Gratitudes 3: my dog, pizza, and Tom Cruise

1. Milo, who always fills my heart: when I see him from the top of the stairs, lying on the fleecy blanket, looking up at me with those expectant brown eyes; when he dashes across the park, or after a bunny, his long legs so eager; when he dances in excitement in the afternoon, as I finally put on some clothes (the dance being for the impending walk, not the jeans). When he smiles at me, and holds my hand (I am not making that up), and we share a moment of the foreverness of our life together. Beginning to end. (Well, ten weeks to, sadly, and hopefully not too soon, end.) I may well gratitudinize Milo in the future, if I keep this list up. There may be repetition. But the gratitude will never not be there. I adore that dog.

2. David's Boboli pizzas. Loaded: tomato sauce and cheese, mozzarella and parmesan, of course; red onion, zucchini, red bell pepper, and spicy chicken sausage. Tonight he had a short performance at the Carmel Bach Festival, so he made the pizza before he left. I heated the oven before he returned, and put it in. Teamwork!

3. A NYT essay I read today about searching for Tom Cruise, because it was funny, and because I've been watching the Mission Impossible movies—just tonight, #4: Ghost Protocol—which themselves have gotten funnier, but also tighter. There really is something disconcertingly fascinating about Cruise. As if he exists only on film, a sort of weird pre-AI AI creation....

And although three is my limit, here's a little essay on gratitude, by the poet David Whyte, via my Howler friend Kim.