The past several months, at times, have had me acting a little more doom-and-gloom than I’d like. Although I’ve always been pretty terrible at keeping up a regular gratitude practice, I have been consciously trying to label things that bring me joy more.
Here are a few lately.
* Sun-ripened tomatoes from the yard rinsed with cold water and sprinkled with salt. We’re lucky we got any this year, as our tomato plants didn’t take the transplanting from our old place very well.
* An unexpected surge of energy that motivated me to tackle the massive pile of boxes in our basement this morning and create some semblance of order out of them. So now, instead of boxes three deep and stacked all the way to the ceiling in the corner (90% of which were filled with our books), we now have the one remaining bookcase we’ll be keeping filled with our DVDs there instead. (And, in case you’re wondering what alien took up residence in my body and forced me to want to get rid of all our bookcases, have no fear—we’re doing wall-to-wall built-in bookshelves sometime relatively soon.)
* Raven’s new thing of asking several times a day: “What doing? What doing, Mama?” She’s really into getting everything explained to her that’s going on, and it’s still new enough that I love it.
* Having only two books left from the library that need finishing up soon. While I love the built-in deadline that library book rentals give me, it is difficult when you have about a dozen books all come in at once and need to read them all in the space of about a month and a half. Looking forward to reading some of my own books again, finally. I might even convince myself that it’s okay to reread a book now!
* The fact that every one of our neighbors has taken the initiative to introduce themselves to us, and that they’ve all brought us food, too. These are good people.
* The hot cocoa I sipped this morning for breakfast. It might still be over 90 degrees outside, but I will be a year-round cocoa drinker for life.
* Long, hot showers after excruciatingly hard classes at the rec center. I’m still sore from my boxing/bags class last night, but that shower felt like a piece of heaven all wrapped up in steam.
* Having Matt read the same book that I just finished (The Magnolia Story). It’s not often we both read the same thing, especially one right after the other, but when it happens, it’s kind of magical.
* Finally getting a magazine in the mail today after an inexplicably long dry spell (of almost three weeks!).
* Freshly made cookie dough in the fridge, ready for sneaking fingerfuls whenever I need a little pick-me-up.
* Staying true to my resolve to go off of Dr. Pepper again. I’m now about a month off it (again).
* Chasing after a bird yesterday so that I could try and get a picture of it to show my dad (so he can tell me what kind it is). There’s just something about being a grown woman chasing after a little bird on stick legs that is enough to make you not take yourself *too* seriously.
* Eating a big ol’ salad last night for dinner. We’re not huge salad eaters, but the salad we had last night might convert us. (Recipe here.)
* Cuddling with Raven yesterday after our nap as we both sat and watched a cheesy movie on Netflix for about half an hour until I had to start dinner.
* How much easier flip-flops make my life.
Summer, you’re not too bad, really.
