Comments (5)

By Lindsey, February 19, 2012

~ 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!

***

- Audio books, so that I can multi-task!

- A really nice Valentine’s day, spent at my parents’ place since F. was out of town. My mom always does such a nice job of making holidays special and different from all the other ordinary days of the year. I love that. She decorated & bought a big balloon, and my dad came home with flowers, pizza, and some incredibly decadent chocolate-covered strawberries!! We played Dean Martin’s Love Songs CD. It was really fun~

- Going to Colorado’s new IKEA with my mom — having lunch at their cafe and then shopping!!! SO FUN! I’ve always gone to IKEA when on vacation in other states, so naturally I felt like I was on a mini vacation that day!

- At IKEA, finding exactly what I’ve been looking for — a small, portable desk/table that I can transport around the apartment according to where the sun is! I LOVE it. It’s a one-person desk, but then it also has a fold-up leaf that slides into place to make it a two-person table! So I can do my art & moneymaking work at it anywhere in the house, but F. and I can also sit at it together! Currently it’s right next to the kitchen window, and I seem to be spending all my time at it right now! I’ve wanted a kitchen table by the window for so long, and I am absolutely loving this thing! The simple things, ya know…

- The beautiful miniature living rose bush that F bought for Valentine’s Day! It has soft peach-colored blossoms; you can see it there on the table. ♥♥♥ That was so sweet. I love having a blooming plant here…

- Getting so many errands accomplished this week! That feels wonderful.

- Getting my garden planned! That’s always a big project that I don’t really enjoy very much. It really helped that I was already at my parents’ house while doing the planning, so that I had access to all my seeds, and I could just walk out the back door and count up how many pots there are to work with. Plus just seeing the raised beds in person helps me envision the plant spacing better. (To read how I go about planning my garden, click here.)

Planning the garden!

- Having my cat take a nap with me, which is an unusual thing for her to do. She kept pressing herself closer and closer into my face that I had to keep moving her fur aside so I could breathe! She is such a little sweet one…

- F. getting home from being out of town and walking through the door, safe and sound!!

- Rearranging our living room… again! It’s even better now than before. I love newly rearranged rooms.

- Chipping away at projects that have been languishing unfinished for a very long time.

- Ideas for new ways to do some things in the garden this year — that breathes some excitement into my plans!

- Cutting up our beloved (but worn) lobster-print bed sheets into strips of fabric that will be used to tie up plants in the garden this year. I love re-purposing things like that partly because it makes my life much simpler since the solution to a problem is right there in front of me and I don’t have to go out and hunt something down at a store. And instead of throwing away our Lobsters, which would be way sad, they get to begin a whole new life by helping me out in my garden.

- Drinking tea, sitting at the sunny kitchen table today, doing a long-overdue project, with soft music playing on the stereo next to me. I think I’ve got a very nice little set-up here now with window-table-sun-stereo! Yay!

- Pu-erh tea with milk! My tummy still isn’t really wanting regular black tea, but pu-erh is the thing I really go for right now — interesting — could it be because it’s fermented and not as harsh? I have no idea. But I do love it.

- Speaking of tea, the eucalyptus that I put into my nettles tea just now… oh it adds such a nice element, and unearths sweet memories of being in Australia and surrounded by the scent and majesty of so many eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains. What an incredible & special place that is… I’d go back in an absolute heartbeat.

- Artichokes! I’ve been on an artichoke kick; I’ve eaten four of them in the past couple days. They are so good!

- Reading my Mother Earth News magazine next to the space heater.

- Taking a nap on F’s back. It felt so nice, and kept us both warm.

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

Comments (5)

By Lindsey, February 12, 2012

~ 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!

***

- A restful weekend after a hectic week.

- Working on my felted wool mittens on Monday and enjoying that day so much; it was cloudy outside and cozy inside, and while I worked I listened to some old stuff I haven’t heard in many years including Experiments in Truth by Ram Dass. Those tapes really helped me while I was grieving Sonja’s death, but it’s thought-provoking listening during any challenging situation, really. It felt good to hear them again.

- Having my favorite documentary, Alone in the Wilderness, appear on PBS! What a treat!

- Homemade sourdough flapjacks, re-heated in the toaster till the outside is just a little bit crispy, with a bit of pasture butter and lots of homemade wild grape jam!

- Finally moving the stereo to a new location near the kitchen where it’s getting so much more use. What a pleasure to have Billy Holiday playing softly, with the lights down low, while I prepare black beans and flapjack batter to soak overnight.

- A heavenly massage.

- Napping on my parents’ couch after my massage, with my cat sleeping on my chest.

- Interlibrary Loan — one of the best things ever!

- Salt. How salt has escaped a place on all previous Gratitude Sunday posts, I do not know.

- Hot showers for when the body needs warmth immediately!

- Coming home to my Honey. I love love love that

- Being able to ride my bike again to get from place to place, after the big snow storm where I needed to rely on the buses instead. The bike is so much more free and spontaneous. I love getting around by bike, even in winter. To me, it’s the least stressful of all transportation modes!

- Making black bean hummus using my regular hummus recipe with black beans instead of garbanzos + a little extra olive oil. So yummy spread on a piece of lettuce, with tomato slices, black olives, Dijon mustard, salt + pepper, and eaten like a taco!

- My day planner, a gift from my Hubby’s sweet mom — I’ve never had one before, but am loving it! It’s so helpful and I have a feeling it will be a new staple in my life from now on.

- Staying in bed yesterday for as long as my body wanted to (till noon!). Ohhh my that felt good.

- Having moneymaking work, ’cause it means money coming in which is always a very good feeling.

- Cozy warm house when it’s 5° outside, as it was last night.

- Feeling my body heal. Slowly, but surely. Oh hallelujah!!!

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

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Comments (5)

By Lindsey, February 5, 2012

~ 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!

***

- Receiving over a foot of snow!

- Accomplishing a few things that had been weighing on me more than I realized, and once I did them I felt so much lighter.

- Watching some Seinfeld episodes. I need to do that more often — they always make me laugh!

- Eating lunch of soup & bread with my mom at their sunny kitchen table one weekday this week. Simple pleasures.

- Bad days ending well.

- Hugging my Honey tightly after we both had a really bad day; how comforting just to hold each other.

- Taking a brisk walk in the deep snow.

- Watching our hilarious neighbor squirrels straining to crawl through the deep, deep snow on the roof outside our kitchen window! CUTE!

- Seeing a couple of inspiring shows this week on TV, especially one about Joan Baez.

- Talking with my neighbor Darlene this week both in person and on the phone. She is such a loving, accepting, forgiving, heartful, enlightening soul. In the majority of our interactions with other people in this world, we are not seen for who we really are, and what we say is not honored. Depending on the situation, this can wound us very deeply. And so to actually, truly, be seen and honored by someone feels like salve to your soul. Darlene is one of those people who sees you and honors you, 100%, no matter what.

- Rearranging our apartment! I love how doing that breathes new energy into a space.

- Bit by bit, slowly getting things more in order around our house.

- Getting some significant things accomplished this week & crossed off the to-do list.

- The way our living room feels like a tropical conservatory today with the warmth and all the green plants and the little table fountain bubbling away, while there was a mountain of snow just outside the window!

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

Comments (5)

By Lindsey, January 29, 2012

~ 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!

***

- A wonderful visit and walk with my mom on Monday afternoon. We have both liberated ourselves from our jobs, and one of the many benefits is that we can do stuff together in the middle of a weekday! I cannot tell you how freeing that feels… how good that feels for my spirit, after years upon years of feeling like a trapped animal at either school or work.

- Not carrying the stress of my former job that would follow me around like Pigpen’s cloud of dirt, whether I was at the job or not. Putting my precious energy into my own things now. For me, not feeling trapped in any way is essential to my happiness. It feels good to honor that fact instead of fighting against it and attempting to stuff myself into the conventional box of “a 9-5 worker.”

- Consciously doing whatever is needed in the moment to raise the energy & mood of my day from bad to good.

- Using the last of the garden tomatoes (!) to make a delicious rainbow salsa.

- Working from home again. There was a 2-month break which was great, where I could concentrate on my own things rather than just on my moneymaking work. I was grateful for that break, and now I’m grateful to be working again. The work is challenging which I like, and those every-2-week paychecks through the mail are A-OK too!!

- Not needing to go anywhere on a snowy day this week.

- More purging and giving away of things not needed anymore. I love the feeling of paring down.

- Slowly regaining my taste for tea. I totally lost my taste for any and all tea for a couple months there, and I feared it was permanent! Thankfully not! I do love tea, the comfort and taste and ritual of it.

- Roasted veggies. I’m on a roasted veggie kick; they are so delicious, I can’t believe I’d forgotten about them for so long.

- A dream one night of being at an enormous incredible buffet, and filling my plate with all these wonderful things that looked delicious to me, and not having to think at all about how they would settle in my stomach! My tummy is still very finicky and I’m getting awfully weary of that. Being ever so careful about what I put into it, and the amounts… I’m so over it. The dream was so telling! No hidden symbolism there… haha!

- Eating a whole tin of smoked oysters one day, and keeping them down. Yay! I appreciate when my body accepts the nourishing foods that I like to eat. (It doesn’t always.)

- Clear streets and warm weather on a day I needed to run lots of errands on my bike. It made that day flow so much more smoothly.

- Watching such a fun movie last night, Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery. I sure needed that — what fun!

- Hearing the sweet little birds singing outside the window as I write this. That’s a spring sound! I’m not quite ready for winter to end, but I know when spring comes, I’ll be ready. Time to begin planning the garden!! Maybe today or tomorrow…

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

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Comments (2)

By Lindsey, January 22, 2012

~ 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!

***

- A lot of down time to think and process and read and ponder and write and be inspired. Physically I felt very droopy this week from the drugs, and most of my days were spent really just lying around. But mentally I felt good, and there was a lot going on in my mind (there always is, but it was all good, positive stuff this week). Strangely I didn’t feel depressed, didn’t let it get me down, didn’t read too much into it. It was simply like, ok, this is how I feel today. I’ll just hang low and do quiet stuff. And that’s that.

- That I have the flexibility of schedule to have a really droopy week; to just allow my body to do its thing. I’m definitely on the mend and feeling that I’m pulling out of this, though not there yet. This healing process is quite the process indeed; I can only describe it as “squirrelly.”

- A beautiful, warm day with all the windows in the house wide open. That was also the day I took down our sweet Christmas tree. It was sad to see it go, but I also love how the living room feels more open and spartan now. I also moved around a couple plants which created a slightly new look. I keep wanting to rearrange our living room, but how it is now is functional in such a nice way that I don’t want to wreck that. But still, it needs a bit of new energy. Trying to decide how to change it up more…

- Freshly washed windows, inside & out! I forget what a pleasure that is.

- Remembering to smudge the house with piñon incense on a regular basis.

- The library, and how you can check out books that sound good online, but then turn out not to be. I love how it’s risk free! See it, hate it, return it!

- That I share my life, and home, with such a sweet and wonderful person. I love my F! ♥

- A bad dream that contained an important reminder. I have a lot of bad dreams, and always have. But then again, bad dreams often have the most important messages.

- Ordinary days, where everyone arrives home safe and sound. After Sonja died, I never took that for granted again.

- A sweet afternoon visit to mom & dad & my cat yesterday on another gorgeous shorts-’n-t-shirt day. Visiting, puttering around, snacking, doing outside stuff. Then later after dark, soaking my feet in hot water at their kitchen table and resting, while smelling my mom’s delicious cottage cheese dill bread baking in the oven!

- Feeling happy

- Randomly picking up my half-read book from many many months ago, and finishing the whole thing today! The information in it was really pertinent, and I love the satisfaction of finishing a book. I also thought it was interesting how today was the day I suddenly felt inspired to finish it. Sometimes I put a book down and don’t pick it back up for a long while; that’s totally okay with me because often I have to evolve in myself a bit more in order to fully appreciate and digest the information contained in the rest of the book.

- Our space heater. I love how I can sit really close to it and be warm, any time that I’m chilly.

- How our kitchen looks at night, after stringing some Christmas lights in the recesses above and below the cabinets. I do love Christmas lights… perhaps they’re not super classy, but they add such a warm glow.

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

Comments (2)

By Lindsey, January 15, 2012

~ 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!

***

- More snowfall! We woke up one morning to the scene above!

- Accomplishing projects, and beginning new ones I’ve wanted to start for a while.

- Thankful again for the good insurance I have. Saw the statement this week for my night and day at the hospital — $7,640!!!! INSANE. I’m so thankful that I received the much-needed care there, but didn’t have to fork over that crapload of cash.

- That the doctor, lab, and pharmacy are so close to our house. I’ve been over there more times than I can count this past year, and it has been such a huge advantage that they’re so close, since we don’t own a car. And I’ve become such a frequent flyer at the lab that they know me, and we catch up on what’s been goin’ on each time I go there. The people there are so nice.

- Being exhausted after a long day and wanting to just vege out in front of the TV, and then having three of my favorite shows come on in a row — Globe Trekker, Rick Steves’ Europe, and New Scandinavian Cooking! That was really fun.

- Sitting on my ‘balcony’ in a tank top one warm and sunny afternoon. (Then waking up to snow the next morning!)

- The library.

- Making snow ice cream, and its ever-so-familiar flavor from my childhood!

- Snowy, cloudy days, for the way they make me feel like hunkering down and digging into projects I’ve put aside for so long.

- A mid-day bath on a snowy day.

- A wonderful lunch out at a vegetarian restaurant with my mom and her childhood best friend who was turning 65 that very day! I had a vegetarian Reuben sandwich made with portobello mushrooms instead of meat. It tasted so close to the real thing! My stomach is still really touchy, and even though I crave Reuben sandwiches, I can’t eat them. But my stomach was good that day, and I could eat this vegetarian one!

- Being home and therefore having the private space to weep if that’s what comes up. Now and then, I will all of a sudden miss my best friend Sonja so intensely that tears well up. Other times, this illness gets the better of me and I just need a bit of a cry-n-release. I remember those things happening while I was at work, and I would wipe my eyes, stuff the feeling back down into myself, and hope a coworker wouldn’t walk into my cubicle at that moment. Now it feels good to just address the feeling as it comes, shed a few tears, and quickly and quietly release it.

- Catching some of the Red Green Show last night before going to bed. My parents and I used to watch that religiously, and I haven’t seen it for so many years. Funny!!! Especially the earlier episodes.

- Hanging low yesterday, watching some cooking shows, doing some art, just being together with F, doing separate things yet still hanging out together. A nice day.

- Seeing my folks today, and my cat!

- Going out to the garden today and discovering fresh green oregano beneath the dead leaves! I love it fresh on Greek salads — especially from this plant, which isn’t as overwhelmingly potent as other fresh oregano I’ve tried.

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

Comments (3)

By Lindsey, January 8, 2012

~ 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!

***

- Snowfall yesterday! Oh how I love the snow. (See how pretty it made the trees look this morning?) I visited my parents yesterday, and took a nap on their bed, all warm and cozy and wrapped up in fleece blankets. And when I awoke, it was snowing! I get a deep feeling of contentment in my soul when I’m warm and cozy indoors while rain or snow falls outside.

- The feeling of practically buzzing with excitement and inspiration lately! I have no idea why it has come on, but what a wonderful and jubilant feeling that is! I love it.

- Feeling like this illness has unearthed a beautiful bubbling spring within me, full of all sorts of wonderful things and creativity. Sort of like cracking open a geode — you have to take a hammer to it in order to reveal the beautiful crystalline shapes hidden inside. It’s so nice how good and bad always go together; with the good always comes bad… but perhaps more importantly, with the bad always comes good!

- Slowly getting our house cleaned up and organized and purged. I’ve felt quite good this week with good energy (that is HUGE!), and have really felt inspired to get our house looking better. I’m tired of having so much stuff in it.

- Crossing lots off the ol’ to-do list this week.

- Being outside with my hubby one night, taking photos. It was so frigid but it was really neat to be out and about together, doing something different.

- Writing a New Years Manifesto — something I’ve never done before. A manifesto is a declaration of intentions… how you want to live & be… things you want to keep in mind throughout your days, weeks, months. I like how it reminds me of the priorities I’ve set for this moment in time.

- That I don’t have cavities, but just some tooth sensitivity. A couple months ago I started getting zinging pain in a couple of teeth when I’d eat something sweet. I thought, Great, cavities are just what I need right now. So during open enrollment for insurance, I was struggling with whether to enroll in dental insurance in case I did have cavities. I happened to mention the situation to my mom the day before the paperwork would have been due, and her advice really surprised me and made me feel so much better! She said “cavities, no, you don’t usually get cavities there… it’s probably just sensitivity from receding gums. Try getting some of that sensitive toothpaste. And dental insurance… I’ll tell you… it’s really not worth it. It’s a racket, and I cancelled mine for this coming year.” So not only did that help me make up my mind about the insurance, but it saved me a bunch of money, and she was totally correct — all I needed was a $3 tube of sensitivity toothpaste!!! It’s so nice when things turn out like that.

- And in a similar vein, I’m really grateful that I followed my intuition to keep my health insurance after I quit my job nearly a year ago. That was a *very* smart thing. I sure have been usin’ it this year, oye!

- Airing out our down comforters on a warm day. And freshly washed bedding! Love that.

- A really nice day yesterday. Went out to have a late lunch with my parents, and we ended up lingering for a long time at the restaurant, listening to the great music, talking, eating, and watching the snow falling outside. It was a sweet time.

- F. hooking up some speakers that have been lying ‘dormant’ for years. I had a sudden thought to hook them up to our TV during a wonderful Gershwin concert on PBS. We needed an adapter, so yesterday F went out to get one, and by the time I came home, the house was rockin’ with THE most incredible speakers I’ve ever heard!!! What a treasure we’ve had right under our noses! And since the landlord wasn’t home, we flipped it to the Mexican MTV channel, cranked it up to a nice obnoxious level, and danced. Ohhhhh did we dance! How great that felt! I can’t wait till the day we don’t share walls with anyone.

- Some new (thrifted) wool sweaters to keep me warm!

- Thrift stores!!!!!

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

*****

Comments (7)

By Lindsey, January 1, 2012

~ 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!

***

- A most wonderful Christmas…spent in a mountain cabin with my parents and cat~

Our view!

In town...

- Our tumbleweed Christmas tree! Now and then we rent a cabin in the mountains for Christmas, and whenever we do, our tradition is to have a tumbleweed tree. I love them!

- Doing such quintessentially Christmasy things on Christmas eve — it fed my soul deeply. We hung out together in our little cabin, played Christmas music, had a fire going in the fireplace, baked gingerbread cookies (dough rolled out with the wine bottle!), roasted chestnuts on the hearth (never mind most of them turned out to be moldy inside, haha!), drank hot mulled apple cider, gathered around the glowing ‘tree’, and opened a few presents.

- Watching Liz, my cat, have the absolute time of her life in the cabin! She had a blast! How fun it was to see her having such a great time.

And she wears her Christmas collar with such nonchalance. Pretty cute.

Christmas morning!

- The incredible night sky. OH my goodness…I’d forgotten just how the night sky looks when you’re away from city lights. OH MY. That first night, I walked outside and literally gasped out loud. I dearly want that night sky to be part of my life…in the near future!! I miss seeing an overwhelming number of stars like that.

- The smell of new soap… I love when I’m on vacation because the soap at new places smells different and really reminds me that I’m on a trip!!

- Pine needle tea.

- Giving my gifts at Christmas!

- The wonderful, love-filled gifts I received from my folks. Wow.

Christmas morning!

- Taking a family walk on Christmas, down to the sledding hill, the frozen pond where people were skating, around the dirt roads, past other cabins… it was lovely. I also loved that I felt well enough to do such a walk! And then…drinking hot chocolate and eating snacks after our walk.

- Starting fires in the fireplace…soaking split peas by the hearth…roasting a potato in the ashes…loving the atmosphere and warmth of a crackling fire…and then taking home all the wood ash for the garden. I loved having a fireplace for 4 days!!

- Going swimming with Mom and playing catch with a wiffle ball. We surprised ourselves at how much fun we had! And the view from the pool of the surrounding snow-covered Rocky Mountains was breathtaking.

- Having a break from the computer (and all other technology) over Christmas. Gosh that felt good… and I’d like to make that happen more often in day-to-day living. How nice it was to go back to the simpler times that I remember, when computers weren’t part of our daily lives, and we actually interacted with one another, read actual books, had actual conversations, took actual walks together, etcetera!

- Low-tech “family art time” that happened spontaneously — dad was doing watercolor at the table, and mom and I began making ornaments. All was quiet while we were absorbed in our tasks, and it felt good to be gathered at the table together. We definitely don’t take each other for granted, and we know those moments are so precious.

- Getting home safely, and feeling that of course I loved the cabin and the mountains, but it also felt good to be home.

- Getting home to my sweet Hubby, and glad that he got some good alone-time while I was gone. We all need alone time.

- Meeting F the next day near his office and going to lunch; I loved that.

- While driving home from the mountains, feeling a deep desire for a luxurious spa treatment…and then arriving home to find an envelope with a gift certificate from my sister for…a spa treatment!!!!!! Oh Hallelujah!!!

- Finally getting to the thrift store for some new clothes.

- Getting home in one piece after an exhausting and frazzling errands day out and about on my bike… arriving home after dark, from icy and slushy roads, with a heavy backpack and annex bag on my handlebars. Totally exhausted. And into the loving arms of my wonderful hubby (who was busy making some incredible spaghetti sauce!), and then into a hot bath with flower essences, bath salts, candles, and relaxing music. Then into bed!!

- Cleaning up and purging some stuff from our house yesterday. I didn’t realize it was New Year’s Eve until mid-day, but F and I had spontaneously launched into a perfectly appropriate activity for that particular day…purging the old, cleaning up, throwing out, organizing. And today I got out my Lillian Too’s 168 Feng Shui Ways to Declutter Your Home book which is such a great way to get fired up about purging your house if you’re lacking inspiration. I always lament the fact that I use so much of my stuff, because I’d really just like to give it all away!!

- Having help from my Hubby with the huge mountain of laundry yesterday. Our landlord bought a brand new fancy Samsung front-loader washing machine that we all hate. I won’t go into detail because it’ll just rekindle my hatred of that thing, haahaa!, but yesterday having Hubby pre-wash everything in the bathtub was a huge help, and made the task seem a lot less overwhelming.

- A relaxing and quiet New Years Eve. We even watched an entire Lawrence Welk show — they were celebrating New Years Eve 1971! We can’t help but laugh at certain acts in that show, and comment that every single person in the audience is probably dead now…but last night some good old fashioned schmaltz just felt right.

- Though I don’t normally get too excited about New Year’s, I began thinking about it last night and feeling glad for a slate that’s been wiped clean, ready for a new start!

***

Happy 2012 to you!

What gratitudes have graced your week?

***

*****

Comments (4)

By Lindsey, December 18, 2011

Sunday’s a good day to remember what we’ve been grateful for over the past week, don’t you think? I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition.

- Being bathed in the angelic voices of a professional children’s choir!

- Lying on the living room rug at my parents’ house, wrapped in a blanket, watching them decorate their Christmas tree. I wish I’d felt well enough to help, but it felt homey and comforting just to be there.

- Challah bread! What a special, delicious treat to have around.

- Hubby making the most incredible pot of spaghetti sauce, and how amazing it made our house smell!

- Seeing glowing Christmas trees in other peoples’ windows.

- Candles in our bedroom.

- Having a wonderful day with my mom on her birthday. The stars aligned and it ended up being one of those rare days where I almost forgot I was sick; I felt really good, and we had such a nice day together, and then when my dad got home from work, we went and had a wonderful dinner out at our favorite French restaurant. And she really loved the framed mandala I made for her! I was happy with how it turned out. That’s a picture of it at the top of this post.

- Getting a Christmas tree! And decorating it together with F.

- Meeting my sweet Hubby for lunch twice this week. Fun!!

- A squeaky clean kitchen floor, cabinets, fridge front, and stove! I got roped into cleaning after accidentally spilling 4 ounces of castile soap on the floor! Gah! On the upside, it’s great to have those surfaces nice and clean.

- Speaking of the fridge, we have a light in there again. It went out last week, and a fridge is surprisingly dark and depressing without a light! It’s so nice to have light there again! Hah!

- Smelling the Christmas tree as I go about my day.

- Hot bath!

- Watching Radio Days with F. last night. I love that movie~

- Sitting by the Christmas tree in the quiet of the night before bed, writing my gratitude list by the glow of the lights.

- That dusk falls early during this quiet, cozy, inward season. To tell you the truth, it feels like a relief.

- Looking forward to snow tomorrow!!

- Feeling pretty good for several days this week; near-normal energy, and getting lots done.

- And then when I began feeling quite bad again, being reminded by my mom that “everything happens exactly as it should.”

- Being with my Hubby… just hanging out together. Laughing together! What an incredibly lucky girl I am.

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What’s on your gratitude list this week?

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