Three Beautiful Things 05/12/16: Bagel Gratitude, Coffee and Cards, Aquatic Agility

1. The new toaster works. I enjoyed a comforting toasted and buttered sesame bagel with coffee this morning. Momentarily, I was back in our sunny kitchen on Madison in Eugene, grateful to have lived so close to Bagel Bakery and to have been so lucky to have relished their bagels for so many years.

2. Late in the morning, I went to Panera to sit at a table with a dark roast coffee and a blueberry scone and to write short letters on cards I had made of a picture I took of Kellogg's YMCA building, my home away from home in my youth. The Y has been closed for many years in Kellogg and the building has stood unused all those years, but, even now, when I walk by it, I swear I can hear the squeaking of our Converse Chuck Taylors and smell the chlorine fog coming up the stairs from the basement swimming pool.

3.  I increased the amount of time I spent in the pool today and added an agility drill we used to do when I was on the 9th grade football team (no wins, six losses). It is fun to do what was torturous in full pads on the Astro-dirt of Kellogg's Teeters Field while wearing a swimming suit in the much less punishing water of the Greenbelt pool.