Every day this month I've been writing down something I'm grateful for. Some days it has been hard to see the light, but in honor of Thanksgiving Day in these United States, here is my list.
Today I am grateful for:
11/1: I'm reading a book that is absolutely fantastic.
11/2: Beautiful fall weather that allowed us to get some yardwork done.
11/3: A rainy day that provided an excuse for me to stay inside and not have to be productive out in the world.
11/4: Helpful colleagues when I can't figure out the technology.
11/5: The right to vote. The laughter of the lady at the polling place who was enjoying picking through the "I Voted" stickers with me. The poll workers who were gracious and efficient.
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| The election results weren't what I wanted, but at least I got to vote. (No makeup because I was still not feeling great after my COVID bout.) |
11/6: The cat twining through my legs and the dog doing a happy dance when I got home from work on a dark, dark day.
11/7: A boss who allowed us to vent for the first fifteen minutes of our regularly scheduled team meeting about non-work world events.
11/8: Don't look now, friends, but I'm currently caught up on grading. This will last until Monday, but I did it!
11/9: The time to check off a bunch of items on my to-do list.
11/10: A rainy day that gave me an excuse to take a nap in the afternoon.
11/11: Being able to call my mom and tell her Happy Veterans Day. It's been a year and I'm so grateful that we could have an exchange about what she did today and how much the time change sucks.
11/12: Listening to a "classic country" radio station while running errands today that played the following songs - "We Danced Anyway" be Deanna Carter, "Almost Goodbye" by Mark Chestnutt, "That Summer" by Garth Brooks, "Something Like That" by Tim McGraw, and "Next to You, Next to Me" by Shenandoah. Sure, it made me feel old that these are "classics," but I was singing along like it was 1995.
11/13: It was a beautiful sunrise on my morning walk with Hannah.
11/14: Being able to sneak out of work a couple of hours to get a hair cut.
11/15: We watched the series finale of Taskmaster (UK series 18) today and the whole season has been so joyous.
11/16: Letting Hannah run around having the zoomies on both our morning and afternoon walk. It's nice on the weekends to have more leisurely walks with her.
11/17: There was a mouse incident in our house and my husband and I both sprung into action to deal with it...including both of us having an earnest talk with the cat about how we just paid thousands of dollars for her to do her one job which IS TO MAKE SURE A DAMN MOUSE NEVER ENTERS OUR HOUSE. Anyway, I'm grateful that my husband and I were on the same page about how to deal with the problem - BURN IT ALL DOWN. (Honestly, as we were contemplating whether or not it was appropriate to chastise the cat repeatedly, I kept telling myself that if Nicole can make it through, I could, too.)
11/18: Look, it was a stinker of a day. It was grey, dark, and rainy all day. But when I got home from walking the dog after work (in the pitch black rain), did I make my husband watch the music video for "November Rain" by the one and only Guns 'n' Roses? I sure did. And did screeching the lyrics and playing air guitar make the day better? It sure did.
11/19: I did a fitness class at the community enter today and the instructor gave us a whole seventy second break between circuits. Such kindness. (LOL.)
11/20: An hour on the couch with my kitty cuddled up next to me.
11/21: THE MOUSE HAS BEEN CAUGHT. We're leaving the traps up for a few more days in case there's more than one mouse, but I honestly think it was just the one.
11/22: Zelda and I taking a nap on the couch together after dinner. We're still trying to figure things out now that she's radioactive, but I basically don't worry about the rules anymore and Zelda is slowly starting to come back for cuddles.
11/23: We watched and episode of The Great British Bake-Off and the new host, Alison Hammond, is so lovely. I love everything about this season.
11/24: This lovely blogging community. It's so lovely to check all your blogs every day and see what's going on. November is such a blogging delight.
11/25: My book club. We met yesterday and it was so much fun. Also, a cat lounged on my lap for hours, so there's nothing wrong with that.
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| Her name is Beatrice. Apparently she will lay on anyone's lap if they are sitting in this chair. I was not chosen or anything, but she did stay there for HOURS. |
11/26: I went with my husband to Costco and it was so much fun. It was crowded, the shelves were bare (it was two days before Thanksgiving in the U.S., which is primarily a food-based holiday), but I was grateful that we were both in good spirits and enjoying ourselves.
11/27: Vaccinations. Can I tell you my vaccination story? In late October, I went to a nationwide pharmacy chain to get my flu and COVID shot and because I've had reactions (dizziness, fainting, and nausea) to the COVID vaccine in the past, they refused to give me the flu shot. So I walked out with the COVID vaccine, but had to make an appointment with my doctor to get a flu shot. Today I got it. Thank heavens for modern medicine.
11/28: I'm thankful for time off work to celebrate the holiday with my loved ones. I'm thankful for the ability to sleep in this morning, take a leisurely walk with Hannah, and cuddle with Zelda on the couch.
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Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends.
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Have you ever had a mouse in your house? What are you grateful for today.
We have had mice- our one cat was terrific at chasing them down. The other cats gaze at them in wonder. ( I think they'd be more into chasing birds.)
ReplyDeleteI'm very thankful for my cats, one who curls up at my feet on the cold nights, and the other who guards the hallway upstairs to keep an eye on his boys. Not so thankful for the cat barf I stepped in at 4:30 this morning, but on the whole, cats are treasures
It's never fun to step in cat puke and yet it's the price we must pay for our fuzzy friends, isn't it?
DeleteYes - I have mouse stories to tell, but it's Thanksgiving and people might be eating delicious food while reading this so I won't tell it now...but UGH. Yes!
ReplyDeleteI love this list, Engie. And how wise to keep it all November. I have LOVED this new season of the Great British Baking Show as well. I feel like the contestants have a lot more "character" than last year. And Allison and Noel together are such a good pair. I'm in stitches at some point in most episodes.
I really do like Allison and Noel together. No offense to Matt Lucas, but I just never really grew to appreciate his humor. This pairing is almost as fun as Mel and Sue!
DeleteOMG Engie as soon as I saw "mouse" my heart dropped for you. I had to do some deep breathing there for a minute. It is SO stressful. We haven't had that problem in the new house but they are in the shed and my son is in charge of the situation. I haven't been in the shed alone since last summer when one climbed up a shelving unit and was like 18 inches from my FACE MY FACE ENGIE. I am faint just thinking about it. Plus our Calgary house had issues often and this is why all my dry goods are in glass or stainless steel containers. I'll never forget the horror of a chewed bag of quinoa. AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Anyway. I have now coopted your comment section which is all lovely about gratitude with my mice thoughts (aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee).
ReplyDeleteAnywayyyyy. What am I grateful for? Lots of things, but I have coffee in my Buddy the Elf mug and a Rex at my feet, so those things at this very second.
I thought of you INSTANTLY when my husband help up a jar of powdered garlic and asked what could have chewed through it. I SCREAMED for him to put on a mask and start looking for droppings and I'm not going to lie, Nicole, it was bad. We threw out a lot of dry goods and it had even gnawed through our TEA TOWELS and we had throw away a bunch of towels and hot pads and every cabinet got a thorough cleaning out. A lot of our stuff is in plastic canisters, but I'm reconsidering our kitchen organization based on the possibility of another mouse. But I think it's all over. We haven't seen any additional mouse signs since it was caught.
DeleteI had a mouse in my house once and I went on a hunt looking for holes where it could be getting in and I plugged them. In an old house like yours this could be a daunting task though. My Mom had bats in her attic (I mean literally not figuratively) and apparetly they are like mice in that they can get into the tiniest of holes, and we spent hours caulking holes in the building. It was tedious!
ReplyDeleteI have just started watching the GB Baking Show, and Netflix only has from season 5, so I have watched it and I think my least favorite part is the silliness of the hosts. I like them well enough, but don't need all the goofing off parts. I guess that is what you get when you pick a comedian to be your host.
The house is solid, though, Kyria. We had a bat in the attic once and the guy who came to look said it could only have gotten in through two places and he fixed them right up. I don't know about mice, though. I like to think it ran in when we were coming in and out because otherwise THERE COULD BE MORE.
DeleteWe've had a few mice over the years, but they've been nice enough to only make their presence known in the basement. The best/worst thing that happened is that once I had a box of Costco protein bars and man oh man the mice were nuts about those bars. It looked like a bear had attacked the box. Guess why I abruptly stopped getting those bars?
ReplyDeleteNovember is a pretty dreary month, and this has been no exception. A gratitude list sure cheers it up!
This November was particularly dire, wasn't it? I asked my husband what his favorite part of the day was every day and at a certain point he just said "I don't like this game anymore." LOL.
DeleteWhat a good idea to stop and reflect daily.
ReplyDeleteIt seems appropriate with Thanksgiving and everything. I like to do it every year.
DeleteWe've had mice. We once had a river rat that came in through an old sump crock! We've had bats. And we've had raccoons and a possum in the garage. One day, Marlowe came trotting up from the basement with a mouse in her mouth, so proud. I lost it completely. (All of this has been documented at the Dept., of course.) Thankfully, we haven't had mice in a long time. Or anything else, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteI love your list, and I love the Beatrice entry so much. Every book club should have a Beatrice. Heck, every house should have a Beatrice cat. And I'm glad to hear that Zelda is cuddling and being cuddled again.
NO NO NO NO NO NO to a rat. NO!! I cannot deal with this as a possible reality.
DeleteEveryone should be able to access a Beatrice. It was so lovely to just sit there with her.
Oof on that vaccine story; so glad you were able to get both eventually. I really enjoyed this most recent series of Taskmaster - it felt like a return to what I love about the show! Happy Thanksgiving, Engie!
ReplyDeleteThis season was so fun and I thought most of the tasks were great. Baba saying "I don't know any more white names" and Rosie yelling "Babátúndé" in the next round was so funny. And I don't know if I've ever laughed harder than at Pigeor. Good times.
DeleteYep, we've had mice. Several different stories. As a kid living in Iowa, our home backed up to a cornfield. How appropriate is that? We lived in new construction, so that first winter the mice took refuge in our home. Like, LOTS of mice. My folks killed 27 maybe? I was like 4 and I'd pick up a box of cereal and there was a live mouse rooting around in the box. It was an experience.
ReplyDeleteLove your gratitude journal. Great look back.
Yes, I grew up in a cornfield myself and we had a lot of mice when I was growing up. That's actually why we always had cats. However, as an adult, I refuse to share a space with mice! REFUSE.
DeleteAw, what a great idea. I wish I had done something like this for this month. Nice job on still finding things to be thankful for during the darkest days.
ReplyDeleteWell... Zelda DID fall down on the job! We don't have a mouse problem, but we did in our old house. You probably know what I'm going to say and are rolling your eyes in advance... we set humane traps and then took the mice outside to a vacant field and released them. That's what you did, RIGHT? ; )
No, no, Jenny, we did not. We had classic mousetraps and a new version that I hesitate to tell you about, but it certainly is not humane. Sorry. I'm all for animal love OUTSIDE OF MY HOUSE.
DeleteWhat a lovely list idea, I love gratetude lists. I have made them in different diaries and notebooks through the years, with intervals.
ReplyDeleteMy cat brought a magpie in once, and it started flying around the whole livign room. Not fun. Sure she brought in a mouse too, but can't remember.
I love UK:s Taskmaster, we've been watching back episodes and love it (we also have a version of it in Swedish) and I have seen the Australian one but the host is very boring.
Season Two of New Zealand TM is worth watching. The Taskmaster himself is the weakest part of New Zealand. I don't think any Taskmaster will do it justice as much as Greg Davies, to be honest, but some of the non-UK editions are fun.
DeleteYes! We've had so many mice in our house. Once, our first cat caught a mouse and left it on the step in the garage. And my daughter picked it up thinking it was a toy (we had many real-looking mouse toys for the cat back then) and she was walking all around the house with it. And I saw her and didn't think anything of it, until suddenly, apropos of nothing, I realized it was a dead mouse and I screamed for her to drop it and she freaked out and threw it up into the bookcase, where I had to find it and get rid of it. It was awful. Just a couple weeks ago our black cat caught TWO MICE in two days. She likes to bat them around and torture them. It's brutal. We've also put traps around with peanut butter in them, and caught a bunch that way (once our older cat stopped trying to catch them herself). I hate having mice in the house. I'm glad you caught yours! Happy thanksgiving. I hope you have a lovely day.
ReplyDeleteHow old was your daughter when she picked it up thinking it was a toy?!?!!!! That story is the stuff of nightmares. Your cat needs to teach Zelda some things.
DeleteHappy Thanksgiving to you.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had a mouse in my apartment but I have spotted one on the floor.
Also my parents have mice living in their balcony that they can't get rid of.
Egads. How do mice even get UP to a balcony?! I don't want to think about their climbing skills.
DeleteI had to take Eve's BFF for one of her Covid shots because her mom was working and she has a tendency to faint after shots also. They just had her lie down and gave her a juice box after and it was super cute.
ReplyDeleteWe did have mice in the basement a couple of years ago. We put out traps and then I cleaned out a butt-ton of boxes, vacuumed up all the mouse crap and disinfected everything and it seems to be good so far. We reset the traps every fall. It's not as upsetting as having them in the kitchen, but it's gross and disturbing.
I have found this NaBloPoMo to be more purely enjoyable than many for some reason. Maybe I'm obsessing less about missing a day or being interesting all the time. I am hugely fortunate in great IRL friends, but I'm really grateful for my online community.
I've found NaBloPoMo really fun, too. I think it's because I realized that not all my posts have to be brilliant. I hit publish and that's it!
DeleteUgh, a mouse. Shudder! We have three cats. Two are lazy, but one is a ferocious murderer of mice. She brings me a mouse almost every day when the weather is nice. Even so, we did get one in our house. I put a sticky trap in the crack next to the refrigerator and caught it within 5 minutes! It was so horrible.
ReplyDeleteWell, wasn't that a nice story for Thanksgiving! I hope you had a happy one!
Wow! I want your murderous cat to visit my house and take care of business and then you can have her back!
DeleteMouse in the house, not exactly. Multiple mice in the attic, yes. To have them removed was an expensive adventure in homeownership, may it never happen to you.
ReplyDeleteWe had a bat in the attic once and I hesitate to tell you how much it cost us to have it removed...
DeleteMy mouse story comes with a large dose of post-natal hormones. When my daughter was about 6 weeks old, my MIL came to visit us and meet her granddaughter for the first time. We lived in a 16th floor apartment on the edge of Philadelphia (we were in Philly, across the street was not). We were relaxing on the sofa when we saw, out of the corner of our eyes, a mouse scurry in under our front door, which ran directly into the coat closet, almost like it had a map of the place. We looked for it but couldn't find it. This is where the hormones came in, because I was pretty convinced that the tiny field mouse (that likely came up on the freight elevator when someone was moving in) was somehow going to turn into one of those terrifying rats from Lady and the Tramp, and it was going to attack my infant daughter. I was SO STRESSED OUT about this mouse, and our attempts to catch it with a mouse trap were fruitless until my MIL said to use peanut butter. Which we did, and it worked. That SNAP! sound is both horrifying and sweet relief.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to defend Zelda and say she has not been feeling her best, but that she will be back on the job presently. Good job taking care of this mouse for her.
You are SO KIND to Zelda. Maybe you're right and she just isn't feeling her best right now. If there's another mouse in this house, though, I'm trading her in for a more murderous model. (jk, of course, I love that cat with my whole heart)
DeleteI've had mouse infestations before, but that was in Washington state and before I owned cats. I hope Laverne & Shirley would be up to the task of ridding our home of them should they find their way inside, but given the way they only half-heartedly swat at bugs, I have my doubts.
ReplyDeleteI get annoyed (and feel especially old) whenever I hear Nirvana on the classic rock station.
Our cats are too spoiled. They've lost their hunting edge!
DeleteWhat a great November list of looking for silver linings every day!
ReplyDeleteWe used to have mice in the attic of my parents house when they were open fields behind our house and before they build up the neighborhood around us. They stayed in the attic though and we just heard them scratching sometimes.
NO NO NO NO. If I heard them scratching around in the ceiling/walls, I would LOSE MY TINY MIND. Excuse me while I try to bleach that image from my head.
DeleteNo mice here! I once opened the door to my apartment to find a raccoon chillin' on my doorstep. I had Dutch at the time and had him leashed up to go for a morning walk. I screamed, slammed the door shut, and waited for a long time for the raccoon to leave. SIGH.
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving, friend!
A few weeks ago, I let Hannah off leash at night at the local middle school in their football field that is enclosed by a fence. (Yes, there's a sign that says no dogs and yes I ignore it. Also, Hannah had on her LED collar, so I could see where she was the whole time.) I heard a noise behind me and when I turned around it was a RACCOON. He stared at me, I stared at him, and then I ran away as fast as I could toward Hannah, quickly put her leash on, and got out of there as soon as I could. THEY ARE SO BIG.
DeleteI haven't had a mouse in our house as an adult but we had a mouse in our house when I was a teen. It ran across my room one morning when I was getting ready for school. I screamed so louder, my parents thought there was an intruder in the room! And my scream must have made the mouse pee and we could not get rid of the smell so my parents had to ultimately replace the carpeting in my room! UGH.
ReplyDeleteI just watched the Baking Show finale on Saturday. I'm so sad the season is over. My favorite was Nelly but overall it was a great show. And I love Allison. She's all heart! I love how she comforts the contestants and talks them off the ledge.
We had LOTS of mice when I was kid. That's why the extreme overreaction now as an adult. No mice allowed!
DeleteAllison is so great. I really adore her on the show and I hope she and Noel stay hosts for a good long time.
11/30: Saw Anne. :)
ReplyDeleteOf course! I should have done the entire month, obviously.
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