Category: Gratitude Sunday (Page 4 of 12)

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

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– Waking up to a morning downpour early this week — what an excitingly unusual treat that was~

– Hauling all the houseplants outside so they could have a rain bath and get all squeaky clean.

– That this particular week is over. BATTERING is the word that comes to mind!

– Watermelon! For some reason I suddenly love watermelon. It was always my least favorite, but now this year I’m stuffing my face with it. I finally get why everyone loves it now!

– Making time to visit an old family friend along with my dad. That was a really nice, different, thing to do.

– New and different experiences, which make me feel alive!

– Meeting F for a fun little lunch date this week — I loved how it was just the two of us.

– Laughing with my honey!! I really love that.

– Eating out of the garden more and more. Today for instance, a little snack of still-vine-warm cucumbers and tomatoes:

– Feeling so excited by the thought of our new house!! I keep thinking about all the things I/we can do once we live there!

– My mom’s support, and how she dropped everything to just be with me during an unusually difficult and hopeless-feeling day. She is an incredible mother, and I’m so lucky she’s in my life.

– Slowing myself down. Slowing the pace when it begins to get a little out of hand.

– Showers. I love how rejuvenated a simple shower can make you feel.

– Reading an article to F. Remembering that I want to read aloud more, because we both get enjoyment from that.

– Getting rid of stuff!

– The beautiful garden, and how well it’s doing this year. Nothing makes a gardener’s heart swell quite like seeing their gardens flourish!

 ***

What’s on your gratitude list this week?

*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

~

– Packing, purging, consolidating. The editing of possessions. Clearing out the old so that there’s plenty of room for the new to manifest!

– Making an effort to connect with people more. I’m not especially outgoing, but feel that I want to reach out and open myself up a little bit more when I’m out and about in the world, rather than always remaining so closed to people I don’t know. A sort of social experiment, maybe. I think the world responds to us in turn, so that if we think it’s hostile and broken out there, it will be. And if we think it’s kind and magical out there, it will be.

So when an electrical company employee working near the back fence stopped to ask how my vegetables were doing, I (sensing he was genuine) decided to strike up a conversation. I love that you never know what you’ll find out when you scratch someone’s surface with a few questions. Had I tossed out a generic “they’re doing very well thank you” and continued digging my garlic, I wouldn’t have learned that he emigrated from Poland 30 years ago (my own heritage is part Polish) and that the correct pronunciation for kefir is “kehh-FEER” which his grandmother would make, or that one of his favorite snacks is to boil some small new potatoes, skin on, and then add a bit of butter and fresh dill — washed down with a cold glass of kefir or buttermilk (“It’s all you need”). And now I also know how to make Polish meat rolls with pickles and bacon, as well as the location of the best & cheapest Polish meat shop in the area. What fun! All because I decided to buck tradition and have a conversation with a complete stranger.

– This handy little gadget to hold a book open, freeing up both hands for the important work of cradling a cuppa.

– I’m also thankful for the book it’s holding open for me — Gift From The Sea. It’s another one that inspires me to keep simplifying. I often put the book aside so that I can go put a few more things into the giveaway pile~

– For rain!!! Colorado has been burning up, and we really needed rain.

– Being outside yesterday at 6am with a mug of tea. The freshness and the smell of early mornings after a night of rain is one of my favorite experiences on this earth.

– Blue jays calling. One of my favorite sounds. It reminds me of autumn, my favorite season.

– Looking at slides of my parents back in the ’70s and ’80s — glimpses into a seemly different lifetime altogether. Different friends, different cities, different hair, different clothes, yet somehow the same person. And running a slide show itself was a nostalgic trip back in time to my childhood when we’d “have a slide show!” the way other families might gather to watch a movie. Hearing the sound of the analog projector advancing to the next frame shoots me straight back 20 years. What with all the change in the air and the complete unknown of the future, some nostalgia can be really comforting.

***

What gratitudes have graced your life this past week?

*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

~

– Gorgeous, delicious, organic fruit on sale at the store; seems like I just can’t get enough fruit right now.

– My Honey, F. I love him so much!!

– My wonderful parents and my cat. I love them all so much!!

– Getting back to reading more of the Anastasia series, bits and pieces, here and there… feels good.

– A week of no moneymaking work; the break was very nice.

– The long-time family friends who live in Hawaii who so generously offered that F and I house-sit while they travel!! We will be in Hawaii next week at this time, and I still can’t believe it’s real! I am so thankful for this vacation, and can’t wait to just hang out in nature, close to my Honey, and away from the city and all the demands of home and work.

– Getting lots of errands done, and not having to think about them any more.

– Creating a slow, relaxing, heartful day because the pace lately has been really frenzied and stressed. Is it the celestial energies, or just me – I don’t know? Maybe it’s the antibiotics — they can make me feel awfully strange. To boot, I’ve been feeling uneasy and quite ‘off’ at times lately too. Crazy times. Anyway, the slow, grounding pace really helped.

– Being outside a lot lately. When I feel ‘off’ and things weigh so heavily upon my mind, I practically need to live outside. It’s just the way it is for me. I’m thankful the weather has been so nice for doing just that!!

– Reading the book “Still Here” by Ram Dass. I really liked it.

– The nourishing food that’s coming straight from my garden. The growing of it, and the eating of it, are two very life-sustaining, life-enhancing activities! I love my garden.

– Stopping at a lemonade stand yesterday. I remember doing a lemonade stand with my best friend Sonja when we were little, and I remember the excitement of having a customer! And it actually brightened my day so much to interact with the three sweet little kids (maybe 5 or 6 years old) who were running the stand. I very rarely interact directly with kids — I see them in the stores of course, but since I don’t babysit anymore, I don’t have any opportunity to interact with them, really. Kids are so pure; they hold no pretenses. It was a joy to hang out and talk with them even for just a couple minutes.

– Working in the garden all day Sunday, and getting so much done, and my body not even complaining about it at all; I felt so good, so normal. It was a really good day.

***

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

~

-Being outside on these beautiful, beautiful days. These are the days. Better than summer!!

– Turning a frustrating experience into a ‘learning moment’ — it takes some of the sting out when you can turn around an unsavory situation and learn from it.

– My sister Julie, who is a cat angel! She has rescued twelve street cats over the years, keeping six and adopting out the others to friends. She spends her hard-earned money to recuperate them, spay them, feed them, foster them — love them! She recently rescued three street kittens in very sorry shape. She took them to the vet to treat their multiple problems — eye infections, respiratory infections, ear mites, fleas. In the picture on the left, you can see how much better they look after only one week!

What beautiful creatures; they are Ingrid, Anastasia, and Vlad:

– Moving slowly, when I remember to. This month has been so busy; the remedy it seems is to move very slowly whenever I can, to offset the frantic pace.

– Curing my own ear infection with home remedies! It feels great to be self sufficient with your health and not need to visit a doctor. I had a bit of an incident, shall we say, a couple weeks ago where a garden experiment (and the subsequent attempt to dispose of it) went way south. What resulted was the most putrid, stinking, disgusting bucket of fetid sludge I’ve ever encountered — you have truly never smelled anything like this — and as I attempted to dump it, it splashed back all over me… into my eyes, ears, hair, clothes, etc. Since that time my left ear has been bugging me, and finally it sort of exploded into a case of swimmer’s ear. I doctored it with manuka, tea tree, and lavender essential oils, peroxide, and triple antibiotic ointment. And I cured it! In light of my recent pattern of reliance on doctors and drugs, this was a nice little victory.

– Tender, succulent garden lettuce and eating lots of amazing salads. The addition of fresh garden herbs like dill, oregano, cilantro, and parsley makes ’em even better.

– Tea

– Getting a really big moneymaking project completed and off my shoulders. That is such a fab feeling!

– Lots of errands completed! And then not wasting mental energy thinking about them any more!

– The few days this week where the catalpa tree was in full flower right outside our kitchen window. I was plastered to my chair right next to the window, in front of my laptop, doing work for several days this week — and every breath I took was filled with that heavenly scent!

– A cozy, rainy night.

– Taking a nap right next to my garden. I think there may be some kind of magic that happens during sleep time that occurs so near to a garden.

– Our air conditioner! It gets so hot up here in the attic apartment.

– The precious sight of a mama and papa goose and their single gosling.

***

What are your gratitudes from this past week?

*****