What's Making Me Happy: April 4

This time last week, I thought I'd contracted some sort of horrible sudden-onset autoimmune disease. I'd been fighting fatigue for a few days, which happens sometimes. But last Friday I made myself go on a short hike, normally one I can literally run through in about an hour, and as soon as I started I knew something was wrong. My heart was pounding so hard it felt as if a tiny prisoner was trying desperately to escape my chest. I was short of breath, dizzy, wheezy. I got to the summit and I thought, I'm just going to lie down for a bit. Wee nap. I didn't, because I was slightly worried I might never get up again; I staggered back to my car and made it through the rest of the day in a zombie state. The next day I felt better only because I didn't try to do anything. That night my husband and I relaxed and made a nice dinner together, but around bedtime he began to feel funny. At 2 a.m. he woke up, very ill; I wrestled with milder symptoms. We'd been whacked with some sort of gastric virus. (At first I thought it was food poisoning, but Facebook posts began popping up everywhere: we were not the only ones with the same symptoms, and none of us had eaten all the same things.) The tummy-bug aspect was no fun, but at least I knew what it was. And that it would pass. The days of bone-deep exhaustion had been more worrisome.

So the happy thing is that this Friday, I am almost entirely back to normal. I did the same hike with ease yesterday and hit the gym pretty hard today. I've also had the energy to run errands, clean my house, finish my editing jobs, prune my perennial shrubs, and pull all the red-valerian weeds that plague my garden. (Note to gardeners: do not plant that thing unless you want your entire yard to be nothing but red valerian the following year.) It's a wonderful thing to have the energy to do stuff, something we take for granted until it's gone.

Speaking of editing jobs, I'm also happy I've had some. I don't advertise my services and jobs are few and far between: I had three cross my desk in one week. It was nice to be working and it was also really nice to click "send" and be done.

Now, some happy things we can share. First, two photos I took this week:

My dog is headless! Not photoshopped, just the way she's standing.

My son and I were chopping veggies. Edvard Munchpepper resulted.

For the low-carb cauliflower-loving chef, enjoy these recipes. I'm pretty excited about that cauliflower pizza bake, myself. I think I just need to give my tum a few more recovery days first. (Miso soup is more my style at the moment.)

Here's an apparently spontaneous, and certainly joyful, performance on an airplane.

Check out these awesome rodents. Wild rats = disgusting vermin. Domesticated, trained rats = adorable and clever. Go figure.

This video series, "Kid Snippets," which my husband finds totally unfunny but which makes me laugh so hard I have tears streaming down my face. I've watched "Salesman" half a dozen times and it gets more hilarious every time. It is very sweet, fyi.