Much in the same way that you cannot beat London in the summer, you cannot beat the PNW once spring has finally sprung. The sun wins a five-month-long battle with ceaseless cloud cover, the temperature creeps a degree or two above fifty, the sun stops setting at 4pm, and I genuinely think you can feel your soul leave your body (in a good way!) when you step out onto your front porch in the early afternoon to a blue sky filled with warm sunlight. I am a true believer in the seasons and I love them each deeply – but the first time every year that I feel sun-warmed skin might just be the best seasonal emotion.

We went down to San Diego in March for a long overdue visit to friends and America’s finest city and it was a flashforward of the sunshine to come, and I appreciated it in my bones. (For the record, I think when it comes to city monikers, the tourism gods have chosen well when bestowing the title “Finest City”: the English city that boasts that distinction is none other than Norwich.) But after four beautiful days, we left San Diego in March and returned to Auburn in March, where it proceeded to snow. SNOW.

It took about a month, but now, in the mixed bag of forecasts that is the month of April, spring is doing its damnedest to stay sprung, and I am revelling in it and all of the joy therein.

What’s been bringing the joy besides the sunshine? So many things! Let’s make a list!

One: Trips & trips & trips

There was San Diego last month, then next month I will be going on a cruise to Alaska (a first for me and a very generous gift from a very generous friend), and in August Aaron and I are GOING TO ENGLAND & SPAIN!!!! I am SO VERY THRILLED! We will be there for 12 days, flying in and out of London, where Aaron will get his first United Kingdom experience and see all of the things and people and places I have fallen in love with over and over again. Is there something better than sharing what you love with someone you love? It is one of my most favorite things. Then we will set off for Spain, where we will see one  of my best friends and her amazing family, which will be so very wonderful. And then we will catch the total solar eclipse on the 12^th. Jetlag and August heat be damned – it will be SUCH an adventure, I cannot WAIT.

Two: Progress of many kinds!

When we bought our house, it was almost entirely because of the potential on the property to host a shop for Aaron. We have just under half an acre, and on it sits a 24’ x 30’ reinforced cement foundation three-walled RV carport, making us one wall and an electrical plan away from a perfect shop. In the past five months, while the sun battled the ceaseless clouds, Aaron and I have battled the equally ceaseless King County permit department, and we are finally gaining ground, culminating in very exciting coming changes and, eventually, a full-permitted working shop for Aaron! This feels like some of the biggest progress we’ve made on the property since moving here, and I am very here for it.

Then, there is health progress. I don’t think I have ever been a particularly unhealthy person, but the past year has seen the most consistent and least dramatic (which I think is fully the only reason this has been consistent) progress in the department that is Being Healthy. I slowed things down in the winter months, because goddamn the winter is long and dark and cold and hard, but now that we are springing, I can mark nearly a full year of running. I checked my old C25K app a few days ago to see when I first picked it up last year: on April 22, 2025, I did my first thirty minute workout of alternating 90 seconds of walking with 30 seconds of jogging. Last Friday I did a casual 4 mile run after work. I just love it and am excited to see if this next year brings any other fun ways to stay on the move. (And if it doesn’t? That is A-Okay! Running can absolutely be my personality if needs must.) (Jokes.)

And then, there is driving progress! This will sound like a weird one because I didn’t really plan it and it’s not exactly on everyone’s list of things to learn/know how to do. But last fall, Aaron started teaching me how to drive a manual transmission car. There were many reasons for this: getting extra cache at work, because, well, car museum; feeling cool, because, well, feeling cool; and most practically, being able to jettison Rhonda the Honda, who has been my boon companion since I got back from London in 2021, but why have a car payment when you can…not have a car payment! It wasn’t until late January that I really decided to make the jump, after some months of casual weekend lessons and feeling like a small stretch of Military Road just outside of our neighborhood where I could hit fourth gear for all of two-hundred yards was the most I could handle without having a panic attack. But since about the second week of February, this gal has been daily driving a lovely little manual transmission 1998 Ford Ranger, and Rhonda has gone on to greener pastures (i.e. Carmax). Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time around car people, but I really do think there is something to driving a stick shift. I have been converted and absolutely love it and despite it being completely unplanned, this too feels like progress.

Three: The Little, Beautiful Things

I’m not going to go fact-check this statement, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that tucked into the first or last paragraph of every post I’ve written since November 2024 there is something along the lines of “ignoring the fact that the world is on fire”. That’s because it feels inherently bad to write a whole lot about what is going well when everything on a macro level is, legitimately, the worst – even by millennial, unprecedented times terms. But the truth is I don’t think that you can really keep on keeping on if you don’t have some good to focus on, and I feel that no less now than I did in November 2024. And so much of that good is the little, beautiful things. (Baseball caps & also, kindness. That sort of thing.)

Back in my Tumblr era, there was a trend of listing Very Good Things. It might just be because I’m listening to the They Were All Making BANGERS playlist that captures the moustache-laden hipster whimsy optimism of the early 2010’s, but I think we could all benefit from bringing Very Good Things back. We all desperately need Very Good Things, and the most wonderful part of Very Good Things was that sometimes, it was something as simple as really good plate of spaghetti. Or a fan-fucking-tastic playlist. The stakes were low: if it brought you joy, even in the tiniest amount, it was a Very Good Thing.

Whether it’s in the form of a pair of yellow speckled plates, of laughing at something incredibly stupid, or of realizing people are capable of changing feelings at any giving moment, this sentiment seems to be all around my life right now. And like the sunshine on my front porch, I am revelling in it. May everyone, world on fire or no, have more Very Good Things meet them left, right, and center, wherever they are.