Sundays.

When I was a child, Sundays were all hustle-hustle, get to early mass and then drive 23 miles to visit my grandparents all day. Sundays also meant staying dressed up until we were back home in the evenings. If we were very lucky, we got to go to my uncle's farm just outside the town that my grandparents lived in. We got to change out of itchy fancy clothes and play with our cousins. That was special.

These days, Sundays are long lazy breakfasts with the newspapers, eaten and read by the fire in the living room. I have a large overstuffed leather chair and ottoman that is my special place.

Late mornings and afternoons are scatterings of errands, finishing laundry, and a late afternoon manicure. Evenings are quiet time with my husband and sometimes guests for dinner.

What hasn't changed in all these years are Sundays after dinner, with the sense of preparation for the week to come, the ordering of lists and review of the week that's just past.

Every day is different.

Seattle is a wonderful place to live because it is such a small town and because people care about one another. I worked early, then drove to Queen Anne to have my hair fussed over my Anna the Bold, one of the youngest survivors I met when I started to train to walk in 2007. Being anywhere in her space just gets all the juices going. She's a pistol. While I was there in the salon, I recognized a friend I had not seen since 1984 and spoke with her....she's as accomplished and diplomatic as she was in those days when we saw one another at the Seattle Art Museum. Her husband was SAM's legal counsel and a role model for me in those days -- literate, funny and a very good attorney.

Then news that one of our fellow walkers from 2007, the cousin of my good friend Jenny, is awaiting more test results after finding a spot of cancer in the liver. Her name is Faith and I hope that name serves her well with what is to come. Eliminating cancer is a goal, but each case is personal, is different, and is heart-breaking.

At the same time, in Connecticut, our old friend Elizabeth perseveres with wit through cancer treatments as well. She is a poet and a teacher, and I hope she will make a book out of her experience. She soldiers on.

This afternoon I taught 30+ graduate students for about 90 minutes. My focus was risk and change in the financial services sector. It was thrilling to get such good questions and to be able to reflect a year after the collapse of WaMu upon the whole situation. It won't take much work to make it a publishable paper.

In between all these events is my regular day, with emails and phone calls and meetings. I would not trade my life for anyone else's. I am glad I can recognize the differences among the days -- that's how I know I am enjoying myself.

Another way to see history.

Here's an interview I did last summer, when I still had work-life balance. I'm one of a number of former bankers interviewed. It's interesting how each reporter has a different angle to start from. In this story, it appears that all executives had something done to them. I certainly had options and made the decision to stay on only for six months to transition my programs over.

http://www.bai.org/bankingstrategies/human-capital/human-resources/second-acts-for-displaced-bankers

However it happened, there's no doubt that I have ended up exactly where I want to be, and that it would have been harder to get here without that train trip. And without Cathy's "reboot your life" think tank in Santa Fe, which was part of that trip.

Exercise builds strength.

I had a great workout with my trainer this morning. I get stronger each week, able to do more, lift more, repeat sets more. It's pretty clear that I connect strength with the ability to exercise and stay fit. And exercise cleans out the mental gunk as well.

Yesterday, I ran across Diane, my next door neighbor and two of her friends. They walk to the Y every weekday morning and take a 6:30am class. Monday it was chi gong, yesterday aerobics. And so it goes. Build this habit now, and maintain it for the rest of my life.

"Consider again the November trees..."

"...which lift their arms to say that they have only temporarily yielded; that next spring they will again assert their determination to live. Those trees, like the frog now sleeping under the mud, are on our side. " From Joseph Wood Krutch, The Twelve Seasons, 1949.

I love this book, and consult it whenever it seems to me that time is whirring by.

My first walk at Green Lake since sometime this summer before my foot surgery. It was memorable, even if it was only a mile long. It's my right knee, not my feet, that kept me at that conservative distance.

I think only Seward Park rivals Green Lake this time of year. I have photographed these same vistas for three or more years, and love them more each time I do.

Everywhere one looks, there are leaves still on the trees -- not quite the November that Krutch is describing, and leaves to scuff one's feet through on the ground. Magical colors.

Here are the most charming pumpkins that Leroy carved yesterday for our Halloween visitors. He does this carving with a scalpel. None of these pumpkins is more than 4" in diameter.

Here he is setting them out and -- the most fun for him -- playing with fire to keep them illuminated for the kids.

You can see his two larger pumpkins in this shot.

And here's a close up of one of the large ones, carved with his buck knife.

I am feeling good about progress I'm making on current goals. I've eliminated the most obvious forms of sugar from my diet -- including yesterday's big bowl of Halloween candy for the kids. I am in the gym with Tami, my trainer, two mornings a week. I think I'm ready to add several walks during the week, as well as another session at the Y on my own with the weights. I'm looking forward to work this week, because it includes a University of Washington lecture I'm giving on change management and risk -- a nice diversion from thinking about and working on bio-events like H1N1, which seems likely to consume much of my time until the end of the year.

Sugar is everywhere.

And I'm not talking about sweet thoughts!

As I was eating my zero sugar cereal yesterday morning, I happened to check out the Trader Joe's unsweetened rice milk I pour over it -- 12g! I picked up the 1% milk that my husband uses, and it's 11g. Ugh. And there's high fructose syrup in my English muffins. So I guess I'm going to have to shop a bit more carefully. I know I said I was just going after desserts, snacks and other obvious forms of sugar, but I think I have to refine that just a bit more now. I'm not turning into a sugar cop, but I am going to try to be more careful.

Leroy says the key isues are "fresh" and "not more than 3 ingredients" and "look out for most forms of "-ose" in the ingredient lists. He patiently explains to me that the body can't live without sugars and that they are in all fresh fruits and vegetables. As a diabetic, he has studied sugar in more depth than most doctors, and was taught by an endrocrynologist and a dietician.

He reminds me that Irish whiskey certainly has a fair amount of sugar, which I know. It's the one over the top exception I identified at the outset, along with promising him and myself that I would not become a sugar cop.

"The only joy in the world is to begin." -- Cesare Pavese

This may sound a little extreme, but I think it's true. Life is made up of many new beginnings. Some of them are called "changes," and may include elements of fear and anxiety. Many of them are filled with joy, if we could just slow down long enough to recognize it. How hard is that, really?

Too often we substitute relief for joy, saying, "there, but for the grace of god, go I." That's just a peverse form of smugness and wrongful pride, though I am as guilty of it as anyone else.

Joy, real joy, is when you feel deep down like you've moved a big rock, like the world is your oyster, like you and the music are one. Like Beethoven's "Ode to Joy, " that fills you up to overflowing. It's not containable.

Cathy at the Santa Fe Group says that it takes six months to get past exhaustion and closure once you leave a position you've loved. I left my old job at the end of March, and so I'm seven months out right now. I don't know if it's saying goodbye to that job, or to sugar. I am sure that it's directly related to defining what I like, what I want, and then doing it.

That's JOY. It's there if you take the time to find it.