Gratitude Challenge: Day 4

It's 9/11.  For my generation and our daughter's generation, it's like saying December 7th.  I just got an email from a friend I was teaching with that day telling me in retrospect she is so grateful to have been with friends that day.  We all remember where we were, and what we were doing.  The first time I saw the video of the plane flying into the tower, my initial, irrational, interior mental response was, "That can't be real.  That's got to be a special effect."  A fleet second later, my stunned mind comprehended it WAS real, and my second thought was, "The world just changed - forever."

Like Christine, I'm grateful I was with friends that horrible day.  I'm also grateful our principal banned the use of all TV's and radios at my school that day.  The idiot principal at LD Bell High School, Sarah's school, let the TV's in every room blare non-stop 'news' and pictures all day long.

The instant school was over for me that day, I burned up the freeway driving at breakneck speed getting to Sarah's high school to pick her up.  I never picked her up - not cool, you know for a teen's MOM to pick her up like she's some little kid.  Not that day.  Sarah Lynn was just a few weeks short of being sixteen years old, and she was never so glad to see her mother in her entire short life.  For you see, today I am so damn grateful my daughter is alive.   Sarah had been standing on the top of the World Trade Center in July, just two months prior to the attacks.  Today, I say a prayer for all the mothers who aren't as lucky as I was.

It's 9/11.  Thirteen years later it's still as senseless and enraging as it was on the day the towers fell.        

Gratitude Challenge: Day Three

I'm telling you...nothing sets up your day like a little cartoon viewing.  I'm grateful to be able to laugh at stupid stuff.  It definitely improves your coffee.  I have favorite cartoons - it used to be Scooby Doo, and don't get me wrong, I'm still a big Scooby fan.  In my 20's I would drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and watch Scooby on Saturday mornings.  I moved onto the Power Puff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, and Jimmy Neutron, and now I like The Penguins and Planet Sheen.  The Sheen show is a spin-off of Jimmy Neutron - even cartoons have spin-offs, and the Sheen character just cracks me up.  Even better are the commercials!  Today I saw one for Glowjamas!  You can write on them, and they glow in the dark.  Plus, they are washable, dryable and you can start over with new messages.  ($19.95 + $7.95 shipping and handling)  I mean you just don't see these types of products on grown-up TV.

Another thing that I like to do is read in the bathroom.  OK, not glamorous, but when I was a kid, it was the only place I could read uninterrupted until I perfected selective hearing.  I am so grateful for junk mail catalogs.  They are perfect bathroom reading.  Not too involved, and can be put down on a moment's notice without losing the gist.  I love moving into a place where the prior occupant was a big shopper who always checked the catalog box when she ordered something.  Berkeley was great; the girl who lived there loved to catalog shop, and we always had an eclectic assortment.  Every mail day was a possible surprise.

My final gratitude of the day is having my own personal news source.  Drake always gets up much, much, much earlier than I do, and he likes to peruse news sites.  He filters and edits out the stuff I don't need to know, and gives me not only the weather report for the day, but also a capsule of important breaking news.  It's so efficient, and I don't have to wallow in all the bad news every media outlet is so delighted to shower me with as well as the endless repetition.  He also does follow up sleuthing.  (Example:  Why DID Ron Washington resign?)  FYI for non-Texans, he's the former skipper of the Texas Rangers who resigned for mysterious reasons this past week.  Believe me when I tell you having your own personal news source is heaven in this media overloaded world.            

Gratitude Challenge: Day Two

Today I went to the United States Post Office, South Lake Tahoe Branch (one of two).  As I was standing in the three minute lines, I realized I'm grateful for the USPS.  People love to make fun of the post office, but I discovered after a little research that the good old US post office is ranked #1 in the world.  It's economical and accounts for 40% of the mail sent in the entire world.  (#2 Postal service?  Japan)

I bought bird stamps.  These are terrific; they are colorful and educational.

I realized I'm grateful  Lake Tahoe area has different song birds than what I'm used to.  No cardinals, blue jays or mocking jays here, no siree.  The most common bird here is the Stellar Jay.  Really pretty, but NOISY.  

Another bird I've also seen is a Mountain Chickadee, and a Red Tailed Hawk

Finally, today I'm grateful this house has a hot tub.  I'm having lots of pain due to using an elliptical for cardio followed by weight lifting.  Maybe I can possibly hike without dying.  That hot water helps me not to limp.  I would show you a picture, but I hot tub in the nude, and nobody wants to see a lumpy 64 year old body.  SWAK!  (Who isn't grateful for a kiss?)  

Gratitude Challenge: Day One

I have this friend...   Ok, Ok, I have lots of friends, but this one challenged me to post three things I'm grateful about for five consecutive days on FACEBOOK.  This friend, let's call her JG doesn't realize I only use Facebook as a stalker or perhaps more accurately as a swooper.  I've never posted anything on FB for five consecutive days.   I like to swoop into FB about once every two weeks. I can see all the pix, ignore what everybody had for lunch 8 days ago, skate past the inspirational messages, and slide past the kitten/puppy/kid/ Youtube postings.  Occasionally, I post my status when I'm bored - like when I'm driving across the Mojave.  (Yes, you can actually get internet electrons in the middle of the desert - but only on the main highway.)

My gratefuls are going to be easy because I'm always working to put myself in a positive frame of mind.  The real challenge is to make them fun and interesting.  In that vein, I will not post being grateful for my husband, my daughter, my health.....blah, blah, blah.  Let's just accept those as givens.

That caveat issued, here's Day One:

(1)  Very grateful I only have to post for five days.  FB is truly the EVIL EMPIRE.

(2)  Seriously grateful I can still walk......there was a time...

(3)  Frivolously grateful OU Football has started - BOOMER, SOONER!  (Jacki's magic sox are working, people!)