This morning I read off a litany of complaints to anyone who would listen. I realized it is time to list some gratitudes instead. 1. Lebanese Iced Tea, a lovely concoction served in middle eastern restaurants in Louisiana. I read that it was invented in NOLA. It is mostly lemonade and rosewater. Quite delicious. 2. The new red chef hats worn by the employees at the middle eastern restaurant where I drank Lebanese Iced Tea for lunch today. Bright and happy. 3. All the videos on the intertubez of Fiat 500c’s driving around in the snow. I’m now confident I could drive my car throughRead More →

Sometimes you arrive at something small, like a pebble, or a discovery of a bit of your soul that you lost along the way, and you take stock of where you are on your path. That happened to me this week. I found a handful of pebbles, in fact. I am a perpetual stock-taker, an accountant of pebbles, a self-cartographer. Sometimes I take too much stock studying the pebbles, and I neglect the road. My hands and pockets get weighted down with an accumulation of gravel, much of which no longer has any name, and none of which is worn smooth. I should make theseRead More →

My gratitudes for daddy: 1. He was a supreme raconteur; I owe every story to him. 2. Whoever thought to put pears and cheese together? Whatever odd pairings in life, I got from him. 3. The persistent belief that cats know what you’re thinking despite your best efforts otherwise. ∞

Today I am grateful for….. (gosh let me think…) 1. Southern Pecan coffee from PJs. Mmm good. And huge coffee cups for drinking. 2. Staples, thumbtacks, scotch tape, and other magical things that make offices work. My life and desk would fall apart without them. Especially sticky notes, those glorious things that color my life with semi-permanent reminders and labels. 3. The number 3 for its mystical properties and for forcing me to think of a third thing to be grateful for every time I do gratitudes. The number 3 keeps me mindful of what’s in life. ∞

If you look up practice in the dictionary, you get lots of definitions. You will see there that the word derives from the Greek and Latin sense of “practical work.” Gratitude as a practice is indeed practical work. It takes work. It takes practice. As such, it connotes the many meanings of practice found in the dictionary. Think about gratitude as you read these definitions, because it might change the way you understand gratitude. It did for me, or at least it reminded me of some old lessons. Gratitude is a proficiency that must be practiced. It is a habit, a custom, a customary performance,Read More →

Someone pointed out today how important it is to observe and even appreciate the little things around me, like the changing seasons or paint peeling on the wall. My response? Seasons don’t change in BR and really? Paint peeling? Ok, ok. Point taken. So, not so much gratitude as things that I was present for today: 1. Hoarding ink jet cartridges, something I just now noticed. 2. A lot of colorful markers. 3. Three d10’s on my desk for years, left over from a torturous attempt at World of Darkness. One is rather pretty with its blue and purple speckles and silver numbers. It remindsRead More →

I am behind on… 1. Grading. SO MUCH GRADING. And it’s not even the crunch time yet. 2.  Cleaning. I never finished my 40 steps/40 days summer goal of cleaning my office. I have piles of crap all over the place and everything I dusted now has layers of dust again. Depressing. 3. Reading. My “to be read” pile is huge. 4. Health care. Dentist’s appointment and a dermatology appointment. For months now. 5. lolcats. Caught up on lolcats, goggies, lookalikes, and punditkitchen. Behind on Engrish and Failblog. Can’t catch up. At all. I’m trying, though, which shows my priorities are straight. 6. Dollhouse (therebyRead More →

The Latest Threes: (Semi-gratitudish) The intartubes: 1. My latest bookmarks are all WordPress related. 2. I’m on Google wave. Are you? 3. I’m still confused about the new Facebook. The meat world: 1. We are shifting to online teacher evals at school (wait, does that count as meat world? Or on the internet?) 2. I haven’t been to a movie in ages, but I did buy Madonna’s Celebration. 3. The kid and I eat out too much. She’s an expensive date, going for three courses and two drinks. But we do have such excellent conversations. My cat: 1. …is very fat. 2. …is on aRead More →