Sometimes, I get stuck in a loop of complaint. A whiny, grumbling gripefest. To be fair, I blame this partly on my fantastic support network who patiently listen to the same grousing time after time.
So, the last few days, I’ve made a conscious list of things along my path that I’m grateful for:
- Grapefruit soap products. There is no better soap scent. When I go to a restaurant that has grapefruit scented soap, I automatically give them an extra star in my only-in-my-head rating system. Target stocks grapefruit scented soap erratically, but whenever I find it, it’s a big deal, and we stock up. I have grapefruit face scrub right now and it’s really the best part of my morning and sometimes why I get out of bed.
- The initial joy of pockets in the fall. If there’s somehow a stray $5 in there, even better. I never know how that even happens, since I so rarely have cash at all. And yet, surprise pocket cash? So great. After a full summer season without jackets, with more skirts, which so rarely have good pockets, and more casual clothes, it’s so great to slip on a jacket and trade cute but impractical shorts in for serviceable jeans. And if I freak out about misplacing my keys a time or two at first? Where did I…. oh. Well, pockets are still great.
- Space. About an hour before dawn, the sky is still dark as night. The world doesn’t quite know yet that it’s about to wake up, and it’s bracingly cold after the lingering summer temperatures. But if you happen to be up, and happen to be out, and happen to look up, there is an amazing moon-planet display going on.
My cell phone is a sad, sad chronicler, I hesitated to even post a photo, but you can at least get a sense of the brightest of objects against a dark, dark sky. It makes you feel very small in a giant universe, but also very connected. I see the moon, and the moon sees me. Those stars, that moon, guided mariners, and the Underground Railroad, rules the ocean and is available for me to stare at every night. - Friends and family and coworkers whose stories we share. We’re part of a collective and it’s a great thing. We have people to whom we say and who say to us, “How did X go? What did Y say?” Sometimes we get absorbed in our own story, and they understand. Sometimes it’s about them, and we understand. But we’re part of a collective story, either in big roles or bit parts, and we each matter to the whole. We have stories and a language that only our coworkers understand, that only our best friends have the decoder ring for, that only our family can translate against the depth of their experience with us. It’s a wonderful Ven diagram of interlinking circles.
- Introducing my own childhood to my children.
The Boxcar Children. Banana boats — banana, peanut butter and cheese. It sounds disgusting. It’s not. The Princess Bride and Anne of Green Gables. Hersheytown chocolate chip cake, i.e., the reason bundt pans exist. Making Great-Grandma Rinehart’s sugar cookies (now great-great grandma Rinehart’s sugar cookies) with the same cookie cutters from my own childhood. These are the days, my friends. Past, present and future intertwined. As they get older, there are more and more memories I’m looking forward to sharing with them. And since flares and clogs are back again this season, I can feel comfortable that I’m introducing them to the very latest and greatest when I relive the past. - Italian lights. Is anything more relaxing than a string of Italian lights? They just make everything better.
- Cherry tomatoes warm from the sun. Raspberries on sale for $.99 in the summer. Breakfast for dinner. Spinelli’s marinara tomato sauce. Peanut butter and honey. Port and dark chocolate. Chocolate and mint. Chocolate and cherry. Chocolate and …. well, chocolate, apparently. And the miracle of a crock pot when you walk in the door after a long day away.
- Fridays.
