As we all know by now, every so often – and the more often the better – it’s a wise idea to stop, look all around (and inside and out), and count one’s blessings. Today is one of those days for me.

I won’t burden you with my whole, long list – nor even with many words. I’ll just let some recent photos tell the story for you.

This week my neighbor Nancy took a photo of me that will appear on the back cover of my new book, which is due out in September. [More on this news to come!] This photo says what I’d hoped it might say: Here is a woman who is not young, not hip or cool or stylish, not cutesy or ritzy or even jolly. But she still IS, and she’s still writing, and she still has some color.

And that woman — me — now lives in a beautiful, colorful place, where the jacarandas are in bloom again, where bougainvilleas cascade from almost everyone’s walls, and topiary rabbits wear sunglasses:

I live in a place where art and architecture take one’s breath away at every turn — in the glorious Parque Juarez on weekends, when there’s always an open-air art market, as well as in the Jardin (central plaza), where the dazzling, pink Parroquia church looms over all like Paris’s Eiffel Tower.

Today I thank my conception of God (which is to say, definitely NOT a big old white guy in the sky) for my countless blessings. Among those blessings: legs that can still walk miles every day, eyes that still can read books and appreciate the color and beauty all around me, new friends and neighbors here in Mexico who are kind and generous and thoughtful, old friends far and wide who are always near to my heart, a new-to-me old and proud country that is affordable and embracing, and everything I’ve learned so far on my long and circuitous journey.