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
Yes - 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.
OMG 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 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.
We'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!
What a good idea to stop and reflect daily.
ReplyDeleteWe'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.
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!
ReplyDeleteYep, 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.
Aw, 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? ; )
What 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.
Yes! 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.
ReplyDeleteHappy 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.