

2. The upside of the kids being gone is that I haven’t had to go grocery shopping. The downside is that I also have no lunch.

3. Linen on linen.

4. She’ll be back today!

5. I wash my hands and think about our futures. I think she’s not dreaming big enough. Why not do it now? What are we waiting for?

6. Last-minute decision to dash for a Chicken Caesar from Station.

7. They say they want to eat pizza in the circle. We sit around half-court and talk about summer plans, the kids in their class, and quinceañeras.

8. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be, or what I thought it would be. But then you get a very long text from the 7th grader and you remember why you did it.

9. Fever dreams.

10. My nails are still wet, but I can’t keep my eyes open.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Sixty-Seven

1. Why can I never sleep in?

2. Hot, hot shower. Just give me a hot decaf.

3. It was enough.

4. Women in all black digging in the desert dirt with their bare hands. A little girl building a circle with rocks, digging into the dirt with her hands. She lays some sticks inside the wall of rocks. The women keep digging. She’s building a pyre. In the distance, a large group of men dressed in black march across the sand. And then you see it. A body wrapped in white, carried by some of them. A ring of fire encircles them. Life and death. I think of what is happening in the Middle East — all over, really. Can’t you feel it? The deep sadness of a mother having to dig her child’s grave? The fear of a child knowing that they will dig the grave of another?

5. On the way out, I read the plaque: “Passage by Shirin Neshat… inspired by the Palestine-Israeli conflict… a poetic image of loss, grief, renewal, and hope…” “That’s what I thought,” I say out loud after I read it. The women and I step away at the same time. “That was intense,” she says. “It was.”

6. Texture and color and light and sound. I had forgotten how much I love to be in a museum.

7. A book about wabi-sabi and another book about dreaming.

8. On the other side of the Golden Gate is real life.

9. I have misjudged my time, and I will pay for it.

10. She wants them to bring their jerseys so that they can take a picture in them. I can’t wait for her to get to high school.

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Sixty-Six

1. 4:30 a.m. Up early because I fell asleep so early. I flip over my phone and see that another one can’t make it.

2. Waiting until 5:00 a.m. to send a text because that seems more reasonable than 4:37 a.m.

3. I step outside with my small cup of decaf and listen. All I hear is the song of a bird or two. Above the treetops, the sky is blue. To my right, where the sun is rising, a hazy glow from the fog. Like magical mist.

4. “I just don’t ever need to do this again.”

5. Platinum blonde? I don’t think so.

6. The longer I live up valley, the less I want to leave it.

7. That looks like a St. Helena Little League hat, so chances are it’s him.

8. Go Cubs, go!

9. Bouche. Didier Charton-Vachet, Montagny 1er cru Les Jardins d'Ysabeau 2022. Soft, glowy lights. Hand-painted mural. Small tables and an Algerian named Ramses.

10. Is this what it might feel like when they all leave the nest?

Ten.Two Thousand, Six Hundred & Sixty-Five

1. The a/c in the office is off. On Friday mode, maybe? It’s 85 degrees in here.

2. A little bit of perspiration forming as I roll the solly stacked with wine down the hill.

3. Maybe we just aren’t dreaming big enough.

4. Not again.

5. The house will be clean and stay clean for at least another week, though.

6. The bar is just not for me. We take a corner table outside.

7. Brown butter-aged beef with spinach and potato gratin.

8. I’m getting nervous. One more down.

9. A table of four sits beside us. This is the second year in a row they’ve come to the restaurant. This time, they are celebrating a birthday. He says something about tourists. I tell him that I try to remind myself of how lucky we are to live in a place where people come to take a vacation. We get to live here.

10. We should do this more often.