I have often said that humans treat dogs better than then they do their fellow humans, especially at the end of life. That said, it is a peculiar thing, sometimes agonizing, to determine the end for a four-legged friend.

The entire leadership team learned of my date night tonight, the first in a long while, and celebrated by whooping and hollering during our morning huddle. A coworker-turned-friend is keeping my kids for a craft night and a sleepover. My husband stopped by work to drop off a bottle of champagne and a bottle of moscato, for me to deliver to a friend who had a baby down one hall and a friend who agreed to a promotion down another hall. These glimpses of normal and belonging are what keep me going in an industry that will not recover quietly or easily from the last few years.

I listen each morning and night, for news from Ukraine. It’s hard find to words, and so I listen. Two ears and one mouth and all of that. Anyway, the thing that strikes me most about this past month is that the world has banded together in its language and agreed to call this tragedy what it is — an invasion, not a war. For that, I am glad. Words matter. The truth is usually clear and should be shared loudly without stutter or preface or compromise.

I pushed and pushed and coordinated to get our winter tires switched off of both vehicles. After all, we haven’t had a snow storm in weeks — months! — and I wanted to preserve the tread and studs and roads etc. etc. etc.

One hour after our summer tires were installed today, the snow began to fall. And fall. And fall. It was glorious, beautiful, magical, right up until the moment my husband slid the family Suburban on its summer tires down a mountain road and into a guardrail.

Nobody was injured and nothing was broken, aside from a crack in a bumper and my ego, but dang it if I don’t still have loads still to learn about patience and waiting and letting things come as they may.

I’m really, really glad I let him take the picture last night. I truly, truly want to see myself the way my husband and children do.

For the first time in a long time, I can really see myself tonight, in the images my husband snapped of me in my new secondhand dress. The dog barks at two moose feeding in the yard, the yard in which they very well could give birth in a few months. You may read until the alpenglow fades, we tell the children. This is how we gauge the night as the light returns, racing straight at us. The pink turns to purple as the setting sun bounces off of the mountains. Chris shares a bit from his newfound relationship with counseling. New beginnings all around.

The spring solstice — excuse me, EQUINOX — is upon us. On this day, we change the bedsheets. We exchange the curtains. We purge and donate and wipe down and put away. We open windows. We are invited to a bonfire, to celebrate the turning over of another season. We have survived winter. We love you, Alaska.